It is Christmas Eve today. Last night when I open an ecard form a friend, suddenly I wanted to send my greetings to all my friends. I don’t like sending out ecard by putting everyone on the cc list. I took the time go thru my address book, personalize each ecard I sent out with related greetings. It took me almost 2 hours to go thru my friend’s list and determine whom I wish to keep in touch with. I am so happy that I received over ten replies this morning. I havn’t talk to some of them for a long time, it is good to heard from them. I think next year, I will try to send real christmas card to some selected ones. I always wanta to send real christmas card, but keep push off to ask for the mailing address until its too late. Maybe next year, I will send out a mass copy email in october, and ask anyone who wish to receive a real card from me response with their address.

Tonight I have home made dinner with Pat and her family. After washing the dishes, we played the Dogoploy game I bought Pat, which is a Monoploy with breeds of dogs replacing properties. It’s kinda fun to play silly games sometimes. At the end I went bankrupt by stepping on Pat’s Golden Retriever. I joke that since I can’t afford the rent, I will pay it with myself. How ironic.

We went to midnight mass at St. Mark’s college in UBC. It’s a long drive but the atomsphere is quite nice. Pat may not agree with this, but in my opinion going to church in Christmas and Easter is the absolute mininium requirement of being a Catholic. I really like going to midnight mass, and listening to the all familiar christmas songs. The carol I like most is “O Holy Night”, probably rooted in my mind from the the movie Home Alone when I watched as a little kid.

Me and Pat signed up for a cooking class with Chef Eric tonight. The course is on french cruise, a very delicous 6 course dinner. I even send out the course information to my friends, trying to convince them to join us. Other than Verona, none of the guys is interested. They all think the course is too expensive, they could have someone serving the dinner at a nice resturant paying the same price. Oh well, this cooking course is not just to learn how to cook, it is an activity to spend sometime with your other half. All the ingredient are prepared for you. After the dinner, you don’t have to clean up all the mess. You can just enjoy the fun of cooking and the good food. Ok, it maybe not so good if you screwed up. Unfortunately, this morning the cook shop called us to inform us Chef Eric is sick, so the course is cancelled. I am very disappointed, since I am so looking forward to my first cooking class. I end up paying about the same amount to have someone served me and Pat a nice dinner. Heron in Waterfront Fairmount Hotel is highly recommanded, plus they accept the entertainment book, so one of the entree is free!

Visiting internet forum is my daily habbit. I first heard about TTF throught boxup, the mp3 download site that I get all my mp3 from. Boxup started TTF, later on TTF is spinned off as an independent forum, but they still have close relationship with links to TTF all over boxup’s pages. I have been with TTF for over 5 years, and it is where I get my interest of writing articles. Today I just became a moderator of TTF for their new Anime board. I don’t know why I take up this role, they are asking for moderators for the new Anime board, which is my interest, and I know the super moderator there thru Anime related discussions. So I agree to help him out on the Anime board, and I become a moderator myself. Being a moderator is not much different from a normal user, except a moderator has to delete advertisement, give marks to good posts and participle in the forum, which I do it normally. The only benefit of being a moderator is it satisfy my curiousity, I am finally able to enter the moderator board. To my disappointment, there is nothing interesting to see, mostly are forum businness.

Today the IT department took back my dual 19″ LCD monitors. They would like me to evaluate the difference between a 24″ widescreen LCD and two 19″ LCD monitors. Costwise, a 24″ cost $1000 while two 19″ cost $900. The resolution of the 24″ is 1960 x 1280, while a 19″ is 1280 x 1024. Two 19″ has more screen area, but it has a stripe right in the middle. My initial feedback depends on what application I am using, each setup has its advantage. Two 19″ is good for using Linux side by side with Critix, since the two monitors are two seperate virtual desktop. A single 24″ is best for viewing waveforms, such that I can see longer period of time in a single screen. Writing code or document doesn’t make a big difference as long as I pull up the reference on the side. It is really a tought call on which setting is better. I am wondering how about a 24″ with a 19″ on the side? I guess that would be asking for too much.

The CEO of my company just ordered a full shipment of Jack Welch’s latest book, Winning, and distributed it to everyone who bother to read. I am always happy to get a free book, especially the book is on the New York Timers best seller list. The book is Jack’s writing on his management philosophy, I just start reading, so couldn’t comment much on it. It is always a good sign for the company to encourage its employee to learn. From the few sections I had already read, I can sense PMC is anything but what is described in the book. By giving out the book to everyone, the CEO trys to revolutionalize the company to the right way. My only doubt is how well will the executives and middle managers support the ideas praised so high in the book. It may end up like all other efforts we had done before, become some nice but useless decoration on top of the ugly messy underneath.