I recently stayed in Manhattan for a few days during a business trip. My colleague and I were looking for places to buy some special chocolate to bring back home. We asked a few locals New Yorker as well as consulted the web for recommendations. Here are the list of …

As many of friends, I recently acquired a HP Touchpad largely due to its low price. I don't really need a tablet, as I am sitting in front of computes almost all the time. My original plan was to turn it into an interactive cat toy, at least sometimes, so …

Huahai and I have just returned from our first trip together to Italy. The trip itself was wonderful and unforgeable. However, it usually took a lot of planning for such an extensive trip, unless you hire someone else to do it for you or join a tour group.

We usually …

My colleague has highly recommended to me the following CSV reader/writer: https://supercsv.sourceforge.net/

I am yet to test it out, so I will need to come back provide my review. But just put a pointer here, since this tool is not realy easy to find without the …

For some reason, my main working machine, a Windows XP desktop, recently  started to crash a lot followed by the blue screen of death. The error message output at the blue screen does not seem to be helpful.

***STOP: 0x0000008E (0xE0000001, 0xBA490925, 0xA880D820, 0x00000000)
***watchdog.sys - Address BA490925, base at …

It has turned out that Netflix has abandoned the plan, finally.

When Huahai told me the news late last night that Netflix is splitting into two, my first reaction was that he must be reading from Onion! After all, based all what have learned from the business school classes and …

I was looking for buying birthday cakes for the cats' birthday. Surprisingly, although it is very easy to find dog bakeries, there seems no existence of a single cat bakery. Luckily, a single Google search online brought up many birthday cake recipes for the cats. I picked one simple recipe …

We are getting rid of our front lawn --- to save water and money!

A landscape designer helped us did the design to convert our front yard from an old deteriorating classic English garden into a vibrant modern garden full of native plants.

Given our shoe-string budget, we plan to do …

The old master bathroom is dark and ugly, with only one sink and w/o tub.

We wanted a master bathroom that is modern and bright, and at the same time with a sense of Zen. We also wanted it to have two sink and separate shower and tub. Three …

China is a fast-changing country. Not surprisingly, the list of popular gifts for Chinese family, relatives and friends keeps on changing as well.  When I return to China, I always do some extensive research to gather an updated shopping list of gifts to buy. Here is a summary based on …

As a busy professional, I am consistently looking for ways to save time. Below are 3 time-saving tools that I have found most useful.

1. Chore Buster

With two busy professionals in the same household, dividing chores around the house can be tricky. Dividing chores in a fixed way is …

If you have multiple machines but only one set of mouse and keyboard, then you must check out this neat little tool called Synergy. It allows you to seamlessly share mouse and keyboard across machines. It even allows you to copy and paste text across machines.

I have been using …

I am consistantly looking for new ways to entertain the cats, as they get bored with their toys very quickly. One new toy I have recently bought for them is Hex Ant.

I tried it during the cats outdoor time.  Mayori completely ingored it, while Tom was obviously attracted to …

The old cat tree of Mayori and Tom were bought nearly 4 years ago and has started to show its age. I have been shopping for a new cat tree for a while now. I need something that is nicer than the typical carpet covered cat tree and goes well …

Mayori is mostly a very sweet girl. However, she can have evil eyes as well. Look at the follow photo when she wants to hunt to the toy mouse. She certainly looks more like a leopard than a domestic cat!

Mayori and Tom grow up together ever since they were still little kittens in the shelter. However, they still love to fight, especially for the best spot for window-watching the outside.

Tom shows off his Samba dance skill.

As a cat, Mayori has impeccable taste, as represented by her favorite furniture in the house --- a Bertoia Diamond Lounge chair.

It is certainly a modern classic and a piece of highly functional cat furniture as well – Mayori can attack Tom easily from all different angels and only need to …

Tom shows off his catch and his big paws.

Mayori loves drinking fresh-served water, especially from a wine glass. Obviously she believes that is the right way to drink water for a cat princess.