There is no particular topic for this blog post but I just want to share with you one of my favorite rock song, “November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses.

It’s November and at this time of the year, the beginning of North-Eastern monsoon, brings a lot of rains. No word in the Webster can describe the mixed feelings of listening and smelling the rain together with the music. If you are somewhere so happened to have rain outside your window in the month of November, turn up the volume and watch the rain outside.

Perhaps you want to share with me your feeling?

Thanks to Hisao Yamada-san, a friend from Steply, who has helped to identify the above flower. It is one of my favorites. The name is Torenia fournieri or Wishbone flower.

Go here for more photos of flowers and plants in my garden.

The new OSX operating system 10.7, code-named Lion, was officially released by Apple, Inc. on July 20, 2011. In astrology, it was just two days before the Sun begins occupying Leo from July 22 to August 22. And I ordered my iMac and received it before the Sun leaves Leo.

In astronomy, Regulus or Alpha Leonis is the brightest star in Leo constellation. In Chinese, it is known as 轩辕十四, the Fourteenth Star of Xuanyuan. Regulus is also one of the brightest stars in the night sky. Together, with Eta Leonis (a fourth-magnitude star), they mark the lion’s heart.

My new 27″ iMac is a top range CTO model and will be the power horse for my works which include software development, some photography and design works. It is also the most powerful personal computer I have ever owned/purchased. Thus, Regulus is the best and most beautiful name for my new iMac.

Pluto will be passed down to my wife and kids after the data has been completely migrated to Regulus and a stable working environment is established.

Then, last night I stumbled upon an iPhone app, SkyView which uses Augmented Reality (AR) to reveal the current positions of planets, stars, constellation, satellites and even the International Space Station (ISS)!

I demonstrated the wonder of the app to my kids outside our home just now. Although the sky was cloudy, we could still see the moon so I used the moon as the reference. SkyView accurately revealed the exact position of the moon on my iPhone screen. Tonight, we found a lot of constellations, including Virgo which was behind the moon. Next to the moon was Saturn, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Virgo, moon and Saturn.

Not too far away from our moon, we found three satellites, the COSMOS 1536 (below the moon), COSMOS 1975 (slightly above the horizon but behind the apartment and MIDORI II (ADEOS-II) (further to the right of the moon). See their illustration in Figure 2, 3 and 4 respectively.

Figure 2: COSMOS 1536

Figure 3: COSMOS 1975

Figure 4: MIDORI II (ADEOS-II)

Beside these, we also found the Hubble space telescope and the ISS (International Space Station). Both of them were below the horizon and behind (or under?) our house!

Figure 5: Hubble space telescope and ISS

The SkyView app is a great iPhone app for astronomy hobbyists and perfect education tool for both parents and kids. It’s certainly worth investing. It costs only $1 and there is also a stripped down version which is free.

Among all I was reading, there was one that caught my attention, the one that I paused all my activities, and let it touch deeply into my heart. I can’t help to shed my tears.

This is the most beautiful and touching commercial I’ve ever watched. Besides the artistic and beautiful photography, the video portrays how beautiful life is and how fragile it can be. Take a moment off your work (yes, I know you are busy) to watch this video. I bet and I hope it will make you realize how beautiful our lives are.

Enjoy!

This is the new “wear your seatbelt” ad the UK is doing – started by a man not hired to do it, but because the cause is important to him, he came up with this idea, and now it’s being hailed across the world as a ‘beautiful’ commercial. And now the video has become so popular with the general public that people are forwarding it to friends/family on their own so quickly that it has spread all over the world in a very short time.

You can watch here too.

Here’s the screenshots (click to enlarge):

On this page, it says “iPhone 3.0 Software Update for iPod Touch – Already have an iPhone? Update it with new features, free.

On the other page, it says “Download software update. Only US$9.95.”

On the page found at Singapore site, it says “Buy now for $9.95″

I hate misleading advertisement. I checked various websites and found out that iPhone owners are entitled for free update but the iPod Touch owners are not. What the ….

I am not going to pay for the f&$@*?# update so I searched the web. I found one blogger from Sarawak has written a blog entry about this. I also found some links to download the free iPhone 3.0 here.

It seems like, according to dzimonotion, Apple has mistaken published a free upgrade for download but the link has been taken down later. Someone was quick enough to discover that and downloaded the free upgrade and sharing it now.

You can download the iPhone 3.0 free upgrade here or here is a torrent link.

After downloading, connect your iPod Touch and option click the Update button in iTunes (8.2 or later). Look for a .ipsw file and select. The upgrade will begin immediately. The upgrading process will take a while. Do not disconnect your iPod Touch. When the upgrading process is completed, your iPod Touch will reboot. Enjoy!

Now, I can connect a bluetooth stereo headset (I don’t have one now), I can do copy-cut-paste, etc. Check the Apple website for new features in iPhone 3.0 Update.

Not too long ago, I wrote an article about Apple’s business practice, Is Apple Dirty? Why iPhone owners are entitled for free upgrade? Why iPod Touch owners are not? Now, you judge.

After lunch, I took one tablet and felt very relaxing and fell asleep very soon. For almost two weeks, I have had too much bed rest and it becomes quite difficult for me to fall asleep. Xanax has been a great temporary relief.

Ok. I am lazy. I have been using rsync to sync folders I am working on between my Macs. I have been using command line scripts in Terminal for almost two years and finally I have gotten lazy over the task.

The thing is, I need to execute the scripts in Terminal every time I want to synch my folders. Of course, I could simply use cron to automate the tasks at specific time but I ran the risk to cause havoc between the folders on different Macs. It is best not to cron the task.

So, I learned up AppleScript and after a ten-minute hack, I wrote a nice AppleScripts to do the job. It is quick and dirty.

set debug to false

with timeout of (30 * 60) seconds
	tell application "Terminal"
		set Window_Title to "Sync Documents"
		set Rsync_Cmd to "rsync -acrtv --delete
			/Users/username/Documents/
			username@xxx:Documents"
		set output_doc to do shell script Rsync_Cmd
		choose from list paragraphs of output_doc with prompt
			"Result:" with title Window_Title with empty
			selection allowed
	end tell
end timeout

Copy the script to ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Finder and save it as “sync documents.scpt”. Then launch Script Editor to edit username to your login name and xxx to your Mac IP address or computer name. This script will sync your Documents folder under your user home directory. To execute this AppleScript, at Finder, click on the script icon on the menu bar and select the script to launch.

rsync uses ssh. If you have not setup a password-less ssh login, you will need ssh-askpass in /usr/libexec. Unfortunately, it does not ship with Mac OS X. You can get it at Joe Mocker’s weblog.

Mounted on the wall to save space

It costs me RM2,400 for the unit and extra RM100 for the wall mount. It is not a full HD model as I decided that we do not need one. Of course a full HD model will be nice to have for watching movies on Blu-ray disc. The player is still very expensive, more than RM2,000 and the original movies titles are also expensive. Unless till Blu-ray hack is widely available and the equipment and software prices have come down tremendously like the DVD, full HD is not our utmost priority.

It seems like a good head start for me. Everything I planned for today seems to be smooth sailing although I am having one problem which I do not know why it happens. I guess I will need to toy with it and/or hack it to learn why it isn’t behaving as it supposed to be. If everything is running perfect before end of this month, I will acquire an iPod Touch to proceed further. This will be my first wish on this very first day of 2009.

We decided to stay home this Christmas. The main reason was recession and heavy traffic everywhere. The price of petrol had fallen to RM1.80 per litter causing everyone to start taking to the roads with this more affordable price. Our petrol consumption has become even lower because of the cheaper price and the driving habit we picked up after the price hike a few months back. We planned our outings and routes so that we hit the roads less often.

On Sunday night, we went to the Portuguese Settlement to see Christmas decoration. Nothing unusual, same as it is every year, but for the fun of the kids. It was a four days before Christmas and the traffic there already built up. Some silly-no-brain drivers were part of the cause of the traffic jam in the settlement.

We spent whole day watching movies and listening to Christmas carols at home. What a relaxing Christmas.

Oh yea! My wishes this time… you know, don’t you?

Just finished watching Kung Fu Panda with LA and kids. It is a really nice comedy with good meaning. My boys like to watch animation and Dmitry has been asking me many times, “Daddy, when can we watch Kung Fu Panda?” Finally, there it is.

The CG animation has brilliant colors and Chinese culture cleverly blended into it. I think it is the best CG animation ever that involves many great complexity. I am not going to talk or comment about this movie because it has been released in cinema sometimes ago. It is pointless for me to review it now. But one thing which has caught my attention is near the end of the movie. Po’s goose father Mr. Ping, tells him about the secret of the secret recipes of the noodle soup. Ping says, “The secret of the secret recipe of the noodle soup is nothing at all. There is no secret recipe.” (I hope I get the line correct, I am lazy to play the video again). Then Po realizes why the dragon scroll is blank. He then defeats his enemy, the much feared Tai Lung, with his determination and courage together with a little enlightenment.

The moral of the story, there is no secret recipe to become success. Courage, determination, faith, hardworking, persistence, strive and a little enlightenment are the secret ingredients of success.

Oh yeah, I forgot, a dream and a miracle are also secret ingredients in the secret recipe. So, dare to dream for a miracle and realize it.

For those who have not watched the movie, I strongly recommend to have a watch. You will certainly have a good laugh.

If you have noticed, I post less starting October. Perhaps some of you are wondering why. Yes, you are right, I am busy working on my research and the thesis. Please continue to check my blog regularly and all comments are welcome. I will check and reply comments and will write new posts when time and ideas sneak in. I will be writing selectively rather than random thoughts.

Thank you for your patronage.

Today? Richie went to school for the first time to get him familiar with schooling life so that he can accustom easily when he starts his school officially next year. It was quiet at home with only LA, Nik and I. Nik was able to enjoy quiet moments without Richie bullying or disturbing him.

“This is the great opportunity to show the kids about science I learned when I was in lower primary.”, the thought emerged quickly. At that age, I used to read science comics for kids published by a Hong Kong publisher. I never had any chance to use that knowledge. My mom would do the cooking and I did not mess around her kitchen so there was no chance to mix up the cooked and uncooked eggs. This time, my kids gave me an opportunity to show off.

I took the two eggs in my hand and LA gathered the boys around the dining table. Mom told D, “Look, daddy is going to demonstrate science.”

I took one egg at a time, stood it on its broader end and then spun it on the table, One egg would spin standing until it lost its angular momentum. The other egg couldn’t hardly spin on its end for a fraction of a second. The cooked and uncooked eggs had been determined. The boys, especially D, were astonished.

Well, what is the relationship about this egg tale and the rise of an industrious country?

I always believe in doing the simplest to the most complicated things with my own hands. The end result is not so important. The process of doing it and the knowledge I acquired is of utmost importance.

I am reading this book, “Against All Odds – The Story of the Toyota Motor Corporation and the Family That Created It”, by Yukiyasu Togo & William Wartman.

Sakichi Toyoda was an intelligent man who prided himself on what he had been able to achieved without benefit of education or family influence. He believed that a man didn’t need education in the theories and principles of science and that he could learn all he needed to know by working on machines with his own hands. His son Kiichiro had the finest training from his father.

To bring to the point quickly (I am not going to write a summary of this book yet but to complement a post and its comments here), Kiichiro perfected the automatic shuttle changing device which his father, Sakichi, invented for Toyoda Spinning & Weaving Company.

It was the unorthodox and bold spirit of Toyoda father and son that made Toyota one of the best known and largest auto makers in the world.

Just an appetizer to keep you going. I will write more while I read on.

And today, guess what? Nik begins to show symptoms. His outbreak is slow with fewer blisters. We are supposed to meet up with LY tomorrow but it looks like impossible. They are so afraid that their daughter (same age as Nik) may get the chickenpox too.

Well, all three of them have gotten their chickenpox.

Many people claimed NSD to be very easy to read and understand, especially for beginners. This is probably quite true but maintaining NSD can be a problem for system designers. Unlike flowchart, NSD lumps all the symbols into one large block and does not use connectors between the symbols.

Contrary to flowchart which uses connectors, NSD provides a better structural approach of design where Goto should be avoided in structured programming. NSD provides simplicity and a compact overview of a program that can show some relationship nicely. NSD, in particular, provides visual aid and guides thinking about nested conditional structures.

Personally, I find that NSD is useful for rapid prototyping. It is quite simple and easy to draw a conceptual design before expanding into a flowchart. Modifying a stage or symbol in NSD is rather tedious compared to flowchart. On the other hand, after a careful and thorough investigation, I find NSD most suitable for structured system analysis, design and programming. NSD was designed with structured system analysis and design in mind as mentioned in the above paragraph, it has many advantages over flowchart despite of problem maintaining it. I think it is worth to study and to use it.

Here is an example of NSD and flowchart stating an algorithm to find a summation given by the equation:

If S > 100, then display k and tell the user that k is in range.

Some of the books are available as ebook but I prefer a hardcopy. Downloading of ebook pages are quite slow. The other drawback of the ebook is that I am unable to flip between pages for cross referencing. Hence, I would rather to invest in hardcopy books.

Local bookstores have limited titles. I believe Borders and Kinokumiya may have titles which I am looking for. I have to travel to KL one of these days to search for the books I need.

Dmitry has got chickenpox this morning. I didn’t see any when I had bath with him yesterday. So, the doctor gave him one week medical leave and advised him to stay at home. Nowadays people are so afraid to let their children to get chickenpox. This is a sign of overly protective. Children should not be sent back to school. But I personally think that why not as long as the children have no fever and as long as personal hygiene is taken care of.

Lets go spread some virus! He…he…

When I was doing shopping alone this evening, the idea flashed in my mind. I could use Mathematica to explore algorithmic art. So, I sat down in front of my Mac and explored. Here’s my first piece of algorithmic art . It is not comparable to what Jean has done but is definitely a good start. I can’t call myself algorist yet because I created no algorithm.

The following examples are two very simple mathematics equations. The plots demonstrate that mathematics can be visualized as art.

And here is the Mathematica code:

ArrayPlot[
 Table[Mod[Abs[((2 x + I y/5)^2)/5*Pi], 2], {x, -36,
   36}, {y, -36, 36}]]

This is the first color algorithmic art which I accidentally stumbled upon while I was trying to plot a directional field. I modified the plot equation and added colors to it.

The Mathematica code:

ArrayPlot[
 Table[Mod[Abs[(4 - 2 x)/(3 y^2 - 5)], 2], {x, -36, 36}, {y, -36,
   36}], ColorFunction -> "Rainbow"]

I dug out my collection of conference proceedings yesterday afternoon, hopefully I could find some inspiration. Obviously, I haven’t.

These photos were taken in May and I did not have time to process them and to write a post. I was processing Dmitry’s graduation photos last night so I conveniently processed them together. Some good and mouth watering pictures to get rid of the eye sore.

I need some time to think it over and if it is viable, I then have to look at possibilities to patent it. If I am lucky enough, I may get venture capital fund for research and development. I hope so. Let’s dream big.

This is going to be exciting though.

I read his papers with great interest and the desire to read more of his works is becoming stronger in me. I have never had such feeling before. I will continue to find inspiration in his works.

This was the story. Last night before going to bed, I took those books into my working room and wrote the post here. The books were on my desk till this morning. After I was done with emails, I took the books to the bookshelf. He saw me taking the books and asked me why I took his books. I replied, “well, daddy found it interesting to read so daddy read it last night.”. He replied without hesitating, “Those are my books. Why do you read it?”. I knew it was a right moment to inspire him so I replied, “Daddy finds it interesting so daddy wants to read it no matter what book it is.” Then I turned away without speaking too much and ate my breakfast.

After some moment, I saw him reading one of the books. He has been inspired and I hope he will continue to inspire himself. When I was ready to go, I saw the other two little brothers holding Blyton’s books in their hands. The two brothers are not at the level yet but, well, that’s a great start.

Then I called the boys and mom to gaze at the sky and told them it was Jupiter the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet in our solar system. I told them that Jupiter would take about 11 years to orbit the Sun compare to one year for our planet earth. The two older boys responded with a big “Wow!” Nik was rather excited and very vocal.

We could also see some other stars and Ara, Triangulum Australe, Libra and Virgo constellation. They were magnificent.

The kids had their first astronomy lesson and so did I. I learned that Pluto is no longer the ninth planet in our solar system. Instead, the International Astronomical Union or IAU has reclassified Pluto as one of the four dwarf planets together with Ceres, Makemake and Eris.

I will reconsider to acquire a telescope soon. I almost invested in a Meade’s ETX-90PE in 1998 but for some reason I did not. I will consider a larger model, ETX-125PE.

I became interested in astronomy when I was first introduced by two persons. One was Dr. Ghaffar and Khoo. Dr. Ghaffar is a nuclear physicist and Khoo is my ex-classmate and a mechanical engineer. Both of them were very involved in star gazing. Khoo had even built his own 12″ diameter Newtonian Reflective Telescope.

I almost invested into one as mentioned earlier but I didn’t. At some point, I became very interested in astrophysics. Writing software to model celestial body can be interestingly challenging. Perhaps I should go get a Ph.D. and become an astrophysicist. Or, perhaps, one of the boys will become a renown astrophysicist.

We drove to Bukit Baru to source for durian. Finally found a Malay stall opposite SRJK Kek Seng. Bought 9kg of durian and proceeded to grandma’s. The kids had not been to grandma’s place for months. The kids were really enjoying at grandma’s place. We stayed until 2330. The kids will definitely wake up late in the morning. They usually sleep early but once a while we allow them to sleep during weekends so that they can adjust to adults’ timing. They must be sleeping soundly by now.

This morning, the weather was so cool because after the rain and was perfect to go fill up the gas tank. So, we all woke up early and went to the petrol station to fill up the tank. After that we went to the park followed by breakfast.

We went to the old part of Melaka China town near by the Cheng Hoon Teng Temple for dim sum. This restaurant is Melaka most famous and oldest dim sum restaurant and one of the very few pioneer. My dad used to bought us buns and glutinous rice in lotus leaf. They were delicious 30 years ago as I could remember. That was one of the bad dim sum we ever had. Actually, the taste not too bad at all but certainly was not a good one. The service was very bad and not really kids- or baby- friendly. We quickly had some and left. When checking the bill, it was quite expensive. I will definitely not recommend that dim sum restaurant.

Forget about the bad experience at breakfast. Anyway, we all enjoyed very much today. At night we watched movies at home.

I guess I am happy of the whole week of activities and I am signing off to bed.

Last week, we had thunderstorm in the middle of the night (I can’t remember which day). Dmitry was awaken by the loud thunder and he hit me on my mouth with his elbow. We were sleeping together on the floor. He insisted not to sleep on his double decker because he wanted to sleep with me.

The following night, I insisted him to sleep on his double decker because I feared he would hit me again when the thunder roar. Of course he refused initially. So I insisted and I had to sleep on the floor just beside his bed. In the middle of the night, it was so cold and I had to get up and move my bed farther away from his double decker. He climbed down to my bed no long after and I had to to insist him to get back to his double decker.

After a few nights, he is beginning to use to sleeping on the double decker all by himself (he used to wait for me to finish my work and go to bed together). I am seeing him starting to become independent in some ways.

Is it me to be thinking too much after reading articles about modern children reaching puberty earlier? I hope I worried too much.

M has been advising us to stock up some food items with long shelf life. After reading news and considering Wall Street has begun to speculate on food prices, we decided to start stocking up some food items especially rice. I made some analysis based on Geography. The south-western monsoon season is approaching. The rice planting and harvesting season will end soon when the monsoon comes. Looking at the situation in Myanmar that was hit by typhoon Nagis, the future for rice supplies does not look optimistic to me. In addition, the price hike of diesel (RM1 per liter) has prompted transportation company to increase their transportation cost by 38%! This cascading effects will cause food prices to increase again very soon.

Just now, I grabbed 8 bags (80kg) of rice. That will last us for 16 months. Tomorrow, I am going to grab some more rice again for my mom.

Another good reason to stock up essential food items will be reducing the trips to hypermarket thus saving petrol.

Dmitry and Dietrich were so excited. Especially Dietrich, he likes to blow off candles. So, Dmitry was trying to prevent that from happening. I was so afraid they might ruin the cake. Thank God the cake was safe.

Here’s our neighbor. They live across. Her husband is a lecturer in MMU. They are Indonesian expatriate.

There, the princes and princesses.

This is Gwen. She is 3 weeks older than Dominik.

Time for the present, the ultimate moment Dmitry has been waiting for…

After the party, having relax moment in our bedroom…

Dominik and Dietrich were excited about the bread. One thing for sure our children love bread very much.

This morning I switched on the bread maker without any ingredients in it. It was not working. I left it turned on for almost an hour and it was not working. So I called the Pensonic service center and one of the lady told me immediately that their headquarters called them to get the unit back to have the circuit board replaced. They offered to collect from my house. Hmm… otherwise I would have the chance to shoot them.

Anyway, Pensonic service vehicle came to collect after noon. Next time when it comes back, it better works. Otherwise, I am going to take this to consumer court and have them to reimburse the material wasted.

If you are planning to buy a bread maker, don’t buy Princess bread maker! I hope Princess will be reading this blog. Beef up your quality, Princess!

We chose Princess among other brands like Kenwood and Sharp. We chose Princess because it was better (solid) built (and look nicer) and the pan was bigger. But it is so fragile and of low quality. It is dead for just one month and baked 3 loafs!

I will send the unit back for warranty claim this afternoon. I will demand a new unit swap. No repair is acceptable by my standard.

We went to the town to see some CNY decoration. The decoration is not as beautiful as 20 years ago. Partly the reason is lack of sponsorship. Shops are not willing to sponsor as the local government does not care to participate in the CNY decoration.

I hope I will have some time this weekend to go downtown for photo shooting. I always wanted to do it but did not find time for it. I hope this year I can find some time for it.

This morning, I hacked some codes to provide a rather informative post commit email notification. All are done except the check in will stall. It takes a long time (and possibly hang!). I have yet to fully test before I begin my development project again.

Without further delay, I called the Bomba (Fire Department) to help capture the snake. I waited at the front of mom’s house to keep an eye on the snake while waiting for the Bomba to arrive. After some minutes, they came in a fire engine.

They checked the crevice but could not find any sign of a snake. I told them that I really saw its tail about 2 feet long and that could not be a lizard’s tail. One of the guy inspected further under the crevice and he saw something and confirmed a snake was hiding in the crevice. He used a thick cable to reach into the crevice and the snake fell out.

I was right! It was about 4 feet long. Black but with some green and black cross hatching. They said it was “ular daun” (literally translated leaf snake).

The photo (click for larger view) is not so clear to confirm the species of the snake. But it could be Chrysopelea ornata or Chrysopelea paradisi (paradise tree snake). This tree snake could fly and often called flying snake or flying tree snake. Watch the movies how the snake “fly” here. This is a website of Jake Socha, a hepatologist from The University of Chicago. Very interesting.

Back to the snake. We thought it was dead or passed out because it was not moving. That’s why I went closer (but not too close) to take the photo. After a while, it became lively again and moved swiftly under my car. The Bomba men were trying to surround it but it moved too quickly and finally it found an exit and disappeared into the bushes in front of mom’s house. I saw it moving swiftly into the bush and I was closest to it. I could have picked up its tail but I did not have the gut to do it. Not like my karate grand master who is so quick that he can catch an Okinawan Habu snake with his bare hand. The Okinawan Habu snake is a very venomous snake on Okinawa.

The incident also brought two schoolmates to meet again. One of the Bomba guy, asked me if I was from St David just before they left. We exchanged some information and he appeared to be Khalid from 5A2, same year as me. What a happy ending. The snake did not die, two ex-schoolmate met again. Really happy ending.

Until the roof above the area has been built, the sun will still shine at the window at this time of the year. I got an idea about installing blinds after building the roof. I prefer bamboo shades or blinds which give the Zen favor.

SelectBlinds gives 25% off everything until this Sunday and free shipping with FedEx or UPS. They guarantee delivery before Christmas! Should I get something for our home this Christmas?

Don’t stir the yogurt! All the yogurts on the shelf are stirred and blended with bits and favors of fruits to enhance the taste. In the process of adding fruity favors and bits, the yogurt has to be stirred. Stirring breaks up the solid texture of the yogurt.

The Sunglo’s all natural yogurt contains all the solid texture. It tastes great when mixed with fruity jam!

The price of the yogurts are getting more expensive now. I am thinking of making our own yogurt. I will write about our experience making our own yogurt later.

We love plants. Some ideas sparkled in my mind. We can have the plants hang on the garden wall as well as on the roof of the car porch beside the little garden. The hanger must be stainless and weather proof. I came across this site selling wrought iron garden decor. It has variety of wrought iron garden hooks and plant hangers which I am looking for. I prefer classical design.

With the holiday seasons coming, Wrought Iron Heaven offers discount. Perfect to make a great Christmas gift for LA. I found a hidden back door of how to get great discount while surfing their website. Go to the home page, scroll down half way until you read “Our Store now has over 1,300 home & garden items for you to choose from.” Click on the (,) comma to get your discount.

There are many types of termites. Subterranean termites are the most common and economically important wood destroying termites around the world. Their nests can be many feet underground. The worker termites come up from the creeks on the walls to reach to any structures like wooden door frames, cabinets, roof as their food source. Termites need moist to survive. They build many tunnel networks underground and within the brick creeks to reach for any moisture and food.

Common household insecticide like aerosols are useless in termites control. They often kills those termites come into direct contact. The smell of the aerosol will deter other termites and these termites will move away and burrowing into other part of the house.

There are two type of termites control available in the market. One is a bait type like Sentricon and Exterra. The other type is Termidor which is liquid. Termidor is injected into the ground via a drilled hole on the floor. We treated our home with Termidor.

It is important to protect your property with regular termite inspections.

I love my dad
I love Richie
I love Nik
I love mom
I love Dmitry

Of course, he was typing with one finger.