You know you are a dad when…

… you go through your pocket of changes only to find a white hair pin among the pile!  And the first thing you think of is…

“What the…?”

Followed by,

“Oh yeah.  I have a duaghter!” 

Ha ha ha!  This is for my daughter who will be four come tomorrow!  😀

Portrait of Christ

Happy Easter everyone!

Part II

New Morning
And a New Day
That teased the hearts of the Ladies
For hope.

The Birds sang of Unprecedented Miracle.
Angels spoke of Resurrection.
In front of an
Empty bed,
What once held our Savior
Now shouted with Joy.

Confused women
But full of wonder and delightful shock!
Ran only knowing the only thing they knew how…
To share the joy!

Earthquake was his name;
A LORD’s Messenger,
Quicker than a lightning
So might in power
Proclaiming
The only thing he knew:
Of the LORD’s
Disappearance…
From the wretched tomb.

The sky that once gloomed
With judgment was now
Warming the earth
Giving it nurturing energy.

That Day was different.
The Nature knew that.
Yet, we the foolish
Couldn’t comprehend still
What had happened
Being so limited in heart.

Then appeared He
To the Magdalene
To comfort & strengthen,
Yet the faithless believed not
Her testimony.

Later on the road to Emmaus,
Did He appear to two
Where Jesus shared Scriptures
With them encouraging
And teaching them.

Jesus rebuked Thomas
Who couldn’t see with his heart & faith
Yet, He blessed them.
But He showed love
To Peter to show him
That He still loved him,
And He gave Peter what he needed so much:
A Second Chance.

The once Humiliated and Abandoned Son,
Now full of Glory and Honor,
Spoke only of Peace to His Children
And returned unto rightful Father’s Arms
Telling us to wait for that
Time when He shall
Return for us all…

Portrait of Christ

Part I

            Imagine, if you will,
            The last few days of Christ.
            Before the Crucifixion.

            Barabbas released;
            Unfair for the fair.
            Christ to the Cross, the rotten wood.
            To be given the worst death sentence
            Of His time.

            Thorny crown on His head
            Deeply piercing for blood.
            Mocked as a “fake”
            With a purple robe, made fun of.

            Bearing His own heavy tree
            To the hills of Golgotha.
            Barefoot.  On gravel.  Bleeding.
            Sweat dripping down mixed with blood,
            Stenching His white clothes.

            Crucified on the third hour
            With His title over Him.
            Spat at.
            Ridiculed at.  Insulted.

            Loneliness.  In Anguish…
            Darkness filled the sky.
            So dark that the earth shook.
            And at a tremendous rate,
            The sins of the Past,
            The Present,
            And the Future flowed
            Vehemently into Him.

            But the worst was not over
            For God had to abandon Him.
            “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?!”
            So He screamed to the Heavens
            About to be handed over to
            Isolation in Hell.

            Yet, they still had to torture Him.
            Offered vinegar as a drink to worsen His thirst
            To a man who lost one pint too many.

            In His pains & sorrow,
            He cried out loudly…
            It echoed to the eight corners of the Earth.
            And…
            His head fell.

            The tearing of the curtains
            Showed the Father’s anger.
            The nature brought
            Calamity for
            It even showed mournful heart.

             …And as if that wasn’t enough,
            They had to put a spear through Him
            To shed only more blood
            And split His White clothes
            Amongst themselves,
            To satisfy their greed beyond their soul.

            Humiliation.  in front of everyone.
            Torture.  smeared into His pure body.
            Mockery.  of disdain and indifference.
            Pain.  that was humanly unbearable.
            PAIN!  The Father’s Abandonment.
            Isolation.  beyond anyone’s Imagination in Hell.
            Abandonment.  no longer feeling Father’s Presence…
            His Vitality.
            Now,
            One who was always full of Spirit
            Was now full of sin.

Two words that JJ has mastered…

Being a boy, JJ has been slower at picking up language and vocabulary.  However, he has been making progress.  Now, he uses two words on a very regular basis with good pronunciation.  What are these two words, you ask?  “What?” and “Why?”.

It is so funny the way he has discovered in using these two puny yet powerful words.  Example:

JJ:  Daddy. Toothpaste.

Me: No.

JJ:  Why?

Me: ’cause you eat the toothpaste.

JJ:  Why?

And if you call him for anything, he simply replies.  “What?”  Not in a rude voice or anything but just simply and factually.  You have to be there, I guess.

Ah the pure joys of parenthood… that and having to hear his whining constantly!  :p

The Power of Addiction: Caffeine

Well, I was trying to think out of the box and see what I could “fast” on with the Easter around the corner.  Like many out there, I’m an avid coffee drinker.  Back when I worked under a German professor and a Russian post-doc,… well, you can guess how thick and strong the coffee was!  😮

However, since starting to work, the strength has dwindled down and I’ve grown accustomed to weaker brews.  Still, it was usually made up by the volume I’d consume.  Since having kids, I had gone from 1 cup a day to 2 cups and some times 2.5 cups a day!  Sleep was hard to come by…

Now that my kids have somewhat grown up a bit, and since caffeine was something I depended on, I thought I’d say ‘no’ to coffee for until the Easter and see how that affects me.  Well, day 2 is here and I have this HUGE migraine throbbing inside my skull, trying to get out!  Having enjoyed coffee from the age of early 20’s, and having discovered coffee at even earlier age of 10(!), it’s no wonder what kind of control this substance has on me.

If this humongous headache even slightly touches on the pain and suffering of what Christ had to go through on that mount on that day, so be it.  After my fasting is done, for the health sake, I plan on cutting down on coffee intake by significant amount.  It’s such a social drink though.  I don’t normally drink alcohol and so I’d need at least coffee to be that… 

Anyway, here’s to you fellow coffee drinkers and addicts!  To the freedom!

Upcoming Intel CPU: Conroe, finally killing AMD?!

Hmm… it’s been a few months but ever since Intel released its plans for this year to release a new breed of CPUs, under codename of Conroe, the markets and the enthusiasts have been just talking up a storm!

Just ask any fanboys of either AMD or Intel camps and it’s been the talk of the town!  Based on 65-nm technology, with built-in dual core and sharing 4 MB(!!) of cache, it sure sounds like a [Athlon64] killer!  At this past CES, it beat an OC’ed Athlon FX running at 2.8 GHz (while Intel’s Conroe was running at modest 2.7 GHz!)…

The excitement is there as a fellow enthusiast.  Intel sure seems to want to make itself a definite king of the CPUs this year as it also released ULTRA cheap ($133) dual core Intel D 805!  If you didn’t know, the next cheapest dual core comes from AMD X2 3800+ at close to $300!  That’s a huge price gap!  The downside is that it is a huge heat furnace!  But we are talking $133 here!  *GASP*

While AMD plans on releasing a new (just updated verion of Socket 939) AM2 socket, no real enthusiast is… well, enthusiastic!  😛  Just basically adding DDR2 memory support doesn’t buy anything for us, the fanatics of computer hardwares.  Could AMD be really toppled over? 

It all depends on two things:  1. What will the pricing be on these Conroes?!  Will they be more than $1000?!!  Hopefully for Intel’s sake, not.  2. What does AMD have behind their sleeves?  If anything, this should just heat up the competition and fuel the race.  Go AMD!  😛