Category: fun

It’s that time of the year again: a lot of shopping or sales, more online than offline, givings in kids school and at work place, bells outside local Schnucks, gift cards, Christmas trees and decrorations, happy holidays or merry Christmas, red cups or white cups. I know I know I won’t go there. 

Gift giving is always fun, as I get older (hopefully wiser too 🙂 I appreciate more giving than receiving. Actually I barely receive anything 🙂 That is fine. I have pretty much what I need. I have a Toyota Camry, that’s sufficient. Although I want a BMW. See I am applying my daughter’s school lesson here 🙂 

One interesting thing I noticed the other day is at my daughter’s school, they are doing a socks drive for the homeless. And they put an art work saying “donate socks for the poor”. I know I know that’s a poor choice of word, the right word should be “less fortunate”. But I will let go this one, kids have good intentions and they are still learning 🙂

Another interesting thing is sometimes people strongly hinted for gifts. That’s ok as long as someone does a good job, or I feel not forced to give. I remember one time (not holiday season) a teenager asked for money outside Schnucks, I have one dollar, and she asked for more 🙁 

I realized tip or gift is a meaningful amount of people’s income in Christmas season more than 10 years ago. A coworker told me how much he gave tips to bartender he usually goes to. A former gymnastics teacher told me about all the gift cards he received and the feeling of being appreciated. That’s the good dynamics I like to see when giving gifts. 

Gift cards seems getting popular these days. It does give more flexibility for recipient to avoid gift receipt, hassle of return to store etc. My problem with the gift card is it’s hard to track them, or locate them. Like today, I was going to use my target e-gift card. It took me 10, 15 mins to locate the URL on iPhone. It’s under the menu button of the mobile website. I also have a google docs to put in my unused gift cards. $10 dominos, $15 buffalo chicken wing. A lot of effort. I also flag the email message that contains the card. I wish eventual I can have it in one place. Maybe it’s an iPhone or Apple Watch app idea? Let’s see 🙂

Merry Christmas (or happy holidays) everyone! 

From Facebook

This afternoon (actually more like evening), on linkedIn I was surprised to find that the company I used to work for has laid off its CIO (chief information officer). I remember we talked about I joined the company in late 2011. I left the company about 2 years ago, to pursue better opportunities. Also I knew the company was not doing well financially. It seems now it’s becoming more and more difficult for the company to survive. Note it’s more like industry wide problem, not isolated the company. Management could do something, but once a fatal mistake made by former CEO (buy another company at market top using borrowed money), there is very little current management can do.

Also, from indeed.com I found a former colleague of mine, we started on the same day on a small software (custom development) company 5 years ago, and he left the company a year later, and found he has driving trucks for a while after that stint.

Last but not least, I saw my neighbor when he came back from work, and just exchanged “hellos”, and he said it’s Friday 🙂

(11-12-2015) Tomorrow will be friday again. Today I happened to see the website I worked on and put quite a bit effort went live, here it is. It’s a mixed feeling for me, because I left the company and the team a few months ago, shortly after the direction of the project changed. It’s good to see the project finally pulled up and it even got 2 mobile apps, cool 🙂

Timberland Ledge Low Leather Hyper Mesh Gore-Tex®. My first pair of Timberland shoes. Bought it from timberland.com for about $65 to $70 on Sept 2011. It did not disappoint. The water proof feature works as claimed. I worn it for over 3 years, for mostly daily and some hiking. I would definitely buy it again.

Timberland Ossipee Mid Hiker Gore-Tex®. My second pair. I just started wearing it. I bought it in Jan 2012 at timberland.com for about $40. I lent it to my in-law for couple months. As my 1st pair timberland started worn out. I started this one. One thing is it’s a mid hiker or in other words, it’s a bit taller. I anticipate it may not ventilate as well as the 1st pair in St. Louis summer. But I plan to wear this one out before purchase a new pair.

Another thing I noticed is the price of hiking shoes went up quite a bit, and the quality seems declining. From some of the reviews I read from Rei.com about Northface and Merrell.

Btw, came across this top 10 hiking shoes list from outdoorgearlab. Amazon has a good list too.

I’ve been a JCC member since early 2012. Having been in St. Louis since late 2000 and in Creve Coeur since 2005, I found JCC is really a gem for fitness. For me it’s mostly about swim and walk on treadmill. But there is more. I met interesting people (seniors), or in JCC terms, mature adults 🙂

Sometimes they would make me ponder about what I will do if I live at their age. I met 2 world war II veterans. One was 94 or 95 years old, he served in Africa (Sahara desert?), and he told me at one time he could not have showers for one month or 3 months, and the temperature there 130 freiheit. He seems think the British general montgomery is a wimp. I have not seen him for a while, I hope he is still doing ok. He basically does only walking on the track. Another gentleman let us guess his age, I got pretty close, 89. From the hint he gave. He said they have gatherings for WWII veterans. Each gathering he saw he fewer and fewer old friends.

This morning, I saw another old gentleman. He is waiting for my cubby. I asked him why, he said that number is the only number he can remember. It’s “123”. I laughed. Then another old gentleman said “don’t laugh, you don’t understand what we are getting”. I told them, I know some. Because once I lost where I parked my car at downtown. And I had to recollect which way I drove in to figure out which parking lot I parked. We all laughed 🙂

I think besides the excellent facilities, friendly staffs (one person greets me on first name basis), the things I mentioned above is what makes JCC standout. Sometimes I saw they have Autism kids/adults come to exercise. This is just some scene I don’t see very often.