Jeff Chan

What I’m Up To

Summer

• Website Maintenance @ Brite-view.com / Zinnet
• Intern @ FreshBrain.org
• Lots of robotics stuff

My Senior Classes

• AP Physics B
• AP Calculus BC
• AP Government
• Economics
• English 4
• Choir 1

Catch ya’ll later.

 Topics: Blog Updates, Life, robotics

Hawaii!

Yup that’s right. I’m going to Hawaii this Saturday for eight days. As you guys all know, I’m going there for the International Botball Tournament. Right now I’m cranking out the rest of the two days, trying to program robots. I am not even closed to finishing though .

I’m pretty sure I won’t win the giant trophy, but hey, it’ll be fun sunbathing tomorrow, hehe.

After the eight days, I’m going to board another plane yet again to Taiwan. I’ll catch up then. See you all.

 Topics: botball, conference, Hawaii, Life, Taiwan

Tumblelog

I’ve been thinking about getting a tumblelog because I don’t have much time writing long blog posts but sometimes I really want to share some things. The only downside about getting one is that I don’t have full control over the my domain, because I’ll have to point the domain to the hosting server. The other thing about it is that there is no comment system, so I’m still thinking about whether or not to switch.

So what have I been up to…

1. Final exams this week. School is out Thursday.
2. Working on a big project for a client, building everything upon MyBB through the plugin system.
3. I have a research paper due Wednesday, tomorrow, and I haven’t even started.
4. Preparing for the Internal robotics Botball tournament.
5. Upgraded this blog to new version of WordPress.
6. Finished reading Fast Food Nation. I’m now reading At the Center of the Storm, My Years at the CIA by George Tenet. I love autobiography and nonfiction books like this one.
7. Lots of summer assignment for next year’s AP World History class.

Catch up later.

 Topics: assignment, blog, Blog Updates, books, botball, Life, MyBB, robotics, summer, tournament, tumblelog, update

Another Update

I just got back from this one award ceremony and Shane forced me to update my blog.

It’s getting down to the countdown until the end of the school! So excited! For school work, I finished my mousetrap car. It goes 6 meters. I’ve also finished a presentation on Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Very fun. Final exams are just around the corner so I have to spend extra time studying

Besides those stuff, I’m trying to start a reading habit again. I’ve been reading Fast Food Nation, great book. If you want to gross yourself out, this is the perfect book to find out about the dark side of the All-American meal. Next up on the list is The Broker by John Grisham. It’s a legal suspense novel. I usually don’t read fiction books but legal suspense novels really interest me.

As for my web life, I plan on working on a few ideas I have and putting them into action over the summer. I really want to get things done this time.

 Topics: book, Life, mousetrap car, presentation, school, update

Leave Me Alone

Yesterday, I came across a digg story titled “Don’t Bug the Person Who Wants To Be Alone.” The article was a great read. I could totally relate to it. The comments by other digg users are also very good.

Instead of just repeating, I’m just going to quote a few of the comments and comment on it.

I’m sure most Diggers like a little solitude. I certainly do. If I don’t offset my being the center of the universe with getting away from everyone and being on my own for a bit, then I go insane.

This comment basically sums it for me. I like to be alone, and sometimes I need to be alone.

According to the article people with introverted personalities still have friends and have a life, just not the life that an extroverted person would find fulfilling. Loners who keep to themselves are not necessarily lonely, but feel that the time spent alone is more productive and stimulating than socializing with the bulk of society.

This is so true. Sometimes when I hang out with people, all everyone else does is just talk about meaningless things.

Being “alone” is not the same as “being lonely”.

This quote made my day. I want a T-shirt that says that.

Well I’m a solitary guy and I never felt bad about it and I never felt the need to socialize. When I was younger I felt a little guilty about it because everybody was telling me that enjoying things by myself was not normal, I only had one or two friends at any time in my life. It’s not like I’m a reject either, I get along great with people. I just don’t like most people.I’ll talk with my co-workers like anybody else, but it ends there. I had all kinds of less intelligent people (school councelors and such) trying to “help” me in life because THEY felt bad about MY being alone. It usually led to insults from me. I just don’t want to be bothered. I have a better time on my own than with other people, I see most people as an annoyance. It probably seems very egotistical, it is. In my eyes, I’m better than you.

The science of psychology is far from being exact. A lot of people have traits of character that would be considered “not normal” in psychology. But if you’re happy with your particular character traits and you’re not hurting anybody, well that’s it, fuck psychology. It can’t help you because you are not broken. Psychology will be of great help when you are unusually sad or depressed, when you are unusually distressed. But if your personnality is business as usual and you’re happy with it, then you’re fine. The fact that you are outside the norm doesn’t make you sick.

A very long one, but a very good one. However, this one sums everything up for me. At school, sometimes I just want to be alone, and I enjoy it.

I prefer being alone most of the time. But it is not that I dislike people. I hate talking for the sake of talking.

I hope some people here are lucky enough to have those one or two friends that you can hang out with and not say a word to them for hours. Those are the friends I could be social with all the time, the ones that don’t feel compelled to talk just for the sake of talking.

Silence is golden.

This one also nails it. I hate noise and I hate talking about nothing. It seems like in high school, it’s not normal if you don’t talk about anything even when there’s nothing to talk about.

There are many other comments that nailed it. You can definitely check them out. I don’t know about you guys, but these comments just writes out my story.

 Topics: alone, Life, opinion, silence

Proyecto Final

I know it’s been a long time since I updated. After the all the robotics competition, I just had a lot of projects and the AP Chinese exam to handle. So far, I have two final projects left and I’ve already took the AP Chinese exam. The exam was great (never thought I would say that), I’m pretty sure I’ll score a five. As for the projects, I have a very idiotic Spanish project which involves tons of “summary pages” and essays — not fun. The other project is for my Physics class. I’ll be making a mousetrap car. I already have some ideas, but I just need to stop procrastinating.

I wanted to post about this last week but didn’t have time. I got a new mouse! I got the Logitech MX Revolution. 55 bucks but it’s well worth the money. Now my fingers don’t hurt when I click. I also love the configurations I can do with it.The only thing that sucks is the battery power. There’s no sleep mode either, so I always have to remember to turn it off.

Meanwhile, I’m still planning for the summer plans including the July Hawaii trip. Since I’m part of a “team”, I’m suppose to work with a bunch of pain in the butt parents and hypocritical team members. These people are the stupidest hypocrites ever…

Anyways, other than the usual school work, I’ve been doing some labor for Shane and MQ. It’s also ants season here so after this I’m going to go kill some ants!

 Topics: advance placement, ants, AP, Hawaii, Life, Logitech, mouse, opinion, review, spanish

What I’m Doing

If you are reading this, you’ve probably notice a new addition to the blog sidebar navigation. Yes, that’s right, I’ve added a Twitter badge. If you don’t know what Twitter is and how awesome it is, read my previous coverage.

If you ever get bored and wonder what Jeff is up to, feel free to take a look at that. With this Twitter badge thingy, I won’t have to update my blog that often to post what I’m up to. If you would like a full archive of my Twitter, visit my Twitter profile.

 Topics: Life, twitter, update

Theft

Today, someone stole my money during my PE class. This isn’t the first time.

Before I go on a rant, I need to make it clear that I did make precautions. After the first time someone stole my money, I double checked my lock every time everyday. Today wasn’t an exception. I double checked twice before I went out of the locker room.

Here’s how I look at this: The person, or people, who stole my money, is obviously a low life. I have no idea why you want to steal other people’s money. And further more, this isn’t even technically my money, it’s my parents’. Whoever stole the money should be ashamed.

Sure, I don’t think anyone hasn’t ever stolen anything at all. But it is very sad to see anyone to be a grownup steal anything. I don’t know what goes on to the minds of my peers today. Don’t your parents teach you ethics?

The next in line to be blamed is my school. They give out crap faulty locks that can be easily broken. Not only that, they don’t really give a crap if you get anything stolen. Like everything is the student’s fault.

Lastly, I need to blame myself. Why? I guess I could say I shouldn’t have brought extra money to school. I should have put money in somewhere else more secret besides my wallet.

This isn’t really about the monetary value. I just don’t understand what goes into someone’s mind when someone take something that isn’t theirs. If you don’t feel shame and pity when you take something that isn’t yours, you are pathetic, sorry to say.

What has happened has happened. I can only admit that today is a bad day. The world would be a better place is people were not so pathetic.

 Topics: Life, opinion, theft

Finals Officially Over

What better feeling is there when you finally get over with something? I just finished my finals for all six of my classes: Geometry, Computer App, English, Physics, Spanish, and PE. The physics final was not so easy, but I think I got most of the problems. I got an A+ on my geometry final, so that’s good . The only one I’m worried about it English. Anyways, I could’ve studied harder. At the beginning of the week, I made my devotion to only use the computer for not over 2 hours a day. I actually managed to do that all the way to Wednesday. On Thursday, since Spanish was my only final left and I master it pretty well (:P), I kind of slacked off.

 Topics: exam, Life, school