William Chang

After years and months watching the old buildings getting renovated and new buildings getting constructed. I’m amazed at the setup they did where the “UCF Arena” lies. The area contain two dorms, two strip malls, and a football stadium. And, there are plenty of space between it, filled with nice grass fields to have activities.

I was invited to participate in a football tailgate party and when I got a ride over there it was impressive. Every part of the campus there were tailgate parties. Everywhere you go people setup their gazebo, drinking alcoholic beverages, and having a good time. Half the time, I was walking around half naked trying to get some tan from the sun. Inside the “UCF Arena” and the football stadium up close was nice.

Our UCF football team played against the Texas Longhorns and the score was 32-35. Even though we lost the football game, I had a good time and the convenience of having our own new football stadium on campus.

Uploaded some photos to Flickr of Romeo, the dog, and the football tailgate party. You can see my skin was not tanned. The next coming weeks I’ll be getting Developers Club active from hibernation for Fall 2007 and Spring 2008. DieHard signing out!

Even though I have a few days left before the beginning of Fall 2007 college semester, thus it is the sign of the end. A lot things has happen during the last two months, July and August. I went to Tallahassee, the capitol city of Florida, for the weekend to visit my friend Brad Muirhead and join his VIP barbeque party. After I got home, I spent some time finding a new roommate to replace Corey Snodgrass as he join a band to tour around. A good friend gave away to me a set of black leather couches, very nice. Then, I received a set of washer and dryer machines as backup to my existing set, for twenty-five dollars from another friend. The early weeks of August, I finished my two summer classes successfully and spent my two week break with my job to make money as much as I can. Now, I am on the last weekend of break and I am hoping the time will tick very slowly. Because, I have a lot of work I like to get done.

While I was surfing the internet I stumble upon a cool web service called Anywhere.FM, it allows you to upload your entire music collection, listen to it from anywhere, and share it with friends. While listening to music, I was experimenting using a web application called MediaWiki in my web server, which is used by Wikipedia, a free-content encyclopedia. MediaWiki will be used for documenting some of my projects. DieHard signing out!

All the communication devices I ever had was basic. My mobile phone was just a phone and nothing more. The last few weeks my wireless service was switched from Sprint to AT&T (formerly Cingular Wireless). It was time for me to get a better mobile phone with an embedded operating system like Microsoft Windows Mobile, Apple OS X, or Open Source Linux (Ubuntu). Having an “actual” operating system enable more freedom of control and information, and the ease of synchronization to your laptop or desktop computer. The one thing that is so troublesome when switching cellular phones is transferring many contacts. The smartphone is a personal data assistant (PDA) and holding more information than just contacts, such as appointments, tasks, notes, emails, addresses, birthdays, photos, music, and so on.

As an application developer point of view, having a standard platform, a popular operating system, to develop and to hack (modify) it makes it so much fun to create small applications. There is a wide range of applications out there to put on your smartphone for getting things done or for leisure. My initial smartphone, to be an all-in-one phone and freedom of information, is the Samsung Blackjack (SGH-i607). One more thing, I have my eyes set on my next ultimate smartphone the Apple iPhone (the second generation) or the alternative, HTC P4550 Kaiser.

My two summer college courses are doing okay. At my job, the UCF Assessment (OEAS) project is taking much of my time and dedication out of the other two projects, FINDER and SCINET. Happy July 4th, Independence Day. DieHard signing out!

I got a call from my god brother, Timothy Chin, last Friday and got the bad news about two dogs. Fluffy passed away last Tuesday and then later Nikki passed away. What an uncomfortable time for everyone who care about Nikki and Fluffy. Nikki had the lasting hardship of the other because he became blinded and difficulty hearing. We all had fond memories of Nikki and Fluffy. And, they were cared like human children. So, we hope to heal our heart and continue on.

There is nothing “spanking new” to talk about this summer. I want to spend more time on my hobby projects and take dancing lessons: salsa, merengue, and bachata. But, I’m taking two summer classes at UCF instead. Someday, I’ll get through and do my hobby projects and take dancing lessons soon. DieHard signing out!