Houston is #1 on the Kiplinger 2008 Best Cities list!

When clicking on the link to the Kiplinger 2008 Best Cities list, I was thinking, “OK, where do I need to move?”

But it looks like I’m already there!

http://www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2008/05/2008-best-city-houston.html

About ISpeakSindhi.com

Have you heard of Sindhi?  Or about a place called Sindh?  Well, that is actually where Meena and Nariandas are from.  And Sindhi is their first language.  Almost a year ago when I had registered ISpeakHindi.com and ISpeakSindhi.com, my plans were to develop ISpeakHindi.com, this site, as far as possible.  It would have very sophisticated podcasts, with exercises and quizzes.  There would be a very good Hindi/English dictionary.  There would even be a “language course configurator” that would determine what your purpose for learning Hindi is, how you learn best, how much time you have to learn, etc. And it would recommend a course to learn Hindi and track your progress.  After this, I would then take what we did for Hindi and apply it to Sindhi.

Well, almost a year has passed.  ISpeakHindi.com is not near as far a long as I thought it would be.  But we are still making progress.  And it is serving its main purpose of making sure that I learn Hindi, and that I meet other Hindi speakers.  But it is still far, far, far off from the dreams I have.. Don’t worry, we will get there!

But the domain for ISpeakSindhi.com is up for renewal.  And I have a deal with my wife…use them or loose them.  So, I must start making progress with ISpeakSindhi.com.  If any of you are interested in learning some Sindhi, or know somebody that would, then please visit: http://www.ISpeakSindhi.com It will be much slower.  We plan to only do one very short, basic podcast a week.  Maybe just introduce a word or a phrase.

What we do with free time and the future

Good article worth reading:

http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html

Here is an excerpt:

”

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she’s going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn’t what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, “What you doing?” And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, “Looking for the mouse.”

Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for.”

ClickPass

OpenId is a solid proposal on how to allow for single sign on that balances control with flexibility and choice.  However, there are some usability issues with OpenID in it raw form.  ClickPass (http://www.ClickPass.com) addresses these.  Check it out when you get a chance.

yagi-san - Day 20 - Tuesday

I had to go to work on Tuesday.  So, Yagi-san stayed at home and packed.  However, I did have one of neighbors, Angelo, come over for a few hours to chat.

That night, my mom go the kids a dog:

That night we went to Pappasitos with some friends to give Yagi-san a taste of margaritas and fajitas

And of course, we came home and played some Shogi… (I am already missing our Shogi games…)

Yagi-san (day 14 - Wednesday)

We left the La Quinta (which is a lot nicer than the Rodeway Inn).  One note about La Quinta next to the capitol… you can’t really see it in the picture below, but there is a stop sign with a note that "All parking spots are Valet Parking"… When they say, "All", they don’t mean just this level, but every level in the parking… So that means adding $12/day to your stay.

First stop, Capitol building… (one note about grammar that my son has set me straight on..  Capitol with the "-ol" is the name of the building and capital with the -al is everything else, e.g. name of the city, big letters, etc.

saw the dome…

Senate chambers (picture below) and the representative chambers

Next stop was the "Story of Texas" Texas history museum..  Unfortunately they did not allow pictures in the exhibit hall.  So despite spending most of the day there, I really don’t have many good pictures… other than Yagi-san in front of the big star…

We caught the ‘Dillo.  It is a free bus service around the downtown Austin area.  We took it to the LBJ library.

This is the main room in the LBJ library.  All those red boxes contain all the documents of the LBJ presidency.

we were lucky today… There was an actor pretending to be Senator Johnson.  He answered any questions we had and gave a speech.  It was pretty cool.

Then we caught the ‘Dillo back to our hotel.  The wait was a little long.. so we rested while we waited…

Then we went to Bastrop to wait for my mom.  Our original plan was to spend the night at my Aunt’s ranch… however, she was not feeling well, so we went back to Houston.  While we waited for my mom, we ate at a mexican food place in Bastrop.  There were performers at Mexican food place.

My mom was a little delayed from her trip from Mexico.  So we needed to kill some time.  So I got a car washed.  This is the picture before the wash.  It is so dirty because on the way from Natural Bridge Caverns, it started raining MUD… Can you believe?  MUD?  Each drop of water had dirt in it. 

My mom and uncle showed up.  And then I got my mom and we headed back to Houston

Yagi-san (day 13 - Tuesday)

Breakfast at IHOP.  Stephen and Yagi-san play the "dot" game.

Went to Natural Bridge Caverns

I was really happy that I bought the tickets online.  I didn’t have to wait in this line!  I just went to the front.  (Can you see the door from here?  Yep, it is that long.)

While we waited for our tour, the kids got to pan for different gems.  You buy a bag of dirt and sift through it looking for the rocks and gems.

Here are the gems we were looking for.

Here is Stephen and Yagi-san in the cavern:

They are very big about not touching.  I am glad to report that the children were able to respect this rule. 

Then we went to the widelife ranch next door.  We saw many exciting things there (pictures are not in order…)

Then we headed off to Austin.  On the way we stop at Macaroni Grill.

Yagi-san (day 9 - Friday)

Yagi-san went to the YMCA with my in-laws.

Then in the afternoon he went to Stephen’s school with Sonia.  Stephen and Yagi-san talked about Japan.  Yagi-san answered some questions.  One of the surprising things was that a girl in Stephen’s class knew about Shinjuku station.  This is a train/subway station in Tokyo that has over a million people go through it a day.  It is a very busy station.

That night, we went to the 1960 chess club and watch Stephen play chess.  Also we looked around wal-mart…

Yagi-san (day 4 - Sunday) with pictures

Ok.. Ok.. I tell you to come look here and then I don’t get it updated… Well, Let me update Sunday through Friday…

Sunday (day 4) updated

Started out with a game of monopoly:

Sunday we went to the Houston Rodeo and Livestock show.  The rodeo/concert was sold out so we just went to the carnival and the exhibit hall.

I rode a mechanical bull:

Yagi-san got a cowboy hat:

got fresh lemonade

Christopher did "Mutton Bust’n"  That is where the child tries to hold on to a sheep while it runs across a pen, like a bull.  If they do it for 6 seconds then he gets a belt buckle.

All suited up, ready to hold on to the sheep.

 Not really a good picture.. but he is actually on the sheep.

 This is the picture that was taken 1/2 a second after the gate was open.  Notice the "divergence" between the location of the sheep and Christopher whose legs can be scene on the left side of the guy’s jacket.

This is what it should have looked like.  This is a picture of someone else that we don’t know doing it earlier in the day.

The children also rode a lot of rides.  We walked around a lot.  But the thing that everyone really liked was the little foot massagers.

We also went to the exhibit hall…

Yagi-san (day 5)

Today was a work day for me.  But we met at work with some people that Yagi-san knew of.  Then at night, we went to Movie Tavern to watch "College Road Trip".  The funny thing about the movie was that there were Japanese references in it.  The main character wanted to get into a program that spent a semester in Tokyo and during part of the movie the main characters are on a bus with karaoke singing Japanese people.