Well, here I go again. You probably don’t even really care much about all my travel itineraries, but I find that it satisfies myself to spend the time writing them up anyways. (If it turns out that you actually like my travel itineraries, let me know in the comments.) However, this week will be the California State PTA Convention again, my fourth one in a row. The difference about this year’s (other than the fact that it’s in Long Beach) is that as a student representative on the State PTA Board of Managers, I now get to be a part of running the thing, which therefore makes me more committed during the Convention and means that I have to show up two days earlier. Want to see what I mean? Here we go…
Continue reading »

Tags: California State PTA, Convention, events, itinerary, Long Beach, meetings, PTA, SAT, Subject Tests, trip, workshops

I was at a rally in Sacramento (California’s state capitol) today with the California State PTA, who was there protesting the proposed budget cuts to public education. They have a press release detailing the event. I was one of the speakers of the rally, and thought that I’d share what I said here.
Continue reading »

Tags: budget, California State PTA, capitol, event, governor, protest, PTA, Schwarzenegger, speech

Hello everyone,

This is just to let you know that I will be having little-to-no activity on my blog over the next few weeks, as I have a very busy couple of weeks coming up, between preparing for two AP tests (along with associated practice tests) and SAT Subject Tests, missing 4-5 days of school for a State PTA Convention that I’m working at, etc. Therefore I will be forcefully diverting my attention away from blogging and many of my frequent internet activities until things calm down for a little bit. I appreciate your understanding.

Tags: announcement, AP exams, Blogging, busy, Convention, hiatus, PTA, SAT, SAT Subject Tests, School, tests

It’s the last week of October, and that means I’m hitting the road again for another State PTA Board of Managers meeting. The October meeting is traditionally the Convention Orientation/Preparation meeting, where we go to the Convention Center to plan everything out, so we’re in Long Beach (off of Los Angeles) this time, the same place where the Convention will be in May. However, I won’t be at these meetings for as long as the July meeting was (since the July meeting was a longer meeting for orientation, etc.).

As I did in August, I will be traveling via the wonderful (and cheap) Virgin America from SFO to LAX and back. On Wednesday, right after school, I will be rushing to the airport to check in for flight VX 851, which leaves SFO at 4:15 PM and arrives at LAX at 5:40 PM. From there, I’ll be catching a Super Shuttle to get me to the Westin Long Beach (yeah, PTA puts us up in nice hotels).

Hopefully I’ll make it there in time to go to the Convention Management Committee meeting that night at 7:30 PM. As one of the two student representatives, we’re both in charge of the first-day Student Orientation at Convention, which is how we ended up on the committee. After that two-hour meeting ends, I can happily go off to sleep after a long day of both school and travel.

On Thursday morning, bright and early, will be the Student Involvement Committee meeting starting at 7 AM (with breakfast provided), and which will end at 8:45. That will then be followed by the Communications Commission, which will meet from 9 AM-3 PM, although that will be interrupted from Noon-1:30 PM with lunch and a Board of Managers group picture. However, I’ll have the rest of the day to myself after 3 PM, which should probably give me a good chance to catch up on homework.

Another early morning on Friday, with Breakfast provided at 7 AM, along with a Board Development activity. The Board of Managers meeting will then start at 9 AM, and I’m going to be responsible for opening the meeting with an inspiration. I’ve written kind of a “non-standard” inspiration which will still hopefully go all right. The meeting is expected to end by Noon. I’ll then have a chance to get myself some lunch before Super Shuttle picks me up to head back to the airport to catch Virgin America flight VX 852, which departs LAX at 4:00 PM and arrives at SFO at 5:20 PM.

I will not be going to the Leopard launch event at my local Apple Store on Friday, because as you can see, I get in a little bit late for that, and because I had a bit of an, erm, stressful experience at the iPhone launch event four months ago. However, I’ve pre-ordered Leopard from Apple.com, which means it should be here, waiting for me to install it when I get back home!

So anyway, there’s my itinerary, and I’m sure that within a few hours, Skoker will have commented with every single insignificant detail about the airplanes I’m going on, because that’s what he likes to do. Maybe by now all of Virgin America’s fancy computer stuff will be on, and I can post a more full review of it here on W87.info! We’ll see…

Tags: Apple Store, itinerary, Mac OS X Leopard, meeting, PTA, Super Shuttle, Virgin America

And I’m going with them! That’s right. Every other year, the California State PTA holds a district PTA officers training for a weekend at UCLA, called PTA U. I’ll be going with them–partially to get a bit more training, which you can never have too much of, and partially to get the experience of spending nights in a college dorm–on the cheap! Most colleges have programs to allow prospective new students to experience life in a dorm for a night, but it usually costs a lot of money. However, I’ll get to experience sleeping in a dorm at UCLA for two nights–for nothing! Oh, and travel costs and meals are taken care of as well. See, PTA student involvement DOES have perks!

I also won’t be going alone. As the Nominating Committee chairman last year, I kind of reeled in my mom to be District PTA Treasurer this year, so she’ll also be going down to UCLA, and we’ll be rooming together as well. Our new president, Deborah Kemper (whom I also reeled in) will also be going from our district.

So, as is usual on this blog, I’m supposed to share my travel itinerary. I know that Skoker, who is an airplane addict, will be interested to note that we’ll be flying down tomorrow on the brand new airline Virgin America. So yes, I guess I’ll get to officially determine if they’re any good, particularly given how cheap their flights are. So, here’s the details…
Continue reading »

Tags: itinerary, LAX, Los Angeles, PTA, training, travel, trip, UCLA, Virgin America

Well, if you know me, you know that I enter various stuff at the San Mateo County Fair every year, and if I recall correctly, this is my 10th year to enter. However, this is the first time where I actually found out what I won before I went to go see it for myself, but sure enough, the San Jose Mercury News apparently reported on one of the brand new divisions this year: Website Design. There were three award-winning entries in the new division, two of which were mine. At least someone else did enter, when I had called the County Fair office a month ago to ask for entry details for websites, I got a “That’s the first time that question has been asked!” response, which got me worried that I would be the only one entering.

Anyway, congratulations to Taylor Hansford who does the website for Pacifica 4-H (it’s the county fair, after all!) and won 1st place. My own Webmacster87.info won the red ribbon, and the 17th District PTA Website, which I maintain and entered under the class “Website for a Business or Organization”, took third.

Thanks, by the way, goes to Larry and Anthony who sent me the link and asked me “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” I haven’t been to the fair yet, so honestly, I had no idea that I’d won until they sent me the link.

There are some things slightly ironic about the San Jose Mercury News article. For one thing, San Jose isn’t part of San Mateo County, but I’ll let that slide since our fair is open to all the neighboring counties as well. However, they said that “Neither boys were available for interviews.” Besides that being bad grammar, I wasn’t even at the fair today, so of course I wasn’t “available” for an interview! The article also claims that they were looking for me and the other kid in the livestock section. I can’t speak for Taylor, but I’m not part of 4-H and don’t spend very much time in the livestock section. I might spend 5-10 minutes in there during the fair to look, but I don’t exactly hang around there waiting to be interviewed, if you know what I mean. Now, I did get a phone call today from the fair saying that the San Mateo County Times wanted to interview me, albeit about my being a judge for a contest in the Culinary Arts division, but they have setup a time to meet me there at 4:30 PM on Monday. So, San Jose Mercury News, if you’d like to say hi to me, I’ll be there on Monday willing to answer questions.

Anyway, I am glad that my websites received the recognition from the judges (hopefully they didn’t try to view this website in Internet Explorer, which doesn’t work that well), and I’m glad to have helped the San Mateo County Fair get their technology entries going. Who knows? Maybe next year they’ll have a division for best podcast. Stay tuned next week when I’ll post a full list of everything I entered this year and how well I did!

Tags: Awards, Bay Area, Blogging, event, interview, News, Personal, PTA, San Mateo County Fair, Technology, web design