2007

Merry Christmas Family and Friends,

The biggest change for us since last year is that Stephen is now a freshman at Cal Poly SLO, studying computer engineering. He is already solving complex problems in C programming language - the language Kim was coding in as a co-op at Hewlett-Packard back in 1989 when Stephen was born.

Stephanie continues to excel in her combined BS/MS architectural engineering program at USC. When they visit Sacramento they resume their jobs at Best Buy - although last summer Stephanie also had an internship at an architecting company.

Last summer we had a fun family day jetskiing on the Sacramento River.  We also visited my sister Ingrid at their vacation rental house in San Francisco, bicycling around Golden Gate Park, and again in Carmel, stopping at Gilroy Gardens on the way home.

Our biggest vacation was to Bohol, Philippines to visit Tess' parents and other family. We gave Tess' brother Tito the down payment for a new motorbike, and in exchange we got to use for the 10 days we were in Bohol. We updated a blog each day and placed video clips on the web. We spent the last 3 days in Manila. Tess organized a party at Red Box Karaoke for about 20 of her friends and former co-workers.

Last year we lost Minnie-me when it got in a fight with Blue-bird. Then this year Blue-bird got weak and died. So our parakeet flock is Green-bird, White-bird, and Sky-blue.

Tess' co-worker could no longer care for her Yellow-headed Amazon Parrot, so we now have Pretty-bird.

This parrot says "pretty-pretty bird," "What," "Hello," "Huh?", "Ahhh," makes "space noises," meows like a cat, whistles loud, and laughs like Tess. Kim gives him an almond and he holds it with its foot - like a human would hold a candy-bar in a hand.

Tess has changed jobs to Accountant 1. Kim still enjoys learning new things in ASP.NET in his programmer -analyst position, and lately has been working with SharePoint 2007.

Kim wrote a commentary for BusinessWeek, and created a media frenzy - and Congressional action - for a video he posted on YouTube.

We remain concerned over a pending global crash as peak oil hits. Kim's brother Jay has purchased a 100-acre parcel in rural Australia. While we cannot do anything about peak oil, we could drop by Jay's place for an "extended visit" down in "Mad Max land."

Enjoy "We didn't start the bubble" (MP3 available here)