Vinh Pham

Thinking back on my Disney Cruise and Disney World visit, I started day dreaming about the possibility of building Vinhland.

As I have mentioned before, when I become filthy rich, my philantrophy work will mainly be buying land and leaving them untouched. In my opinion this, and education, are the most effective ways to help humanity.

But in order to increase the awareness of my conservation effort, and to show people that you can enjoy the natural world as-is, I want to build Vinhland. Here are the highlights in a list because I suck at writing complete sentences…

1) There will be no hotel rooms or executive suites - All guest will stay in small huts.

- All huts will be the same and have the same amenities - I have always hated how everything is broken down into social-economic status. By having all similar huts, all guests will be the same regardless of how rich or poor they are.

- Imagine a small house with a straw roof, wooden beds, and dirt floor. The only thing modern will be the restrooms because hygiene and comfort in the restroom is very important to me.

2) Activities include things such as: rock climbing, swimming under a natural waterfall, zip lining, biking, hiking, and whatever else that helps you appreciate the nature. - All structures will be made from wood when possible. No brightly painted plastic stuff. - No rollercoasters,

3) Coconuts - It makes me sick that at every tropical resort I visit, they cut away the coconuts. Coconuts are delicious and useful in so many ways. Vinhland will have plenty of coconuts for sale and on trees.

4) No buffet lines - The kinda of food waste I see makes me want to cry. To prevent this, guests have to pre-plan their what they want to eat. All the food will be served to them just like on a cruise, but they have to choose in advance what they want to eat. Hopefully this will help cut down on wasted food. Guests will even be allowed to help in harvesting and making their own food. It will be part of the Vinhland experience.

5) Solar powered and recycle resources as much as possible - Whenever there is something that could be recycled or harvested naturally, we will do that. Unused food and excrement will be composted to make fertilizer for the plants.

6) Bicycles everywhere - Leave your cars behind. In Vinhland everyone gets assigned a bicycle that they will use to travel. For disabled people, there will be cyclos to transport them around.

7) Everyone will be remembered by name - No badges - When you want something in Vinhland, give us your name. We will type it in the computer and pull up your picture. Then you can purchase, register for things. This will help make a friendlier environment when the workers know you by name and not a number.

Ok, I gotta do some work now, and my day dreaming is coming to an end. Until next time…

Remember back in the days when they had those “alien encounter” shows? The ones where they show amateur footages of “aliens” running around farms and stuff…

Well, this show is equally ridiculous. Oh how the world has changed. Just a few years ago, no one gave a shit about the environment. Nowadays, every body wants to drive a prius and buy organic food.

I guess I shouldn’t complain. This is at least a step in the right direction….

Look closely at the action links on the top right. Come on, seriously, if I was this careless at my job, I would deserve to be fired immediately!

At first I thought it was just in any other browsers besides IE because Microsoft is a dick and does not test in other browsers, but that’s not the case. Running this website on IE, with SilverLight turned off, gives the same result.

Bing is getting a TON of press lately, and I am sure millions of people are hitting this website. What does it say about your product when you can’t even get a simple CSS rule right?

Other minor annoyances:

1) The hover state for the button flickers because it’s not aligned correctly

2) Although there are only a couple of links, such as “Terms of Use”, “Trademarks”, etc… They all link to different domains - What is up with that? Is it so hard to have a proper domain structure?

3) What is the hell is up with capitalizing file names? URI are case sensitive, just try changing Default.html to default.html and you get a “Page Not Found”.

Come on Microsoft, it’s not that hard.

As a novice programmer constantly seeking to better myself, I am usually up at 3am pouring through Google search results for debugging help.

Very rarely, next to never, do I just plainly give up on a piece of code before understanding what I did wrong. Even if I have an alternative path to fix my problem, I find it more enjoyable to figure out what I did wrong first.

I know that this kind of programming is very unproductive in a work environment because it is almost impossible to meet deadlines when you have to stop every so often to figure things out.

However, on the other end, I find it really annoying when people give up too easily and seek alternative solutions as soon as they get stuck. Not very DRY in my opinion.

This thought entered my mind because I am reading a debate about monkeypatching. Monkeypatching sounds like an awesome tool, but I can see a great potential for abuse by people who don’t fully understand what they are doing. I would search heaven and earth — maybe even email the library’s creator  — before trying to patch something. I would hate to patch something, only to find out later that the feature already exists, or that I am using it wrong.

When in an argument, my fiancee often says to me in a patronizing tone, “So everyone is wrong, and you are the only one that’s right??”

After two years of George Bush, Kris Allen wins American Idol, and the passage of Prop. 8 in California, I can resoundingly say — YES!!!

In fact, most experts agree that the reason why the state of California is in so much trouble is because we have too much democracy here. People in this state get to vote on everything, and they can amend the constitution whenever they feel like it. The result is — people want all sorts of crap, but refuse to pay for it.

Now, about Kris Allen winning American Idol… This is a horrible upset. Everyone knows Adam Lambert is clearly the better singer and performer. Even the judges themselves have already basically given Adam Lambert the crown. But when the choice is left up to “regular” people, the second-class competitor came out the victor.

Yes honey — everyone else is wrong — and I AM RIGHT!

cell phones in prison.

That is freaking ridiculous… How does someone even get a cell phone past a metal detector? It has tons of electrical parts that should be setting off alarms left and right!

It’s also absolutely ridiculously that we can’t jam cell-phone inside of prisons because some law. Aren’t law supposed to protect people?

The thought of a prisoner using a cell-phone to call and harass victims outside of the prison wall is like some shit you’d see in a horror flick, not something you’d expect to really happen in daily life.

I really hope they would do something about this.

Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat - Lucky

I’m lucky I’m in love with my best friend
Lucky to have been where I have been
Lucky to be coming home again

You’ll hear the music, feel the air
I’ll put a flower in your hair
Though the breezes through trees
Move so pretty you’re all I see
As the world keeps spinning round
You hold me right here right now

Absolutely the most beautiful duet I have heard in a long time…

Most of us are familiar with the Serenity Prayer, which as a line that goes something like this:

“accept the things I cannot change”

That is beautiful, however, today on NPR I heard something even more magnificent.

“celebrate the things you can not change”

Seriously… it is already extremely difficult to accept the things in our lives that we have no control over like the worsening economy, natural disasters, and unexpected accidents, so it is hugely facetious to tell people to “celebrate” it.

But really, if we can all learn to celebrate all the extra baggage that comes with life, it will be a lot better.

For example, one thing that I find extremely disatisfying is taking the bus with ghetto people who have no manners. They listen to loud music, straddle two seats at once, talk loudly using all sorts of profanity, and they smell.

The way that I have dealt with this is that I have “accepted” it as something that I can not change. So what do I do? I don’t take the bus anymore. I shell out the extra cash to drive, park, and walk. However, in my hearts of hearts, I know that what I am doing will not solve my problems or make society any better. Perhaps what I really need to do is learn to appreciate the experience of living in a big city, understand the people around me, and maybe even volunteer to do something that will change city life everyone not just myself.

But anyways, I digress. The point is, we actually do celebrate a lot of the things that we can not change. Take Christmas and Thanksgiving for example. It’s cold and miserable in the winter, something we can not change, but we as a society chose to celebrate those difficulties and it makes those things beautiful again.

Also, in the Vietnamese culture, and I suspect in many other cultures, we have big parties at funerals. That’s right, we celebrate when people die. Yes, it sounds sadistic, but seriously, what else can you do?

Here is another thing we ALL celebrate — birthdays. You grow old, it’s rarely good. But most of us celebrate it because there is nothing we can do about it.

Beautiful ain’t it?

As a result of a lazy channel-surfing Saturday morning, I caught a myself a good movie about presidential politics: The Best Man.

It’s amazing because although the movie was made in 1964, it squarely captured the sensitiment of today’s modern political mudslinging. It was so good and relevant, it seemed almost prophetic. Issues that they tackled in the movies like communism, homosexuality, promiscuousness, and religion, are the exact same topics still used and abused by politicans today.

It’s fascinating to witness such an accurate prediction of the future, but at the same time it is incredibly sad that society has not changed much in at least 4 decades.

Another interesting point is how the politicans often referred to “the people” as if they are cattle waiting to be herded from one barn to the next. I think we can all agree, this is still true today.

On my way home from work several days ago, I caught the scent of something delightful that I haven’t experienced for a long time — the smell of fresh rain.

Ok, so you are probably wondering — it rains all the time — what’s so special about this one occasion? Well thing is, if you live in a city like I do, rain is never really an enjoyable experience. The sidewalks are slippery, the buses are crowded and smelly, the sewer overflow leaving horrible odors, fast moving cars splash puddles on to unsuspecting pedestrians, and if you are commuting — expect tons of delay due to traffic accidents. So, like I said, rainy days are not much fun for city dwellers.

However, this experience was different. I just happened to be walking by a park with green grass, early spring flowers, there were no people around shoving and pushing their way to nowhere, no cars or taxi cabs frantically honking their horns, and best of all the rain was very fresh.

The smell is not something I can describe, and at the time of this writing, I have completely forgotten what it smells like. But it just smells very earthy and natural. A very instinctual smell, maybe even something that evolution has taught us to enjoy because it means new life is coming and fresh water is plentiful.

Whatever it is, the smell of fresh rain something very magical. Many companies have tried to capture this scent in their product, but what they can produce pale in comparison to the real thing…