Reading Time: < 1 minute Dumb mistakes using airline miles 1) Let it expire; 2) Spend it on hotels, 3) Let myself be the redeemer instead of my old daughter Serenity. Later found out I cannot add my younger daughter (<2) as lap child (the mile redeemed ticket does not have that privilege).

Reading Time: 2 minutes Over the years I have rode quite a few United Air on my trips from US to China. Amid the most recent incident on the UA (warning: the video may not be suitable for little kids), I am thinking of a few UA trips I took, such as this one on March 2007, which worked

Reading Time: < 1 minute Deep Springs College: I heard about the college first time today. Apparently this is a very small college (26 students enrollment per Wiki). But they emphasize work (labor), the college is free. All male for now until the lawsuit can be settled. College of the Ozarks: I knew this college a while ago, and I

Reading Time: 2 minutes Recently I started to realize buring (use) rewards points efficiently is as important as earning, if not more. Chase Ultimate Rewards, Hyatt I made a small mistake about a month ago when I transferred some Chase UR points to Hyatt. The impetus for doing that was I needed to book 3 nights of hotel at

Reading Time: < 1 minute I buy Lego mostly for my daughter and her friends’ birthday gifts. There are 5 stores I usually go (both online and offline): Lego official website, Amazon (probably bought the most), Walmart (both online and store pickup), Target (online, free shipping with red card), and Toys R Us (both online and store pickup). Note in

Reading Time: < 1 minute Recently my wife and I are having some trouble find out a way to manage our old daughter’s at home behaviors, esp. around good working habit (wait until last minute to do homework or play piano), clean up the mess after playing, be nice to her younger sister, and last but not least, playdate with

Reading Time: < 1 minute (update 02-18-2019) Came across this blog post by Jonathan Li, which has more comprehensive steps. (Original 03-11-2017) Recently I picked up my old iOS app as the framework it replied on Parse was going sunset (the date was Jan 28, 2017). I picked up Google firebase after reading a few posts including the one at

Reading Time: < 1 minute There are many good summer day camps in St. Louis area. STLToday recently has a good piece on this topic. Personally my old daughter has been to the JCC Day Camp, and Andrews Academy. We like both, with a bit preference over Andrews: for its after care, and overall quality. Note cost-wise, Andrews is a

Reading Time: 2 minutes Today I had opportunity being a Junior Achievement Volunteer at Northview Elementary School (Jennings). This is the first time I volunteer for JA, also my first time really being a teaching position at school. Almost 18 years I did some brief teaching (Abaqus finite element analysis) for some civil engineering graduate students. More recently I

Reading Time: 2 minutes (Update 28-Feb-2017) Just got back from the book fair in Spoede school, camp read a lot. It’s a lot of efforts from the volunteers and the teachers. At the same time a lot fun for the little kids and the families. Part of the profit goes to the SSA (the parent association of the school).