Ken's Journal (part 14)

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Last updated: 08/07/01

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Hey guys! Well, welcome to my journal. Sorry. But there won't be anything really private written on this site (unless you're lucky and I slip). This site is just for me to keep you guys updated on any changes that I've made on my site. Occasionally I'll talk about what's going on with me, but hopefully not too much. So yeah. Just check on me from time-to-time to see what's going on with my site, okay? I appreciate it. And for those of you long-time readers, you'll notice that my entries won't be as "amusing" as when I was putting my personal life into this. =) Too bad. =D Bon apetite!

Journal 14

(above) Generation X of The Chan Dynasty. Hehe. From left to right (eldest to youngest): Kenneth, Kathy, Stanley, Kristy, and Stephanie.

Tuesday, March 27, 2001. 2:11 AM.
Okay. Back now. Well, before I came here, I went and updated my Table of Contents. I put reserved spaces for James's (Mr. James Hong) Webcam and for Dang's Webcam (Mr. Dang Tran). I don't have the links with me right now. They're on my computer back in LA, so I'll have to add them officially later. I just put them on now so I won't forget later. Urm. I also put a link to this new chapter in my journal and one for the site I was talking about earlier at the end of Ken's Journal (part 13). I finally gave it a name to. I just named it The Hedrick 12. I'll have to make the page reflect that later. Well, basically, I wrote the page because I was a bit frustrated with the way things have been going with housing and stuff. I'm not sure if I've told you guys this yet, but these group of guys that I've met down here in LA are s ... no ... actually they ARE the best friends I've ever had in my life. Which is why I spent so much time last year trying to keep them together. Well, I mean, they came together on their own, but I just wanted to make sure it stayed that way. So ... uh ... I digress. So the page is the story of how we came to living on the same floor this year. Next year, hopefully I will make another site called "The Veteran 12" or something like that, but the chances are pretty slim. Currently the group is split into three.

Er. Hm. I know I said I wouldn't talk about my life in this site, and that I'd strictly talk about my site, but well ... I'm on the topic, so I might as well spill a bit. But yeah. This year, on the floor are me, Benny (Yeh), Ross (Yasui), Steve, Genesan (Kim), Joel (Blair), Mishael, Jeff (Park), Anand (Shah), Tri (Pham), Andrew (Tahk), and James (Hong). As of now, it looks like the three groups will be Anand, Tri, Benny and Paul Su (a new guy to the group), Mishael, Ross, Genesan and Joel, and then me, Steve, Nick Penna (another new guy) and his roommate which none of us have met yet. I guess since this is a pretty big thing in my life, it's okay to share. Don't worry, I won't make a habit of talking about my life. Haha. I learned from the last 11 or so journal pages. Haha. So yeah. Basically, the group might be split, and I just made a site that talked about how all of us ended up on the same floor, with the slight hope that they would read it, remember, and try to work out there differences. Hasn't happened so far, so I guess I'll have to live with that. For now, I'm kinda caught between a rock and a hard place. Anand's group has location as their top priority. They have to live close by. Mishael's group has price as their top priority. They don't want to spend of $500/person on an apartment. Sadly, those to requests conflict. Usually apartments closer to campus will cost more, and apartments farther from campus are cheaper. As for my group, there aren't really any preferences, so we could swing either way. So we could still join up with one of the other groups in the housing decision so we could keep the little unity we have left. But which group though? To be absolutely honest, I think I want to live with Mishael's group. So I'm going to be apartment huntiing with them. Unfortunately, Mishael's friend might be giving up their place, so unless there's another apartment in the complex, that's not going to work. Also, I think Nick and Steve favor Anand's group more because they hang out more with each other. So it might be unfair of me to force them to live with Mishael and them. Hm. Decisions, decisions. Okay. Gotta stop with this rambling. And I've got to stop saying "gotta". Dang. I'm using too many slang terms. Argh. Okay. This entry is getting too personal. I have to talk about my boring site now. =) Hehe.

So yeah. Turns out, I'm almost going over my quota for this web site. I guess it's from all the pictures I've been uploading to my site. That might mean I have to start a new site (which would suck because I just started this one). The other option (which I will probably execute), would be to move my China site to my old web site. I think the China page is taking up most of the room because of the number of pictures. So yeah. That's probably what I'm going to do when I get back to LA. Um. Okay. What other updates have I made? Oh! Haha. I just found out a pretty neat trick. You know how on other sites when you move your mouse over a certain image, it'll change? I think I can do that now. I'll test it out with um ... with something. Haven't thougth about what yet though. Haha. Oh! I know. You see the blue "Link" picture near the top? Maybe I'll change that to another color! Yeah. Try moving your mouse over it. [crosses his fingers] Hopefully it'll work. Haha.

Cool. I just did it. Test it out for me, okay? =) Thanks. Hehe. Okay. Um. I think that's about it for me for now. Haha. Dang. I wrote so much. Wonder if I'll regret writing it? Well ... as my old friend Tony says "Smile, be happy, never regret." So I'll do just that. =) Okay. I'm outtie. Have to get to bed so I can wake up early (or somewhat early ... haha ... before noon) so I can go work out with the track team tomorrow. Okay. I'm sure I'll be back. Don't miss me too much. I still have to complain about my classes. Hehe. Lates!

Tuesday, April 03, 2001. 12:42 AM.
Okay. Quick update. The Spring quarter has begun and I have a class at 9:30 AM tomorrow. Okay. Here goes. (This should make up for that really long entry I just did.) I updated my Ken's 2nd Table of Contents (duh, because it always reflects any changes in my site). I got the addresses to Dang's web cam (dang's voyeur cam) and to James's web cam (Ghetto-Fabulous James). So yeah. They're up. Something's wrong with Ed's site, so I wasn't able to link that up yet. I also remembered that somone from VSU (Vietnamese Student Union) made a site for VCN (Vietnamese Culture Night) 2001 (which I was part of. When I get the address to that one, I'll post it up. It's a really cool site. The person who made it was very talented. Um. Okay. What else? Oh. Also added Lily's most recent (by maybe 5 months ... haha) birthday to the MPHS Class of '99 Alumni Page because it was a pretty large gathering of the old gang. Seems still no one is putting up any posts there. I got that page it's own guestbook too. What a waste. Okay ... moving on. I updated the UCLA B- ... oh ... just wait dang it. Argh.

Tuesday, April 03, 2001. 1:36 AM.
Dang it. I was supposed to be a sleep 4 minutes ago. Argh. Dang it. Sorry. I'm a bit frustrated. I've always complained about girls on PMS ... but then I realized that about all the girls I know don't get too psycho ... except one ... argh. That sucks when it makes me all frustrated. Argh. But I digress. Okay. Let's get through this. Argh. I have so much to do. Dang it. Okay ... [breathes in] ... [breathes out]. Just gotta chill. Take it little by little. Hm. I guess that means I should e-mail my old professors first to see when I can pick up my finals. BRB.

Okay. Back. I got the link for the VCN page too. I'll go put that up after I'm done with this entry. Um. Okay. So where was I? Oh. I updated the BestOfUCLA B-Day Countdown page. Did I ever tell you guys how there came to be so many hits on that page? Well, if I'm repeating myself, sorry. It turns out that Ross has it as his opening page. So yeah. Every time he opens his browser, there's another hit. That would explain it. Guess the page isn't as popular as I thought. Oh well. I still have fun updating it. So yeah. Oh wait up. Just found something out. Actually I now have the link to the VSU web site (UCLA Vietnamese Student Union) and to the VCN web site (::Vietnamese Culture Night 2001 by VSU:::::::::::::::::::::::). To the left is a sample picture from the site (which includes me ... =) hehe). Um. Nevermind. Can't find that pic with me in it. Argh. Lemme check again. Oh well. Nevermind. I'll bump into it again some other time. Um. So where was I? Oh. Yeah. So I updated the pics in the Birthday Countdown page. I pretty much update the pictures only once a quarter from pics that I already have scanned on my computer. Um. So yeah. Moving on.

I also had to delete all the pics from the Beijing part of my trip to China because I was approaching the disk space quota for Geocities. Yeah. Those pics take up a lot of space. What I'm planning to do is seperate the pics into a small handful of web pages (which makes it easier for people with "normal" internet connections to view the pics without having to wait for an eternity). Actually it was my brother's idea. Now. What I'm also planning to do is move the China stuff to my old Geocities account. I figure since I don't use that any more and I still have plenty of space and I plan to keep this site up and running, that I'd just move it over there. Pretty smart huh? I'll try to do over the summer. I might have plenty of time to do that too, because if I don't get an internship this summer, I will be taking summer school. I'm already enrolled in Physics 4BL and The History of China (or something like that). So yeah. My web site ought to keep me busy (like it did the summer after senior year). But I digress (as usual). Dang. I gotta ... er ... I mean have got to wrap this up. I have a lot to do tomorrow. We're looking for apartments (a major event man). Plus I have a class at ... oh ... yeah. I already told you huh? Hm. Well, it's 2:01 AM right now. Any more updates? Um. Minor one. I fixed a spelling error I made on The Kristy and Stephanie Page. Apparently it was really bugging my brother. Haha. Um. What else? Um. That's about it. Hm. Did I ever talk about my One-Hit Wonders section? Yeah. I did. Okay. I'm cool. I think that's it for now. You know how it is. Beginning of the quarter I need to find reasons to procrastinate and get behind. Haha. Oh! Which reminds me. I passed EE1!!! I thought for sure I was going to fail that class, but I guess Professor Pan was very merciful. Haha. I got a "B-" too! How sweet is that? Oh. And I did really good in my other classes too. Almost had 3 A's, but I messed up in one of the classes. I was border-line, but when the final came (it was my last one) I couldn't get myself to study. Too exhausted from the previous finals, so I pretty much just winged it ... and why in the world am I telling you this? Dang. I have got to stop rambling. I might talk about private stuff at this rate. Haha. Okay. Gonna ... er ... I mean I am going to go now. Check up on me late people. Thanks for reading! I feel better already. =)

Tuesday, April 03, 2001. 2:21 AM.
Okay. Last thing. Just wanted to say that I added UCLAProfessors.com on too. It's such a great site. Look at the description in Ken's 2nd Table of Contents for a short summary. Gotta go to bed now. Nite!

Oh. Last thing for sure. The blinking "Link" thing worked. Remember what I was talking about? How the image changes color when you put your mouse over it? It works! Tite! Okay. Bye.

Wednesday, April 04, 2001. 12:37 AM.
Argh. Why do I always have to do this at night and take away from my sleep time? I have an 8 o'clock lecture tomorrow. Argh. Okay. Really quick. I moved all my Chin Trip pics to my old website. I've already made a spot for it there. It first perfectly (so far without text and stuff). So yeah. Here's the future site of Ken's Trip to China. Also, since I was at my old web site, I decided to check what the date was that I first began making web pages. Guess what? I made my first web page on Wednesday, April 07, 1999. Pretty tite, huh? The 2nd year birthdate of my web site is in three days! Therefore I am putting up a count-down meter on the front page of this site. Wow. Two whole years of web designing. It's been so fun. And here's the page that started it all ... um ... actually I'll reveal that on it's birthdate. Hehe. You'll just have to wait a bit longer. =) I'll try to write in here so I can reflect over the past two years and stuff. Gotta go to bed now. Good night!

Thursday, April 05, 2001. 2:02 AM.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have too much time on my hands. =P But anyways ... I finally got my schedule settled. It's pretty cool. So yeah. I posted it online. It shows what time I'll be in what class. Where the class is held. And when my finals are. Pretty tite, huh? Hey! And I learned to do something new. Instead everything being in http://www.oocities.org/azntrackstar/"name-of-file".html, I can now make subdirectories. For example, this new schedule of mine is going to be found at http://www.oocities.org/azntrackstar/classes/01S.html. Cool, huh? Well you may not think so, but I sure do. Haha. Cool!!! =D So yeah, go check out my really sweet schedule at Ken's Spring 2001 Schedule. I have a 3 1/2 day weekend each week. One class on Thursday and none on Friday! I didn't think that was possible for an Engineer, but apparently it is. How tite!!! =D Okay. Gotta rest up for my ONE class tomorrow. Haha. My weekend starts at 11 AM. Haha. Cul! =D

Oh ... and the anniversary of this site is coming up. I put a counter in the main page of this web site last night to count down to the big day. How tite! Two whole years man! Haha. What fun it's been! Nite!

Sunday, April 08, 2001. 2:54 PM.
Yeah. I know. I kinda lagged with the celebration of the anniversary of my first web page. Too much stuff to do ... and I haven't done any of it. I just played Starcraft and Worms all night last night. Argh. I haven't done an ounce of work since I got here. That's gonna bite me in ... er ... that's going to bite me in the butt later. Argh. Okay. So let's get on with it. This entry will be a reflection of the past two years ... from the building of the first web page to now.

FLASHBACK

Well, on Wednesday, April 07, 1999, I decided that I should make a web page. My friend Scott DeMedeiros had one, and it was pretty cool to look at. It was around August of 1998 that I was first connected to the internet. I can't imagine what life would be without it now. But I digress. So, I IMed my friend Luart Tobias and asked him how to make a website (see: Ken's Second Webpage). Luart referred me to Geocities. So I signed up with Geocities. The address I chose for my site was http://www.oocities.org/Tokyo/Springs/3300 because I like the number 3 and I figured that was easiest for me to remember. (note: this was before Geocities hooked up with Yahoo!). So then I began web building ... well ... sort of.

Originally I had a lot of difficulties because this was all new to me, and Geocities wasn't all that great yet. They were very limited with options, and so my first page looked pretty dang ugly. But I thought it looked great. It was my first web page. Back then, I didn't have all these different kind of pages. It was one page. The whole site was one page. So originally it was called Ken's First Web Site, but later when I learned how to make different pages, I renamed it Ken's First Web Page, an seperated the Table of Contents in to Ken's First Table of Contents.

After I learned how to make different pages ... oh ... actually before I get into that, let me just say that when I began the site, I had no idea what to use for a theme. You know? Like, would it be a site for a celebrity? Would it be a site for a video game? I didn't have a theme. But I figured the theme wasn't important yet because there was still so much I didn't know. So instead, I just wrote entries that told my readers what I was learning, and what I was doing with my site (something I still do today). It wasn't until our track team won the Central Coast Section Championship, that I came up with the idea to make different pages that weren't just talking about my site. So yeah. I made a page dedicated to my track team that enlists what happened starting from League Finals and up. MP Track & Field '99 would be the first of many "special" pages that I would make.

So not to bore you with details, after that page, I came out with 13 more pages. 10 of those were more of my narrative entries (which I later entited as Ken's Log and then Ken's Journal ... as titled today). What really got me into working on my web pages was having the summer study internship over at Foothill College. I had plenty of time to work on my pages there because there was a lot of free time. Also, I started getting more pics (because they had a scanner there). If you notice, all of my initial pages had the picture of me that my friend Micah Lemke scanned. Well, a lot of peopel joked that I was so full of myself, all I did was put pictures of myself on my site. The truth of the matter was that I only had one picture. It wasn't until I was over at Foothill that I started getting more pics for my web pages.

I think it was around the end of the summer that Geocities became Yahoo! Geocities. That was when they came out with PageBuilder for the building of web pages too. PageBuilder was a big improvement from GeoBuilder. It is still what is currently being used. So yeah. That was when my site's began looking less plain. I even redid my track web page. Check out the difference! Here's the old one: MP Track & Field '99. Here's the new one: MP Track & Field '99. Pretty noticeable difference, huh? So yeah.

Oh! Also if you notice, the first few pages I made, if you try to print them out, they'll cut off at the side. The default pages were sized wider than the normal 8 1/2" by 11" sheet of paper.

Also, from the summer internship (in the web designing class I took), we learned about index pages and how they should be simple and alluring. That's when I decided to come out with the front page for my web site (which I then officially called Ken's First Web Site). It may not look like much, but I thought it was tite. Look at my current front page for Ken's 2nd Web Site. Now doesn't that look tite? Haha.

Okay. Running out of room soon, so ... oh ... nevermind. If I go over I'll just resume this on the next page. So where was I? So yeah. I then came out to LA to start my college life. At first it was cool, 'cause I was updating my site quite frequently, and with all the new sights and experiences there was plenty for me to write about. But then something happened that would change my life and my site. I became good friends with a group of guys from Mishael's floor and with a group of guys from the floor above them. Since then, my life hasn't been the same. I had even more to write about, but they all kept me pretty busy. I didn't have any time to update my journals. All I could do was write "Dude! I have so much to tell you guys ... but I can't right now." You can tell from my very first entry in Ken's Journal Part 11. I didn't even have time to celebrate the 1-year annivesary of my first web page. Pretty crazy, huh? So yeah. Around July of 2000, I decided to stop my journal and perhaps even my web site all together. Fortunately I couldn't stay away. I made a secret journal and continued writing in there. It was around then that I realized I had to start over. That was the only way I could rebuild my interest in web building. So around September (I think September 15, 2000), I created Ken's 2nd Web Site, a better web site because I got the hang of page designing.

Um. Lost my train of thought. So yeah. Basically, I began over. Improved on the formats from the old site, without changing too much. And *pow* ... here we are today. 12 web pages ... only 2 of which are journals. 10 are "special" pages. And the place has never looked so awesome. I don't try to coax people into signing my guestbook anymore. I think entertaining people is more important than getting the glory ... if you can call it that. So yeah. I'm still building pages ... still writing diatribe (long abusive speech ... er ... i.e. really boring stuff ... haha) in my journal.

Oh! And when I went back to check my old site, turns out all my counters were disabled, so I had to add new ones. So the numbers on the counters right now aren't the right ones. I think I've already told you that though. But it doesn't matter. This site right here is the future; my pride and enjoy. Happy Anniversary!!! You've come a long way. =)

Tuesday, August 07, 2001. 9:33 PM.
Well, I don't know why I didn't include a link to the next page on this site. Guess I just forgot. Sorry. So yeah, for those of you who think the last entry was my most recent, it's not. Click on the link below to continue forward.