On the last day of school, I made a long blog post which sort of included a rant on how the last school year was quite a bit of a stressful one. Well, my freshman year was stressful too, although in a different way. But the other half of that post was to do what a number of others were doing and blog some of my summer plans. In a way, I sort of put myself down for quite a bit of stuff, as there were a number of things that I didn’t even do, but then again, I did a number of things that weren’t even listed. When most people asked me what I did this summer, my common response would be, “I did a bunch of little things.” What are some of the little things I did this summer? Well, first, let me review the goals that I listed for myself at the end of the day on May 31st…

• Get photos from the CAPTA Convention Online I actually never did this, but I came close. This is partially because I took almost 600 photos, and it’s hard to find a place to host 600 photos. I eventually went and got myself a Flickr Pro account for this purpose, but I didn’t do anything after that.
• Go through old(er) electronics/computers I did this! I finally said a solemn goodbye to my clamshell iBook, and also sold off some other things to help make a nice down payment for paying back my parents for my MacBook.
• Clean my room! My room did end up getting cleaned, although my parents ended up doing it while I was away in Sacramento. I still need to figure out how to organize all my stuff from PTA, though.
• Finish Nicholas Nickleby The book that I was supposed to read at the end of the last school year for the read-on-your-own novel in English. I’d finished the first 30 chapters (out of 65), and resolved to finish the book by the end of June. As it turned out, I haven’t even laid my eye on the book since school ended. Oh well, one of these days.
• Summer Reading Novel I said that I only had one novel to read during the summer for English, but I also had one to read for AP US History as well. The one that I chose (from a small list of options) was It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong. It was a good book, somewhat interesting, although not near as enthralling as my US History novel, which was Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Patillo Beals, which tells the story of the 1957 integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas by one of the students who integrated. I have a three page essay on that book due this Friday which I need to hastily finish up.
• Webmacster87.info 5 This consumed much of my time in June, as I prepared the website in a super-secret location, working closely with Hans “macattacks10″, adding plugins and tweaking themes and other code in order to make the new website just perfect. It got some good reception too.
• New 17th District PTA Website Let’s face it, the 17th District PTA Website, although it took 3rd place at the County Fair (see below), needs a facelift. I’ve been spending some time working on a new site for that, and it will probably be going live sometime in September…
• phpBB MODs I made an attempt to get back into my phpBB MODding. I updated Registration Stopper to 1.2.0, and I made a few dev releases of ACP User Registration, but that’s really as far as I got, as I was busy with other things. I also had plans for Advanced Version Check, but never ended up even touching that MOD.
• Sacramento July 11-14 I went back to Sacramento for my first meeting as a student representative to the California State PTA Board of Managers, and had a good time. Next BOM meeting will be in Long Beach in late October.
• WordCamp July 21-22 This year’s WordCamp turned out to be bigger than last year’s, and much more of a prepared conference. The only thing I didn’t really like about it were those awful Subway sandwiches. I was there taking pictures, and ended up interviewing people for a pretty good episode of PreviewCast.
• Tour de Peninsula August 5 I survived another 33 miles!
• San Mateo County Fair August 10-19 I didn’t expect the County Fair to get me in the papers. Not only the Mercury News, but I’ve got an interview with the San Mateo County Times coming up today. Anyway, today I’ll be spending the afternoon/evening at the fair before school starts, and tomorrow (hopefully) I’ll post a recap of what I entered and how I did.
• Ring a Bell I thought about doing a video podcast, but changed my mind. Smart move.

However, what about some of the other things that I did this summer?

• Brother’s 5th Grade Graduation, June 14th Congrats to my younger brother who is now out of elementary school and on his way to middle school! He’s got two more weeks of summer though.
• Giants Game, June 25th / A’s Game, August 1st We got to go to the San Francisco Giants game on the 25th, and my brother and other students from his school district got to play/sing the national anthem! Just a shame that he was behind a tall kid so no one could see him. The Giants did win, beating the Padres after 12 innings. My brother and I also went to an A’s game on August 1st–it was MUG Root Beer Float Day.
• iPhone Launch, June 29th I don’t know if I’ll ever forget this experience. I tried my best to do my innocent little bit, recording two episodes of PreviewCast, handing out some T-shirts, and taking photos. However, it turned out to be a media frenzy that kind of overwhelmed me, as evidenced by the video I posted afterwards.
• Peace Action Tabling, July 4th At the annual 4th of July event at Leo J. Ryan Park in Foster City, I spent the whole day at the Peace Action table helping out.
• Don Havis 4 SMUHSD Board Website My good friend Don Havis is running for school board and has hired me to do his website for him!
• Month of Reviews I announced that I would be doing a Month of Reviews from July 30-September 2 on this blog. So far I’ve completed up till my August 18th review, so I’m starting to cut it kind of close…

All in all, it’s been a pretty good and productive summer. One of the things that I didn’t list that I certainly did this summer was relax. Following the long school year that ended 2 and a half months ago, I’ve definitely been able to relax and recover from the year, and I’m (hopefully) ready now to take on another school year. Here’s hoping…

Tags: article, Blogging, Personal, summer