Categories
advice and tips kids Life Life Tips

Ankle injury and recovery – 从哪里摔倒就从哪里爬起来

Reading Time: 3 minutes

I don’t know about you, but I was fairly enthusiastic about sports when I was in the middle school and part of the high school. At one time I thought I should join the Chinese youth soccer team (under 16), which looking back I don’t think that’s possible.

A few months ago I also talked about Tennis 网球. Recently (to be precise on Jan 7 Sunday evening) my old daughter injured her ankle during a tennis clinics session. I only saw her injured after the fact, as I didn’t see her fall on the spot, which is a few minutes towards the end of clinics. So we got the ankle wraps and tapes etc. from the Walgreens. But she still jumps on one leg – because she could not use any force on her injured ankle. The second day was Monday (school day), obviously we cannot go to school under this condition. And because “wait and see”, as well as “my wife’s reluctance go to urgent care” that day, I went ahead and bought Crutches from Walgreens (I posted it on CL recently).

Urgent care and specialists

The following Tuesday we still went to the Total Access Urgent care (TAUC) next to Walgreens at Creve Coeur (cost: $175.00 not too bad). Then it’s following up. I chose and went to the Shriner’s Hospital for that: 2 trips, the cost to us is only $102.13, plus they have magicians on site sometimes. This seems very reasonable. This is much cheaper than the X-ray service fee (more than $400) from BJC for scoliosis (false positive, but nonetheless the checkup/x-ray and followup with specialist (not too bad there).

(Update 03-18-2024) It seems the Shriner’s Hospital changed their billing in the month of February. Since last time I paid them inside MyChart, I received 2 more bills and I paid them online (a new bill pay website, not from MyChart). The total is about $250. Btw, BJC sent one more bill from the doctor who reads the X-ray, it’s not a lot – but overall cost seems high to me.

(Update 03-26-2023) Okay, I think now I understand most bills now. There were 5 bills or 5 payments from my side. Two bills for the X ray which although it says the doctor’s name in the insurance company website’s benefit explanation section. Two bills for the nurse practitioner who looked at S. And one therapist who came for the 2nd visit. The total out of pocket for Shriner’s hospital is about $450 for us.

4 Bills from the Shriner’s hospital, I think I turned off the paper bill in MyChart and one of the paper bill didn’t come

Btw, I am selling a few gentenly used items on eBay to recover some of the costs.

Set of 2 Theraband Resistance Bands – Green and Blue

Ovation Medical Walking Boot Adjustable Support, Black, Size Medium, Adjustable

Walgreens Ankle Support, Antimicrobial, Adjustable One Size Fits All

Below was written on 02-04-2024 从哪里摔倒就从哪里爬起来

Our old daughter back to court after 3 weeks break, at CCRC.

几个礼拜前她的脚踝扭了：现在已恢复。我几个礼拜之前说了买网球鞋的事：大家如打网球，可以参考一下。A side note is our 13 year old got to hang out with her friend in the mall on Saturday. I recall when I was her age: I like to hang out at the bookstore by myself, and also I saved some changes and bought snacks such as 金团 一种糯米做的甜点。美国中西部没有金团，类似的甜点有mochi 应该是从日本来的。Anyway I am quite happy she is back to her normal routine, and also enjoys some “chill time” with her friend.

Adolescence

Our 13 year old is soon going to be 14 year old. And recently she started to pick up her own clothes, and I think some of it (the style) is likely influenced by the TikTok and YT shorts, her friends (again TT and YTS), and some stores such as Aerie (American Eagle).

In contrast, I recall I started to pick my own clothes around similar age.

Performative Society

Other related topics: how hard should parents push adolescent kids on sports, for that matter anything.

I felt we increasingly live in a performative society, thinking applicable to me (or my work) as well. This is a bigger topic and I will come back to it sometime soon, hopefully.

PS: personally I haven’t had hurt my ankle that bad, when I was a teen. I did get my ankle hurt once during a soccer game, in which my teammate accidentally kicked my left ankle (using his dominant foot, right foot), he and I was trying to kick the same soccer ball.

Categories
Software development

Setup RDMS for learning

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I am teaching a database course this semester at a local university. It seems install MySQL on Windows is not very straightforward. Something I didn’t realize as personally I am on the Mac for a while.

I looked around and summarized the following choices.

  1. Local MySQL vs online databases – Top 9 free online databases  

2) Other: Univ of Arkansas (I have not verified) – “Instructions on how to use web-based free-hosted RDBMS.zip” – from Instructor Resources

3) AWS – RDS

Please be aware of the potential cost! Similar for Azure and GCP. Setup alert or monitor so that we don’t get surprised.

Or Google cloud (again a sample cost alert)

Similar for Azure

Rule of thumb: when you give the credit card information to a public cloud provider, always set a budget, and a cost alert. Because we don’t want any surprises in the bills.

Personally if I am the person who is in charge of a company’s cloud bill, for both dev (experiment) and production. I will be like Cory Quinn.

Categories
Edu-and-Ladue-School Technology

Two simple Microbit programs for valentines day

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I am going to show the below two simple programs with hearts tomorrow for the 4th graders in my daughter’s school.

Instruction for Microbit: download the hex file, paste it to the microbit, the code change will take effect 

Beating heart | micro:bit  – note I can switch back and forth 

Flashing Heart – MakeCode  – this is the one that’s currently on my Microbit, I will switch back and forth, also I will explain the code a bit, both the block code, and the Python code.

Also, refer to my old blog post Teach Kids Programming

Categories
Edu-and-Ladue-School

Expectations, expectations, expectations

Reading Time: 2 minutes

(Update 02-10-2024) Just went there to drop her off for the Saturday event, afterwards I went to Chick Fil A to get some food for the rest of family. I got Starbucks for the 13 year old. We were the 1st to arrive – the teacher said 7 am, and I think we arrived at 6:45 am or so. Saw lots of familiar faces.

(Original) Our 13 year old (soon to be 14) is going to participating the Science Olympiads at Lindenwood University over the weekend. This is something we didn’t expect at the beginning of the school year. For my wife, this is probably a big deal.

One fun fact, Serenity likes to say Science Olympiads in short form: it sounds like Sci-o-ly (it seems this is actual a real word, notice this organization website is here). And finally I was able to grasp it, but my wife could not. For that matter, because Serenity usually speaks very fast, my wife usually could not get what she was talking at the 1st pass. I think there is some mindset (or expectation) going on here too: for me understand 70% of a native speaker’s talking is good enough, for my wife, I assume she usually strives for 100%, which is unrealistic in many cases.

Anyway, Serenity beat our expectations on Science Olympiads this year. We hoped she would do this in last 2 school years, but she was busy in St. Louis Children’s Choir – the 7th grade was especially challenging for her as she was in the concert choir, which has more rehearsals (twice a week, lasts 2 hours each, also there is a 30 min music reading class before one rehearsal) and performances. This year we asked her to pull back from choirs, and focus a bit more on 8th grade sports as well as extracurricular activities in the school (such as Sci-o-li). She followed our advice. She did the Ecology subject for Sci-o-li. And now she is going to attending the event as a training team member. She asked if she could hang out at Lindenwood U after her event, and we said sure.

Also, our younger one recently competed in her elementary school spelling bee contest. Last year she was runner-up. So we were hoping she can move up this year. It didn’t work out, she got stuck at the word hitherto. Later she told us she actually knows the word, but she just spelt it wrong during the contest (she was probably both nervious, as well as not extremely familiar with this particular word). I was on the Zoom watching her and felt bad for her. But it’s okay. She won another contest instead: the yearbook cover drawing contest, which is somewhat unexpected for us. I think my wife was very happy to say the least 🙂

Sophia-year-book-cover-2024

Categories
401k and Personal Finance advice and tips Career

Don’t solely relying on the income from day job

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Reasons for that: economy and layoffs – we have zero control on neither; at certain point, companies and organizations started to discriminate against older workers in terms of hiring and firing (layoffs), due to their potentially higher salary, higher healthcare expense, and so on.

https://twitter.com/CNBCTechCheck/status/1745508231961620622
Tech Job Cuts: tweet and video by Dee Bosa of CNBC
https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1754953014153015490
Chances of layoffs at the Magnificent 7

Surprising, at least for now, AI is the not main reason for the tech layoffs, per the YT video below.

Note we have no controls over the layoffs, especially in terms of the company’s decision. In theory we have some influence such as do our job well, but this is not guaranteed to help one avoid layoffs.

Some of the things I can think of or I am doing

Blogging (make some ads money from Google, very hard). The downside of this one is it takes lots of traffic to generate a bit ads revenue. Similar for the YouTube video creation. For me this is even harder than the eBay.

Selling on eBay (is eBay increasing becoming a flea market, btw?). One side benefit of selling on eBay is declutter, as well as reduce, reuse and recycle theme. Reducing the carbon footprint is rewarding for me.

Part-time gig (e.g., adjunct teaching at Webster U). Note this is not scalable as it’s mainly selling time for money.

Stocks: note this one is risky. But it potentially could have more rewards (again, this depends on many factors, such as the capital one has).

A related topic is to reduce the expense via DIY

Categories
Edu-and-Ladue-School

School Safety and Security

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Physical Safety

Below is mostly from the School Safety & Security web page

See something, say something => Anonymous Tip Line | Report an Incident – Ladue School District

Parent Procedures

4E’s Tips for Parents – Ladue School District (also google doc)

It looks we have some minor issues on the web page above: mainly on the right side “Frequently Asked Questions“. Two things I noticed, and below is 1st corrected one:

All students practice at least 16 drills annually. They consist of at least:

10 Fire Drills
2 Active Intruder Drills
2 Earthquake Drills
2 Tornado Drills

(this part is at the bottom, should be moved up)

Why should my child participate in active intruder drills?

Drills are a way for students and staff to practice and be prepared to act in a crisis. Active intruder drills are clearly identified as “Only a Drill,” and we have members of our staff who are trained to assist students with special needs. All students should be trained so that they are not only able to use these skills taught at the school, but also in any dangerous situation they may encounter outside of school.

======

CrisisAlert School Safety Solution – Ladue School District || Leading School Safety Solutions for K-12 Rapid Incident Response | CENTEGIX

I will add more content as time goes: things like best practice, lesson learned etc.

Internet and network safety and security

Francis Howell School District closes for two days due to ‘disruptions to computer systems’ (it seems the IT director of the school district didn’t earn her/his paycheck 🙂

(Update 09-17-2024) Updated all the links from the school district website.

Today Ladue high school cancels classes Tuesday due to bomb threat (KDSK)

My quick thoughts: knock on the woods, 我们学区/学校相对来说是安全的。当然，世界上没有绝对的安全。我来美国27年，00年到圣村，05年搬到Creve Coeur，后来就一直住在拉肚学区。经历过Columbine high school, sandy hook elementary (new town), 近年德州Uvalde 小学，圣村CVPA （central visual and performing arts high school, Stl city) 等。从一开始不理解为什么美国人需要枪到现在不理解为什么美国人需要冲锋枪(assault rifles, AR series). 当然还有September 11 – it’s another big topic.

(Update 09-18-2024) Now I remember when my old daughter was in the middle school, once they had some similar hoax on the TikTok, and one day a lot kids (or their parents decided) not to come to school, after seeing the thing on TikTok.

Also I saw this last night – Florida sheriff ‘perp walks’ boy, 11, with kill list after shooting threat

Categories
Business Investing

Amer Sports $AS IPO today

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I don’t have any positions. Note IPO usually stands for “it’s probably overpriced” – this is Warren Buffett’s words, not mine. Last but not least, in the general sports apparel/shoes category, not specialized sports, Nike is the king. And I don’t see any one even Amer Sports‘s parent Anta Sports to shake things up. Adidas tried, and was not successful so far. Btw, Jim Cramer of CNBC also just bashed the stock $AS in this evening (02-01-2024) Mad Money show.

Amer Sports Ring the bell on NYSE today 02-01-2024 for its IPO
CNBC reports Amer Sports IPO
My tweet on Amer Sports IPO $AS
Categories
China Travel

Bought air ticket for summer trip to CHN

Reading Time: 4 minutes

The air ticket from mid-west USA to China is getting more expensive after the cut of American Airlines (AA) and United Airlines (UA) ORD to PVG or PEK flights since pandemic in 2020. There are some alternatives nowadays. Besides the cross Atlantic routes below, there are direct flights from Delta Detroit (DTW) to Shanghai (PVG), and from AA Dallas (DFW) to Shanghai (PVG). In fact I took the Delta DTW to PVG (note it’s not daily) last March: I wrote 2 blog posts for that trip – China Trip Spring 2023 – Logistics, and China Trip Spring 2023 – Observations And Thoughts.

Note air tickets and their pricing are always dynamic, and if you are interested in the direct flights from Chicago (ORD) to mainland China (ORD or PEK), please check with the United Airlines’s website, as well as 3rd party websites such as flychina.com (look for “中美直飞航班“) or simpleflying, or aggregator website such as expedia.com. For American Airlines I don’t see they will add back the direct flight from ORD to China in the near future, because they already have the direct flights (daily) from Dallas to Shanghai now.

Cross Atlantic routes

There are some new routes pops up in recent years: mainly fly via Chicago (ORD) and London (LHR), or Frankfurt. If we want to reduce the number of stops, Frankfurt is a viable option (I looked at the dates in June/July, it’s about $2,765 for STL/PVG round trip). Note this is 3 times a week flight (LH449):

Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) to Frankfurt, Germany. The airline uses Airbus A330-300 aircraft for their three-time a week service (with arrivals and departures every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday).

Some new ideas

ORD to HKG : Air Canada

This one stops at Vancouver and lands at HKG. It works out for us: I mean the route. We also got the connecting Amtrak tickets from STL to ORD, and also from HKG to the mainland via trip.com.

Also there are hotel costs: my wife thinks those hotel points are free. They are not. I found out the most expensive hotels are in Vancouver (we want to stay near YVR).

Again websites we used for air tickets are: Expedia.com (Air Canada), trip.com (HKG to mainland)

Hotels: Marriott Bonvoy, Expedia.com (for Vancouver, x2), Hong Kong (Chase Ultimate Rewards), Mainland (HHonors, Hilton.com), Hong Kong again (Hyatt)

Amtrak to Chicago.

Some odds and ends

Credit card declines

My CSP card approved the Air Canada ticket purchase at Expedia.com. But it won’t let me purchase a smaller amount one way air ticket from HKG to NBG. Tried couple times. It triggered fraud alert. Later I got it cleared. It seems I could not use the CSP card for Vancouver hotel booking at Expedia as well. Tried Amex Gold to buy the mentioned air ticket: same results. No alerts but not going through either. Eventually I went to trip.com and used another credit card (Amazon Chase) to get it working. The reason I used Amazon Chase is it doesn’t have foreign transaction fee, and it seems to me trip.com is based in Singapore. I think I tried the CSP there at the 1st step too.

For the Vancouver hotel booking at expedia.com, I used another no foreign transaction fee credit card (Hyatt Chase). I know Expedia is based in the US, but the hotel is in Canada.

Last but not least, I used the CSP as a backup card for the hotel in NGB. I also checked with my friend in NGB to make sure that they have taxi there when we arrive there late at night.

Adding kids to the hotel room

This will cost more in some cases: e.g., the expedia.com booking at Vancouver, I noticed some hotels raised price as soon as I added my kids. In the extreme case: DoubleTree Beilun, it offers me the Presidential Suite as soon as I input in my 2 kids. I get by this issue by only inputting 2 adults (my wife and I). Obviously during check-in we will show kids’ ID etc.

This also reminds me one more thing: as my kids get older, they will likely need a separate room from me 🙂

Last but not least, as I get older, I want to stay at nicer place too. So probably no more Jinjiang Inn or Home Inn.

Some after thoughts

I calculated the total cost, it’s about $1,700 per person, which is cheaper than alternative ways such as via London. The downside is the length of the travel including those stopovers. To alleviate the travel fatigue, I tried to book nicer hotels as much as possible.

PS: Reuters – Which countries can Chinese passport holders visit without a visa?

Last but not least: I realized although I chose the “option of choosing seats” at expedia.com, in reality though, I need to pay up at Air Canada website in order to choose the seat for the ORD to YVR flights (from and to). They do allow me to choose my seats (and my wife and kiddos’ seats) for the YVR to HKG flights (again from and to). Below explained why. This also vaguely made me to recall shortly after the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, airlines usually asked passengers to pay a small amount of money for luggage, probably ranges from $10 to $50 for those short haul regional slights. In bitter cold winter days, people tried to avoid this fee, by drop offing the luggages at the gate, then wait in the cold temperature for the luggage at the bridge upon arrival. I was thinking: is this the America that I came in summer 1997 🙁

(NerdWallet) Air Canada Seat Selection: What You Need to Know

Categories
Investing

Don’t trade the stonks

Reading Time: < 1 minute

By #stonks, I mean the type of $AMC, or $GME, and in fact, I recall the name or hash tag #stonks was coined by Elon Musk.

I think $IRBT

$VFS

$UP

$SAVE

are similar 🙂

The reason: trading them are just like gambling.

Categories
Edu-and-Ladue-School Fun

Snow days, school bus and school lunch

Reading Time: 2 minutes

We had 2 snow days right out of the gate this month, once because it was extremely cold (1/16 Tuesday), another time it was due to the freezing rain and black ice on the road. Basically the road become a skating rink (1/22 Monday).

The green firetruck hit the blue car (nobody inside), barely missed the house, fortunately no one got hurt

Both my kids loved snow days. In the process I also learned the typical Americans’ ritual to get snow days: such as “Wear your pajamas inside out.” On serious note, black ice (ice on the concrete or asphalt) is dangerous both for the cars and the pedestrians. I have 1st hand experience on both. Once my minivan was spinning like the firetruck above at the Briarcliff club house parking lot. Another couple times I was walking like a duck crossing the Olive road, or walking near Olive and Spoede road.

School buses and the drivers for school buses would encounter the same issue. And the teachers and staff too. Plus the parents (guardians) drive or walk kids to school. This is a no win situation in terms of going to school. And we can always learn or have school on a normal day.

School lunch

Last 2 weeks, my old daughter got hurt during tennis clinics (group class). And I sent her to places to make sure she is okay. Once I bought her Chick fil a on the way back from provider to school around lunch time. She liked that. I think the school lunch is probably not as good or flavorful as the chick fil a sandwich.

My younger daughter does bring lunch to school on Fridays. So yesterday morning at the bus stop, right before the bus coming, she said: I forgot to bring the lunch. I said: I can either do carpool to drop you off, or I can drop you off at the next bus stop that your friends will also be there. We did the latter.