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Who is doing the dishes at school: lessons learned from teachers :-)

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I (actually we both my wife and myself) learned quite a bit from our daughters’ teachers. A few months ago Serenity does not like to leave when we picked her up in the late afternoon. I recall one evening we were the last car to leave the parking lot 🙁

One evening, she said she wants to get a drink (water). Thought it’s a benign request, I took her back to classroom. She used 3 cups, obviously did not finish them all. I did not thought too much that day (evening) as eventually she leaves with me. Another evening, she’s doing the same in the classroom, and would not leave. Luckily the teacher was there, and talked to her about “just use one cup”, at that time I realized who is doing the dishes, not my mom, not me, not my wife, it’s our teachers 🙂

We should teach our child to be respectful of others. Another example is in the restaurant, initially I did not what to say when my daughter makes large noise, after a while I came up with this answer: we are here as guests, we should be respectful of other guests (not making noises). This is better than “don’t do that”. From negative to positive.

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Software development Web Windows

Consuming a PHP SOAP web service from C# client

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I need to create a SOAP client in C#, and in order to test it I need a SOAP web service. Since my hosting company uses MySQL/PHP technology stack, I am using this PHP Soap web service example.

For the C# soap client, I am following this example on stackoverflow. But there is one problem when I tried to run the example. I got the error (exception) like the following:
The content type text/xml; charset=ISO-8859-1 of the response message does not match the content type of the binding (text/xml; charset=utf-8). If using a custom encoder, be sure that the IsContentTypeSupported method is implemented properly.

Again I found this thread on stackoverflow which seems relevant. It talked about the custom message encoder developed by Microsoft, and Paul Morgado’s addition to the CustomTextMessageEncoder class (just add his method at the end of the class). There is one more thing, the configuration file for the app. In my case, it’s something like the following: (note the messageVersion and bindingElementExtensions definition, there was some error in the Microsoft documentation regarding the latter one).

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Software development

Set up SVN (Subversion) on local machine (Windows)

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I need to do some development work on Windows, using Visual Studio. I like to have a simple source code control system, in recent years I have used CVS, Subversion and git (on Mac). I did a google search on Subversion and found some instructions regarding setting up Subversion.

Setting up Subversion on Windows

and this one

Installing and Configuring SVNServe and TortoiseSVN on Windows

Download/install the SVN server and starting the windows service was relatively straightforward. So as the Tortoise SVN client. Couple things keep in mind:

1) Some sites requires registration or install additional software, I chose sites that does not require registration.

2) I found sometimes I can not open up svn://localhost successfully, in the same command prompt window where I start the SVN service. After I close the command prompt and tried again, it worked. The commands I used are:

set SVN_EDITOR=c:\windows\system32\notepad.exe
svn mkdir svn://localhost/myproject

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Fun

18 rules on iPhone

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From a Massachusetts mother to her 13 old son.

NPR Talk of the Nation has a discussion on this today.

Very much applicable to myself (though not a teenager).

So in summary, no TV, limited iPhone, happy parenting 🙂

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Fun

Funny things about Yoyo

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Hair cut

Mommy just cut Yoyo’s hair.

Mommy: wo yao kan kan wo de cheng guo. In english: I would like to see my fruits (results).

Yoyo: cheng guo ke yi chi ma? (Can I eat the results 🙂

Reading

Also, these days she just likes to be teacher, “reading” books to us. Sometimes she insists we sit on the carpet (that’s how it’s done ins her school).

Laptop

Seeing both my wife and myself are using laptop on bed, she got her VTech laptop and laughed at us 🙂

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401k and Personal Finance Career Life

2012 Year in Review

Reading Time: 3 minutes

I took this cue from Kurby Turner, the independent Mac/iOS developer, as I think it might be helpful to reflect a year’s work, life, effort, etc. As the old Chinese saying goes “Ji Wang Kai Lai” (learn from past, and look forward to the future).

New job: Software Development
Today is my one year anniversary at my new employer. Looking back, from the initial ramp up to more comfortable work on my own pace, and then deliver the first iOS (iPad) app to the field, back end work, report work and support. I feel good about my effort and the support I got from my coworkers. Sometimes my wife will ask me “why it took so long for you to complete a project”? Because it’s not trivial to do it.

I also wrote a few blog posts on iOS app development, and the back end (.Net) web service. I plan to do the same as times goes. Generally speaking, now I have more confidence doing customized app development, full life cycle, and from front to back end (all tiers).

Family
Our daughter goes to the Hope Montessori Infant Toddler Community at Creve Coeur (off Manson road, near Olive Blvd). We are truly blessed with the teachers and staffs at the Hope family (I consider them as family, both adults and children, because sometimes they are better than family 🙂 . Serenity (Yoyo) learned English and all kinds of things there, which laid a good foundation for her future. For us, we learned parenting lessons there. Sometimes I wonder how much quality time I spent there, from afternoon pickup, to field trip, to social (work-day, Fettuccine, Montessori and Vino, the FMV movie). We watched the FMV movie with great fun, my wife and my friends (couple) did not attend the FMV event, and really enjoyed the movie after I showed them.

Trips
We did one family vacation, and I had 2 business trips in year 2012. We went to Orange Beach, Alabama in the Memorial Day weekend, with Chinese friends. We drove there. It’s funny Yoyo would not go to bathroom on the road, she wants to use bathroom in the hotel or condo (destination). For the business trip, I visited 2 mines in West Virginia, the 2 hours I spent in underground mine is both interesting and a bit unsettling. That’s the first time I visited mines (both surface and underground). In November I visited Las Vegas, stayed in Palazzo (Venetian), which I stayed 3 years ago when I attended AU (Autodesk University, the developer/user conference) in 2009.

Personal Finance
As I wrote this post, I found I made both good moves and bad moves on this topic. I did well in 401k accounts (because I did nothing). But not in the Scottrade brokerage and IRA accounts (because I tried to do too much). Overall I still did ok, because majority of my assets are in 401k (both existing accounts and new account).

Today (01-03-2012) as I listened to Charlie Ellis on the Consuelo WealthTrack podcast, I can not agree more on one comment from Charlie: we all strive to be above average in school or at work. In investing being average is actually not too bad. I understand what meant: 80% of mutual funds perform below average (the index), hedge fund and individual investors are not doing better. So in other words, being average is actually in the top 20% 🙂

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Fun

Let Serenity Surrender with Dignity

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Same applies to Ruixian (my wife). Note for Ruixian I need to respect her authority as well (sometimes she lost patience when discipline our daughter).

Saw this from Saturday’s Kindermusik class, Serenity was a bit hyper that day (due to chocolate lollipop?). When the teacher asked the kids to put the sand blocks back, Serenity did not follow the instructions (she usually does follow instructions well). So the teacher asked “Serenity, could you put the sand blocks back”? Youyou hesitated for a few seconds, and walked toward the teacher. I was a bit relieved.

Another fun story from the Montessori teacher, on Friday, when the teacher read a story about a truck got stuck, Serenity suggested unload some of the lumbers, which surprised the teachers a bit (in a good way). That morning was also her first dental appointment, her routine was a bit off, and she played with food (run around) when they set up for the lunch. Of course she was disciplined. Serenity was a bit shocked (as I speculated) because she thought that teacher was the “nicer” one (more easy going).

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Uncategorized

Simplify, simplify, simplify

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Our daughter has been a bit fussy lately in school (daycare/toddler program). In talking to the teacher, we agreed “too late to go to bed” is probably one reason. So we started to adjust our schedule, trying to put her to bed at around 8:30 to 9 PM. In the past, it could be 10 or 10:30 PM, due to my wife’s evening work load and my laziness. A lot of times I was just doing net surfing while our daughter was watching Netflix, or play her own toys (books).

I gave it more thought after reading our teacher’s article on the TV thing (see Hope Academy toddler home page, titled “How TV watching harms young children”). One comment kinda resonate with me is why the baby diaper needs to have some sort of cartoon figure on it. We are increasingly living in a commercial, multi-tasking, run-run-run type of society, sometimes without our own noticing. This of course has effect on young kids, and on us. From my personal perspective, I had an iPhone 4 from 2 years ago, and I have been addicted to facebook, twitter, and other apps since. I decided to unload a few apps (CNBC, LinkedIn and facebook) after re-reading the TV watching article. Let’s see how it goes.

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kids

The most important thing in parenting

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is the “not give up” attitude. I learned a few things from Dave’s yearly breakfast seminar, last year was Dave talking about the Montessori “explore” approach, this year was about digital media by Dr. Sucre (a parent of Hope Montessori student). The topic is related to the “no TV watching” as shown in the Hope Infant Toddler web page (written by my daughter’s teacher). To be honest I have not read all the materials and have not followed all these good advice strictly, but I was trying my best for the most part 🙂

This reminds me of couple things: I remember Woody Allen once said 80% of the work is to show up. I also recall the CIO of the company I work for recently said: show the customers you care (IT is very customer focused in my company).

Yesterday in the parenting work day, our daughter started crying for some reason, which is a big embarrassment for my wife, she has a thin skin by the way. They wanted to go home. So we started driving while I was hoping they can change their mind. On a red light we saw a friend’s car, I know they are coming to the event as their son is in the same class as my daughter. So I tried to drive back. Things turn out ok eventually.

 

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Fun

Montessori Dad

Reading Time: 2 minutes

My daughter has been to the Montessori Toddler program (Hope Academy in Creve Coeur) for over a year, and I think I am becoming a Montessori dad. This is a bit abstract, but I like to list a few examples about the school and teachers, and show why they are great.

This is the first US pre-school I have first hand experience. I never went to pre-school when I was young, I was raised primarily by my grandmas. There was an old saying “it takes a village to raise a child”. Hope Montessori was pretty much organized this way. We increasingly live in a consumerism society, but that I mean we run around for work and material things, and lose family time and equally important, quite time for reflection and time with friends. Hope has a few interesting activities each semester to bring kids, teachers and parents together. In the fall there is the parent work day. Today is the second parent work day we attended, while I had to admit I didn’t contribute much building the wooden slide. Our daughter did have fun painting the climber. Last year we helped out in the kitchen.

There are 4 fields trips each year: farm field trip in fall, magic house in winter, botanical garden in spring, and a state park trip in summer. Dave (the director) always makes sure the food are good in those field trips. Now when I think about it, the activity fits the season very well 🙂

Now a few words about the teachers. The most important thing is they love/care the kids very much. I am 100% sure my baby is in good hands when I drop her off in the morning. We also learned some parenting lessons from the teachers, tell the truth (be honest) to the kids, encourage her use the words, and recently, how to deal the emotion problem with the kid. One interesting thing is the teacher told my daughter we all have moms and we all miss mom (when my daughter cries for mom during nap time). Kinda cute, isn’t it?