News and Views

Derek and his wife Kelsey presented us with our first grandchild, Dorian Chen Lafferty! Born May 2, 2023, 6 pounds 13 ounces. Mother and son, a few hours old Father and son

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I first installed Solar panels on my roof back in 2011. 7.9 kW. It reduced my electric bill by about $130/month and has been very reliable over the past decade. A few months ago my inverter partially failed and I was only generating about half the power I should have. Along with fixing that, I […]

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I see that the last post was back in 2018! For several years my family used blogs to keep the others informed of their projects, plans and problems. Since we have started using WhatsApp to communicate in real time, the blogs have sat in a dusty corner covered with spiderwebs. My family is still healthy […]

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Hangzhou is a medium sized Chinese city of about 10 million. We spent two weeks there recently on a stay arranged by Gisele’s sister Angela. Click on any picture for a larger version. The flight from Los Angeles to Beijing went over Alaska and Siberia. (Actually the Great Circle crosses over the Alaskan peninsula and […]

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I traded my 2-year old Pixel XL for a new Pixel 3 XL three days ago. Bottom line: My Pixel XL battery would only last 4-5 hours on a charge, so in that respect the 3 is a big improvement, lasting pretty much all day. Otherwise the upgrade probably wasn’t worth the $700 or so […]

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We drove to Southern California in my new Tesla Model 3 to attend my niece’s wedding. The trip was more interesting than usual because of some of the unique features of the car. Here are a couple of notes. Charging: I was surprised how easy and non-disruptive it was to charge the car, not significantly […]

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I got my Tesla Model 3 yesterday, and Gisele and I took a drive up to the Mogollon Rim today to spend the afternoon with Richard, Dianna, Dale and Donna. It was very pleasant up there, though windy. Dianna made a delicious lunch for us of BBQ chicken, fruit salad and other fixings. I’m so […]

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On March 31, 2016 I paid a deposit with Tesla to reserve a Model 3. This didn’t constitute an “order”, it just put me in line so that if and when they started producing the car I would be in the queue to order one. Early this morning (early here in Taiwan, but mid-day in […]

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We arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday, after a 14-hour flight from Los Angeles (LAX). We are here for almost 3 weeks, primarily to see Devon, but also to tour some places we haven’t been. It turns out that we chose a bad time to come. The plan was to spend a week with Devon, then […]

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Here’s a story of a large technology company. The security department came to the CEO and warned him that their servers had been hacked by a competitor and proprietary information had been stolen. The CEO pooh-poohed the claim, and said that even if they had been hacked it could have been anyone, not necessarily the […]

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