PART from this old page about my family, almost everything is private (ancestry pages too). The next week I will be spending with my mother (shown in the picture above), which is a rare opportunity to take some time off the Internet.

As friends of mine know, I left my parents’ house at the age of 18 and have since then lived on my own, expanding my areas of interest, holding about half a dozen jobs (almost a dozen in total including teenage years), and earning a Ph.D. degree. A lot of my accomplishments I owe to family and friends, but rarely does a person remember to acknowledge this.

So, just before I sign off for several days I wanted to make this post and thank those whom I grew up with. If you too sometimes neglect to thank someone, the summer vacation is a good time to make up for it.

ew people manage to maintain a healthy marriage, let alone do so for 55 years. Harvey and Anita are role models for love and companionship and today they celebrate their 55^th wedding anniversary, which I am very excited about. This couple has shaped part of who I am today, so I am grateful more than they can possibly imagine.

Anita, don’t let Harv pull that forbidden cake from his secret slot in the fridge!

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ENNY, pictured above, has been with us since I was about 8 or 9. I have just received some terrible news. Due to her degrading condition, including poor sight and sense of hearing, she will put put to sleep within a couple of days. I will sorely miss her. My memories of her go as far back as I can remember. Like all golden retrievers, she was calm, obedient, and affectionate. Jenny was family.

Related: Jenny, The Family Dog

finally caught up with work. Having returned from this long Easter vacation overwhelmed by workload, I was rather restless for days. I am still feeling sore due to lack of exercise. This comes at a very bad time as a contest is commencing rather soon and I must be in a better shape.

I can finally take the time to post a photo which I was sent a couple of days ago. The photo shows myself, my cousin Rachelle, and my cousin Michael at their house in Davie, FL.

few moment ago I realised that our beloved dog Jenny does not appear anywhere on this site. How can this be? As Jenny is nearing the age of 15, I decided to post a picture of hers, pulled from September 27^th, 1992. It was extracted from the digitised photo albums archive, which I had acquired on my most recent home visit.

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I can vividly recall the day that we got Jenny as a puppy. I must have been 9 or 10 years old at the time.

EVR the past few years I have grown closer to my older sister. We have always gotten along just fine. She is a wonderful person, yet sometimes ideaology gets in the way. Allow me to elaborate if I may.

We are both computer scientists, but she insists on using Windows. She has never tried anything else and her job involved programming for that platform. This observation was the next worse thing to me realising that had gone to interviews at Microsoft. She did that once several years back and once again more recently. If she worked for the ‘dark forces’, that could possibly lead to tension between us. I sure hope that the prospective employer and recruiters ‘Googled’ (or MSN’d) her name to discover she comes from a ‘wrong neighbourhood’. Her brother is a stubborn Linux advocate, though it may be irrelevant altogether.

Bottom-right, from left to right: Me, my father and my sister in our younger days (click for full-sized version but beware: 1.3 MB JPEG)