Hung Truong: The Blog!

You’ll Never Believe This!!!

For some reason, Bill Clinton, Bill Richardson, Jeff Bingaman, and Marty Chavez all called my house today! It’s like we’re some kind of important political family! Seriously, does the Kennedy household even get this kind of attention?

Unfortunately, I didn’t pick up the phone, but all of those highly important political people took the time to leave messages on my answering machine. I feel so honored! I’m never deleting those messages!

All I can say is get out there and vote. If Bill Clinton has the time to call up little ol’ me, then I can tell you for a fact that every single vote counts!

I’m Hung Truong, and I approve this message.

Pumpkin Carving 101

Today is Halloween. UNM had a special pumpkin carving contest going on in the SUB. Since I had 2 hours to kill, me and Wei (some guy from my CS class) went to carve a pumpkin. Wei picked a way too big pumpkin and we started.

But there was a lack of tools. Apparently the blades kept on breaking off of the handles for the carving tools. I went into MacGyver mode and made a custom shiv out of one of the blades and a napkin. It worked okay, but it also made my hands really tired.

Anyway, it took like, 20 minutes to get the top off of the damn thing. Then it took a few more minutes to scrape all of the crap from the inside out. Once we finished doing that, they announced that all participants had 5 minutes to finish their pumpkins…

We ended up just trying to finish, but we both had class to go to. I took the pumpkin home and finished it there. Here’s the result!

It’s really badly proportioned, since the pumpkin is huge and the face is tiny. I do like, however, having a pattern of an actual jack-o-lantern on a jack-o-lantern. It’s kind of meta, don’t you think?

Next time I’ll do a jack-o-lantern of a jack-o-lantern with a jack-o-lantern inside of that one! And so on.

Google Information Session

So some dudes from Google showed up on Wednesday at UNM to talk about Google. Apparently, it’s a pretty awesome place to work. Like they have all you can drink, and mini kitchens where you can order free food. They go on company ski trips and don’t even think twice about it! Oh, and it seems they’re really casual too.

I went ahead and gave them my resume. Maybe they’ll hire me. Apparently the hiring process takes about 6 months, though. To help pass the time, they gave me a pen, a pad, and a long sleeved red shirt that says “Google” on the front, and “I’m Feeling Lucky” on the back. It’s so nerdy and awesome!

Also, I’ve been looking for grad schools. I thought I had graduated from sending applications and getting letters of recommendation, but yeah, I’ll have to think about that stuff again. I was thinking that Stanford will be my primary school, and Harvard will be my backup. What do you think?

New Threadless $10 T-Shirt Sale ’til Wednesday

Whoa, so there’s finally a $10 sale at threadless. I was waiting for one so I could buy Pandamonium. I ended up buying a few:

Pandamonium

So I already have this shirt, but it’s red and XL. I wear L shirts now, so I wanted to have a Pandamonium that’ll fit me. It’s pretty awesome. It has a Panda destroying stuff. Yeah.

Fire and Ice

This shirt is just kinda cute. Seriously, who doesn’t like penguins? Somehow, I don’t think the penguin who is encased in ice will survive, but I’m still rooting for him! Maybe they can perform penguin CPR quickly…

Rocketbird

Rocketbird has a bird on a rocket. Perhaps this bird is of the flightless variety, and therefore cannot fly on its own volition. Or perhaps the bird is in a hurry and needs the power of a rocket pack to reach his destination. It really doesn’t matter; Rocketbird is cool.

There were a few other cool shirts that were in stock in other sizes, or shirts that I already have (and maybe have already bought twice!). Check out Ctrl+Z (my favorite), MP(3), and the whole catalog in general.

Zia Marching Festival 2006!

So today was Zia, the big marching festival of the year hosted by UNM. It was pretty fun, despite all the work and whatnot. This will most likely be my last one, since I’m gonna graduate in December. Not that I feel overly sentimental. I thought my last one was gonna be in 2002, but I ended up doing marching band this year on a whim.

It was a pretty good end to a marching career. And by that, I mean the show was horrible. The music part was okay, but marching was crazy. First off, the hashes for the high school bands are about 4 steps away from our normal ones. This threw off pretty much every set. Next, the sun was shining directly on the grass, and I could barely even see where the lines were painted.

That’s not all. For some reason, my throat got super dry, and by the end, I could barely play anything at all. Luckily this happened before I took my solo.

There’s more! During the drum break (when all the difficult marching goes on), my shoelace got untied! So I had to sorta hop around and I got out of step multiple times. I guess a flute girl (who will remain unnamed) got lost, and I collided with her after doing an about face. I think that’s all the bad stuff that happened.

Honestly, I think it was probably the worst show I have ever marched in my marching band career. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing. It was actually pretty fun. Since UNM doesn’t get judged on their own field, it’s not like I had to worry about having points deducted or anything. Word from some spectators is that we sounded fine. I seriously want to get a hold of the tape, so I can post it (and see the collision)! Ah Zia, how I’ll miss you.

Hinano, my friend from the podcast that I do, made up a comic about the event. That image up there is a panel from it. To see the whole thing, click here.