Year of the Hackintosh?

Our mid-2007 iMac is starting to show its age. Surfing is fine, but once you launch one of the piggier apps like iPhoto or iTunes or PowerPoint, things are slow going.

Yes, I know the apps are (mostly) to blame for the poky performance. None of the iLife apps gracefully handle large media collections. Microsoft Office, never a speed demon, does not age well either. Our iPhoto library is ~170GB large now, and it takes longer to launch iPhoto than it does to boot the computer (3-4 minutes vs. 2-3 minutes). I doubt that I can getthe iPhoto developers to add library splitting or other features that would speed performance, I’ll have to fix this the old-fashioned way: by throwing hardware at it. (Yes, for the iPhoto performance problem, I’m going to try splitting up my library with Fat Cat Software’s iPhoto Library Manager, but it’ll take a little while to find enough disk space to follow its recommendation of cloning and pruning your existing library. And that doesn’t help with the other slow apps.)

I wandered by the Apple Store online and took a look through the current lineup. I was hoping for a beefy enough Mac Mini so that I could occasionally fire up Windows to play a vintage 2011 game like Modern Warfare 3. I wanted a Mac Mini because I don’t really need another all-in-one and I like the flexibility of upgrading my CPU independently of the display. No dice on the Mac Minis: they top at, GPU-wise, with an AMD Radeon HD 6630M.

The iMacs are a little beefier, graphics-wise, with the highest end 27-inch models getting up to a AMD Radeon 6970M. But then you are locked into another all-in-one like the one I’m using now. It’s beautiful and the monitor is still lovely. But the innards are ready for an upgrade, and I can’t actually upgrade them without a lot of elbow grease and specialized parts like a glass suction cup set from an outfit like iFixit.com.

So I started exploring the Hackintosh universe courtesy of the mighty tonymacx86, the fine Swedes behind Kakewalk, and whoever maintains the portal Hackintosh.com.

Oh,  I also invested a few hours getting Lion (the latest MacOS) running on VMware Workstation, courtesy of the step-by-step directions on the Windows 7 Hacker site. It worked—but was slower than my 2007 iMac (running on a 2009-era HP Pavilion), so while I satisfied my curiosity about whether it would work, I didn’t get the outcome I wanted.

So back to the Hackintosh thread: it’s gotten much easier to put together a desktop Hackintosh these days. As recently as a few years ago, you had to cobble together a bunch of software by hand, compile a few things, edit a bunch of configuration files, and pray. These days, simple tools exist to install Mac OS X (even Lion) onto your own collection of x86 components.

To do a sanity check, I ran some numbers on buying a middle- to high-end build using a mishmash of components recommended by tonymacx86 or kakewalk. Here’s the verdict: buying all your components of Amazon, it’ll take about $1,650 to put together a complete mid-range system. The most expensive part of the system is an iMac-like 2560 x 1440 27″ monitor—you can save >$400 by going with a 1920 x 1080 panel; The computer itself (case + CPU + memory + power supply + graphics card + hard drive + DVD drive) weighs in at just about $900.

So what do you get for that $1,650? Easiest way to appreciate it this by comparing it to an actual iMac. If you compare the hand-built Hackintosh with the refurbished version of the May 2011 27″ iMac at $1,659, you’ll get the following upgrades:

• A brand new computer with components you’ve selected
• 16GB (1600MHz) vs. 4 GB of RAM (1333 MHz)
• A faster processor (3.3GHz vs 3.1GHz Intel i5)
• Twice the hard drive space (2GB vs 1GB)
• A graphics card that is two product cycles ahead (AMD Radeon 6870 vs the top end Mac option of the 6790); see here for a comparison of raw benchmarks from each card

Of course, you’ll need to invest some sweat equity putting it all together—and there will be the anxiety of wondering whether the compatibility guides spoke the truth, whether the components you bought are same ones other people are using, and so on. But you’ll also be able to expand the system (e.g., with SSDs and separate drives to dual-boot Windows or Linux, etc.) with more components and swap in a beefier graphics card down the road. You’ll have the geeky satisfaction of having built your own computer—and in my case, the opportunity to teach my kids about the raw components that go into a computer.

(An aside: here’s a sign of the times: my kids still mix up “monitor” and “computer” pretty routinely since they mostly grew up on the all-in-one iMac.)

I have the raw data in a Google Spreadsheet for fellow geeks who want to see the part list I chose after reading a few Amazon reviews. (For those who are curious, the high-end i7 based build came out to $1,800. Add about $130 for a SSD boot drive on either system.)

Still wavering about whether to invest the time & money into it, but this is the furthest I’ve gotten in a few years.  :-)

Christmas Q&A with Cameron

Questions Cameron asked about Christmas this year:

• When is it Christmas?
• What is Christmas Eve?
• Why can’t we have Christmas 1 and Christmas 2?
• When can we open presents?
• Is Santa real?
• Why is Santa so fat?
• Is Christmas really Jesus’ birthday?

Christmas update

Why, hello there. It’s been a full year since we’ve posted anything on the blog. < Embarrassed silence.> It’s just so much easier to check-in on Foursquare or share a pic via Instagram or dish on Facebook. And sharing via those venues has the added benefit of supporting the portfolio (all three are Andreessen Horowitz investments).

But I realize even as I write these words that the real culprits are laziness and short-attention-span-ness. So just once this year, let’s see if we can activate the part of the brain that marshals paragraph-length thoughts. No promises. If I just trail off into 140-character bursts and #hashtags, you’ll know what happened.

The First & Last Year of One School to Rule Them All

The first half of 2011 was the first and last year we had all three kids at Fox School, our cozy local elementary school. Colin (now 11) was in 5th grade, Katye (8) was in 2nd grade, and Cameron (now 6) was in kindergarten. I’m pleased to report that despite a few close calls on the way up or back from school, all three survived the experience. And now we have two at Fox and (gasp) a middle school student.

Colin

Unbelievably, Colin is now a Ralston Ram in his inaugural year of middle school. He had some first-timer anxieties, but has settled nicely into the new rhythm of homerooms, lockers (surprisingly 3: main, gym, and music), rushing between different classrooms, and a student body more than twice as large as Fox’s.

Just over a thousand students jam the hallways between classes, requiring they all exercise some speed  and agility to get to their next classrooms on time. Luckily, the Ralston PE program provides insanely rigorous training to equip the students with the stamina they need. Seriously, they are running for their lives with timed 1-mile runs on a regular basis. Colin is now fitter than he’s ever been–and far fitter than either Frank or Fedora have ever been. In fact, he’s earned the school’s coveted Gold Trunks, which requires 6th grade boys to run the mile in less than 6:50, do two pull-ups and 18 push-ups, and crunch 48 sit-ups in under a minute. Well, given the sorry state of California school finances, we bought him the gold trunks. But nonetheless, we are quite the proud parents. Go, Colin!

Like many of his friends, Colin is now an avid videogamer and has started playing multiplayer games such as Team Fortress 2 and Supreme Commander 2. For a while, your faithful correspondent tried to keep up with him. But after several humiliating defeats in head-to-head competition, we mostly now just play the co-op modes. If you want to test your skills against the game master, the  master himself bids you friend him on Steam where he reigns as Li’l Midget (tagline: “Have you ever been beaten by someone half your size? Midgets will eventually rule the world! JUST WAIT!”).

Katye

Katye continues to excel in school and be our resident enthusiast about, well, everything–books, dance, piano, food, and more. I can’t tell you how delightful it is to have a child whose face completely lights up when she sees a good plate of chicken or pork katsu. Mmmmm, golden brown and delicious.  :-)

Like both of her parents, she’s constantly got her nose in a book. In fact, I think the greatest danger she poses to herself is the risk of falling down the stairs or into a ditch because she’s constantly reading. Kinda like the whole falling into a fountain at the mall while texting thing–but with books instead of a smartphone.

But we’re thankful she enjoys enthusiastic about reading–and about life in general. She’s plain fired up about everything she does: dance (she is taking Ballet and Lyrical and Jazz and Modern, and is competing with the Junior Lyrical Petite Novice Small Group team–wow, that’s a mouthful!–regionally for the first time this year), mixed martial arts (which the kids insist on calling “FF” or “Fearful Fitness” rather than its official name “Fearless Fitness”), and eating (notable highlight this year: Ethiopian food).

Katye wanted to share the list of new gymnastics skills she’s acquired this year: a front walk over, a back walk over, a headstand, a back bend, and a front handspring (kind of).

Cameron

Third-born children have to blaze their own way, and Cameron is no exception. I think it might be a biological adaptation: without some personality pyrotechnics, they might not get enough food or love or water or some such.

Cameron is settling into a good first grade routine. His teacher Ms. Schilling  apparently drew the short straw each year and is now teaching her 3rd and final Chen child. She reports that Cameron is very engaged in the classroom and talks much more than Colin (though, like his father before him, Colin set a pretty low bar on chattiness). This is the first year the school district has had iPads in the classroom, and of course they are a huge hit. I wonder if schools will ever switch from teaching cursive to advanced iPad navigation techniques.

Outside the classroom, Cameron is in Fearless Fitness and (his favorite–not!) Chinese class. Also, as part of his trailblazing, he’s in a hip hop dance class which he claims to enjoy. His teachers are very impressed with his gymnastics skills. We don’t know exactly where this came from genetically speaking, but he’s just about able to land an aerial, which (I learned this year) is a cartwheel with no hands.

When interviewed for this piece, Cameron wanted everyone to know he loves French fries. So now you know.

Life in venture capital

Yours truly is still having a blast at Andreessen Horowitz. We still think of our firm as a startup in venture capital, and we’re in the fun rapid growth phase of our life. We’re almost 40 people now, which is large for a venture firm, though still delightfully small enough to feel like Cheers where everyone know your name.

To accommodate growing A16Z team, we move to a bigger office. Here are the kids helping with the move:

I’m thrilled with the team I’m building, and still relish the rhythm of (1) hanging out with energetic entrepreneurs everyday and (2) learning something new pretty much every hour on the hour.

The firm has been blessed to have a few “exits” (that’s VC-speak for either an Initial Public Offering or a bigger company swooping in to buy a company we’ve invested in) earlier than typical for a VC firm. After 2.5 years in the business, we’ve had exits with Skype (which Microsoft bought), Fusion-io ( the 2nd best performing tech IPO of the year), Groupon (the fastest company to reach a $1b in revenue in history), and recently Zynga (the social gaming company behind the fastest growing games in history such as Farmville and Cityville).

People who are friends with Frank on Facebook will be relieved that he finally found the Facebook controls for sharing Zynga updates. Ditto for Foursquare check-ins. What can I say folks? Trying to support the portfolio companies here.

The new digs

In a surprise move (pun intended), we’re now just down the street from where we used to live. The big picture on the left side of the Christmas card photo is in front of the new house (thanks to Amy for taking the photo!). Here’s the view out back with the trademark Peninsula fog rolling in from Half Moon Bay:

We had been half-looking for a slightly larger place to accommodate the growing family members (and book collection), but had pretty much given up. At one point in our search, Fedora declared  that she’d rather move to China than Redwood City. (I wasn’t sure whether to take that as a joke or a challenge.)

Literally a week before signing a remodel contract for our old place, we stopped by an open house down the road. Four days later, we put in an offer and (God is good!) it was accepted the next day. A few weeks later, we were rolling down the street with our crazy movers (which is a story in itself).

We’re now mostly settled in, though the cars are patiently waiting for their triumphant return to inside the garage. We’d be delighted to see you at the new place, and even have a fully functioning guest bedroom for out of town visitors. Come see the bookshelf wall, which is how I enticed Fedora to move at all. It’s big.  :-)

Miscellany

Like many fellow Americans, we stay-cationed this year. The move was the only big activity we managed. But we were thrilled to clamber through a real life World War II aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet.

And of course, we were pleased as punch to become an uncle and aunt again with the arrival of Harrison (Frank’s brother’s first son).

My poor dad missed seeing his 4th grandchild by just a few months, and of course we miss him. But we’ve been able to visit dad a few times this year and know he’s pleased to have a resting place where he can view a steady stream of airplanes overhead.

Well, that’s the 2011 update from the Chen family, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average. Oh wait, that’s that other place in Minnesota.

See you next year.

Whoa. It’s December! Again!

OK, we’re not entirely sure how it happened, but we’re now anticipating Christmas 2011, and enjoying the last week of school before Christmas break.

Again, if you’re here for our annual update, this isn’t the real deal–sit tight, and your regularly scheduled reporter will be in shortly with your summary.  

In the meantime, this year’s been another full of God’s blessings.  Our biggest news is that we’ve moved!  Down the street!  We’re thrilled to still be able to enjoy our lovely neighbors and schools while also enjoying slightly more space.  (Not that you’d know it from looking at our garage, which still holds just about everything except our cars )

We’re still busy with the usual–church, school, music, martial arts, dance, Chinese school (booooo! say the kids ), and so on…

We’re so deeply thankful for you all and look forward to catching up soon!  Please stop by!

Merry Christmas from the whole family

Welcome brave reader. Not many make it out to the digital hinterlands of our blog these days. With all the cool kids on Facebook and Twitter, we think about just retiring the ol’ blog. But every now and then (like right about now), it’s good to have a place for long-form prose.

Gasp: you, mean actually read and write in paragraphs? Yup! Here goes: see how long you last in this desert, where words stretch as far as the eyes can see before you flee for the oasis of 140-character tweets or Facebook status updates (how long can those things be, anyway?).  Be forewarned: you even have to scroll.

The Big News

This year, we remember Frank’s dad who unexpectedly passed away on October 19, a few days after his 70th birthday. We learned the news from our county’s assistant coroner and a uniformed police office who rang our doorbell shortly after midnight on the 20th. Our lives changed forever that night.

We miss him daily. I keep expecting to see him puttering around the house when we drive down to visit (he was a world-class putterer). But like all first-generation immigrants, Dad was a forward-looking man, so we remember and honor his expectation that better days are ahead. Feel free to visit his online memorial to and leave a comment or memory. We thank all our dear friends and family who came out to support out through this difficult time.

Mom's favorite portrait of dad

Every day is Precious

Naturally, each day we have seems more precious to us in the aftermath of dad’s passing. So in that spirit, we’ll share the highlights of 2010.

Frank spent his first full year learning something new every day (and some days, every hour) at Andreessen Horowitz, a startup venture capital firm located in Menlo Park, CA. He started in August 2009 and is now settling into the rhythm and lingo (“cap table,” “convertible debt,” participating preferred,” “pro rata”) of a new job.

Frank’s day job is to run the research team. He jokingly explains that it’s his team’s job to “know everything.” So we spend time nearly all our time learning about companies, technology trends, and people. It’s fascinating (people come with the most innovative ideas), fun (in what other job outside of Zynga does playing Cityville count as work?), and fast-paced (at one point, we were investigating something like 6 companies at the same time).

When he’s not doing his day job, Frank helps keep the office running (yup, IT tech support for home, work, church, and the extended family!), does some marketing & design (see the company Web site, Ben’s (the Horowitz) blog, and Marc’s (the Andreessen’s) blog), and marvels at the firm’s growth. We started with 6 in August and are now up to 23 people (!).

Outside of work, Frank continues serving on the board of Fellowship Bible Church. He’s leading the board through a vision & planning process. It’s been a slow and steady process. While nonprofits—and especially churches—are not businesses, he thinks the church would benefit from some top-down planning to complement its bottoms-up ministries. The board is making steady progress, and we hope to be able to roll out the vision to the church membership early next year.

Fedora spent much of her year helping our beloved Fox Elementary School keep running after the twin shocks of California state budget cuts and San Mateo County’s losses from the Lehman bankruptcy. She’s there so often doing so many different things that the teachers & administrators  describe her as an honorary staff member.

This is the first and last year we have all three kids in one school: Cameron in kindergarten, Katye in 2nd grade, and Colin in 5th grade. How is it possible that Colin graduates to middle school next year—with his very own locker, homeroom, and carefully calculated dash from classroom to classroom?

Cameron has settled into kindergarten well. He’s learning his reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic. Along the way, he’s doing the typical kindergarten boy things such as wearing out his pants (nearly all pairs have holes at the knees now) and covering his hands in magic marker (it feels like he is competing for kind of “percentage coverage” prize). He loves reading, drawing, and playing video games. God help you if are locked in some kind of 1:1 combat with him on any Wii game: he’s merciless and some sort of strange twitchy muscle condition that makes him twice as fast as most normal humans.

He is going through a “fire breathing dragon” phase in his artwork. Enjoy a sample:

Katye continues to excel academically and socially. She’s our enthusiastic child: she loves to learn, to eat (“meat!”), to play, to do just about everything (well, except for maybe Chinese school on Saturday mornings).

She’s in a mixed 2nd and 3rd grade class, which is good for her. Reading-wise, she should be probably in a mixed 2nd and 7th grade class.  :-)  She’s cheerfully taking two kinds of dance (ballet and modern) from Miss Teri’s Heartbeat Dance Academy and a martial arts class from a place called Fearless Fitness (which the kids like to call “Fearful Fitness”). She reads nonstop: many mornings, we’ll find her still in her pajamas, nose stuck in a book, when it’s time to leave for school.

Her computer games of choice are Webkinz World, Petville, and Club Penguin. She’s also inherited Mommy’s social intelligence: we constantly ask her for names and social relationships for kids (and parents) we don’t recognize (“Katye, what is Sophia’s brother’s name and what grade is he in?”).

Here she is with a fun project she did at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa:

Colin is growing up fast. We dutifully provided the typical Chinese parent feedback on his last report card: “what can you do turn the A-’s into A’s or A+’s?”. He loves origami and drawing and computer games; he’s okay with piano and violin and sometimes his Fearless Fitness class; he dislikes Chinese school (like his parents before him) and performing in public.

He’s able to beat daddy in increasingly sophisticated computer games: this year, he’s soundly trounced daddy in all first-person shooter-style games (Halo, Team Fortress), and is surely working his way to complete dominance in real-time strategy games (Age of Empires, Supreme Commander 2) as well.

Colin also some measure of visual talent. Daddy has been hinting at a career in video game production, though he wonders whether even those jobs are safe from outsourcing in the next few years. Here’s Colin’s specimen from the Charles Schulz Museum:

Tilting Into 2011

We wish you and your family peace and joy this holiday season. This year, we are more mindful than we’ve ever been about how precious the moments we have with each other are.

As Christians, we think of it as Paul wrote in a letter to an early church in a tiny city called Colossae in modern day Turkey:

Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful…And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

But you don’t need to be Christian to share this yearning for yourself and the world. May you extract the most love and kindness and joy available from each moment in 2011.

How did it get to be December??

If you’re here because of our Christmas card, fear not–this is not the real Christmas post!  That will come later, from the real writer in the family

It’s been quite a year–some downs and many ups, with many thanks to our always gracious Lord.  As we dash madly towards the end of 2010, we’re:  turning cartwheels (sometimes one-handed), reading everything in sight, filling the house with folded paper creations, still a familiar sight at school, and sometimes biking to work (but not recently in the cold and wet).

We’re missing Frank’s dad, but are thankful for our families and friends, and hope to see you all and often in the coming year!

Pay it forward

The bad news: someone hit our beloved Prius while it was parked.
The good news: Steve, the driver, who did it left a note! (No, not our Pastor Steve.)

The bad news: While it wasn’t that big a collision, it still caused $2,000 worth of damage (!).
The good news: the insurance company is taking care of it.

The bad news: the auto body shop will take a week to replace the door panel.
The good news: the insurance company is paying for a rental.

Bottom line: Grateful for the kindness of strangers. Even though it’s been a mild inconvenience to deal with the insurance company and the auto body shop, etc., it would have been 100 times more aggravating to have to pay for it out of pocket.

Call to action: Pay it forward like Steve. Thank you for your integrity, Steve!

What the typical Starbucks in your neighborhood does not have

Oh Canada!

Johnston Canyon

The best. Hike. Ever.

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Test post to Posterous

This is a text post.

I’m basically comparing Posterous and Tumblr auto-posting capabilities. Surprising that syndicating content is that hard to do. All I’m trying to do is:

• Use one of the micro-blogging platforms to show photos and videos.
• Have the content (not just a link to the content) show up on WordPress.com and in the Facebook news feed.
• Seems like Posterous puts in on my Wall but not the News Feed.
• Seems like Tumblr puts it on both the Wall and the News Feed.
• Both seem to break WordPress.com’s 2-column layout.

One step at a time.