BensonHsu.com

Double Rainbow Guy Does a Commercial for Microsoft

Benson — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 21:25:44 +0000

fancy bento

Elise reads a story to her turtle

Benson — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:41:05 +0000

A part of her daily bedtime routine is to get a bedtime story and then go to bed. I hope that the turtle is sleepy!

Oh boy!

Benson — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:03:11 +0000

Babies do the craziest things

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Bucket List

Benson — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:49:28 +0000

My bucket list is a little different – I want to be able to repay each of my loved ones or at least show that I don’t take them for granted. Related posts:A very sad day Good Eats Related posts:

Aarti Wins!

Benson — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 05:30:36 +0000

If you read my previous post about watching the latest season of The Next Food Network Star, you’ll know that I was cheering on Aarti Sequiera. She ended up winning, like I knew she would! I think it’s great – she has such a sincere and bubbly personality and I really think that there needs to be an Indian cooking show out there. She can be the Indian Martin Yan and introduce her ethnic food to the world. Her new show Aarti Party already airs this Sunday, so I am definitely setting my DVR.

And now Nadine needs to follow through with her promise to try Indian food! Anybody have restaurant recommendations?

Check out Aarti’s Pilot!

Dinner challenge

Benson — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:11:37 +0000

Kristy called me as I was driving home that she and her friend wanted macaroni for dinner, but I didn’t have a chance to buy any groceries yet. This happens all the time where I have to make dinner with whatever I have in the house.

Usually it’s not a problem because I’m just cooking for us and if it’s bad… Well it’s just us. Haha!

Well this time I had a time constraint as it was 7pm and I was barely getting home. Did I mention that Kristy had a guest? That meant I had to get dinner on the table fast and it had to not be embarassing home food. What was I supposed to do with macaroni??

After rummaging through our fridge and pantry, I decided to make a casserole with a mornay sauce (using leftover colby jack and parmesan cheese from the weekend), some frozen chicken breast (that I always keep stocked in our freezer), frozen chopped spinach (another item I always have) and a box of breadcrumbs (I always have this too).

I cooked the noodles first and then the chicken in the same pot to save time from boiling water twice. Then I made the sauce and mixed it in my casserole dish with the noodles, chopped chicken, defrosted and drained spinach and then topped with the breadcrumbs and some parmesan cheese. Since it was already hot and everything was cooked, I just threw it in the broiler to brown the top. Cooking the casserole on the cook top is my cheater way of getting them done faster – I do this with green bean casseroles on Thanksgiving and can cook them with fresh green beans in 20 minutes.

I was pleasantly suprised – it came out pretty darned good. Not only did it include most of the food groups for the kids, I was able to gussy up macaroni enough to serve our dinner guest.

More Flying Toyota Chaser

Benson — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:31:20 +0000

Here’s another view of Saito launching his big sedan into the air. Thanks to Ben in Chicago for sending me this!

Japan does it again – jumping drift

Benson — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 17:10:54 +0000

First ass-first entries was the new thing to do… now you have to get all 4 wheels in the air to be cool.

Rob my Hero at Bihoku

Benson — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:27:16 +0000

Rob, you’ve done the man style entries at Bihoku. Feel proud!

Say no to the long e-brake junk!

Happy 86 Day

Benson — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:12:55 +0000

In today’s world where the internet never forgets anything, I’m having the hardest time trying to find pictures of some really good AE86s for 8/6 day.

It seems that some of these cars were pre-internet drifting hype and that google has allowed them to be forgotten. If anybody has some good photos of great ae86s back in the day, please post them somewhere so they can be remembered. Here are some that I just could not find!

Terasaki Gen – Street Levin pre D1 graphics
Kamimoto Hisashi – Red supercharged Trueno
Hiro Sumida – Rust colored Trueno with gold Dori Dori
Yamashita and Hiroshi twin Running Free Truenos

Since I couldn’t find any pictures of the cars I wanted to post, here’s a backup pic – Tsuchiya’s TRD Trueno. This car inspired a lot of people!

Oh heck, and I might as well through in a couple others.

Here’s Steve’s ae86 in my old driveway:

And Perry’s new style AE86 before it got mashed and before he joined the Imola Red club. Haha “MANFOOT”

Dinner is served

Benson — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 03:17:52 +0000

A few weeks ago I learned how to make Chicken Chasseur, which is a French dish that is kind of like a stew with a chicken cut into 8 pieces. Tonight I did pasta inspired by that recipe using thigh meat that I cut into small pieces.

Ya Ya Ya

Benson — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:58:18 +0000

I decided to write a random blog entry today because I haven’t written in a while. So here’s what the name Yoshinoya means when you break down the Japanese.

It breaks down like this: Yoshi-no-ya.

Yoshi is some dude’s name
No is a word that indicates possession
Ya indicates that it is a store

So basically it translates to Yoshi’s store (restaurant).

If this is news to you, you’ll probably notice now a lot of restaurants that end in “ya”…. Honda Ya, Bento Ya, Sushi Ya, Osaka Ya, Erobi Ya, Viagra Ya. Wait…

Good Eats

My latest obsession – Janelle Monae

Benson — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:14:51 +0000

I just bought her recent album Archandroid and it’s awesome. One of those albums that remind you that there are still unique artists out there.

Who needs Yoshinoya

Benson — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 03:20:25 +0000

I made one of our favorites lately – gyudon. It’s easy to make, and it’s a lot healthier than Yoshinoya because I can remove a lot of the fat from the meat before I cook it, and I also skim the fat off the top before serving.

I have to eat it with some greens like Mom always said but can’t forget the shichimi pepper and beni shoga!

Here’s a good recipe if you’re interested in making it for yourself:

Latest project finished: Work Wheels USA

Benson — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:00:02 +0000

I just finished a small project doing some renovations for Work Wheels USA. Their previous web development company created a content management system (CMS) for them, but Work needed some additional functionality and customization so they contacted me.

The challenge with this type of project is having to go through somebody else’s code to modify it. At the same time, I have to be able to mimic the current site so that everything flows nicely in terms of code AND in terms of the user interface. In other words, to a normal website visitor, it can’t look like somebody came in later to do a patch job, and to a programmer looking at the code, things need to be consistent so you don’t need to learn how to read coding styles from two different people.

Lucky for me, the people who previously developed the site for them did a great job with the programming, as their code was very legible and organized. I even picked up a couple of organizing techniques from them that I’m already using right now at work.

The most noticeable thing I created for Work Wheels USA is a rotating front page slideshow. These rotating slideshows are super hot these days. Even though I don’t think they are very good for search engine optimization (SEO), they grab a human’s attention and allows for presenting multiple content in a single area.

The other things I created were just to allow them to swap out certain images and content here and there, things you will probably never notice because for the most part they look the same right now.

This site is programmed in PHP, which isn’t what I work in mostly, but I dabble a little in it, and it’s nice to know how easy it was for me to get acquainted with it and even finish a PHP project in such a timely manner.

My goal in the next few months is to really get my hands dirty with PHP and .NET. I’ve been holding myself back for far too long programming in classic ASP (10 years!!). It’s time to start get relevant with today’s popular technologies.

Anyway, this one is done. Time to start working on a few others I have sitting around waiting for me! I’m looking forward to the Joomla project I have coming!

Lunch at shin sen gumi

Benson — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:37:14 +0000

Before and after. I think I should skip dinner.

This is why I went to a good college

Benson — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 05:38:08 +0000

I was at the gas station tonight and saw the taco truck across the street… Darn I only had 1 dollar and no ATMs around.

I got my Macguyver on and bought 3 scratchers with my credit card and proceeded to win 3 dollars.

$3 + $1 = 4 dollars = 4 tacos and one happy fat boy

Thanks for spending all that college tuition on me mom and dad!

LOL!! OH NO!

Benson — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:30:55 +0000

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Ladies

Benson — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:22:45 +0000

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I usually don’t like rocket bunny but…

Benson — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:18:45 +0000

The style experts in Japan have done it again and changed my mind. Logs sent me a link to a blog with the pics below…

Do they have some sort of car style school over there that I can attend?