Khoi's Blog

On the first day of the trip, my Dad, sister, two of my relatives, and myself drove north to Orlando International Airport to fly from MCO to MSY which is New Orleans, Louisiana. We stayed in New Orleans for two nights, on the first night we met up with the rest of my family and visited the Acme Oyster House. I got to try a few of their oysters and their Gumbo and they were pretty good. A bonus was that there was a fight in the back of the restaurant as well, typical in New Orleans. After that, we drove to a house that was being rented out to stay for the next day. My aunt was also caring for her newborn as well so everybody was looking after to him, which would be my new cousin Phillip. On the next day, we visited a place called the “French Quarters” which had a lot of shops and places to eat at. We also got to see the large lake as well in New Orleans. Also, traffic in the French Quarters is horrendous, if you are going there either walk or take a bike. After our stay in New Orleans, the next day we drove around five hours to my cousins hometown of Lake Charles, Louisiana. That would be where we would stay for most of the trip. For attractions in the area, we got to visit a small little frozen yogurt shop and my cousins and I would be playing outside as well sometimes. After a few days, we would attend Church for the Baptizing of Phillip, this was done during mass and I remember everyone standing around a fountain of water as Phillip was baptized. Pretty good experience. We would then take a road trip over to San Antonio, Texas, where we explored a cave (video is on my channel) as an attraction and visited the Alamo, a historic place. After our Texas trip, we drove all the way back over to Lake Charles, LA, where we would spend the rest of our trip. Near the end of the trip, our family would instead be driving back home and it was a very, very, VERY, long trip back. That’s it for this blog, and I hope you enjoyed.

I’ve been running a community centered around a Roblox game for the past two years now (since July of 2022!), and from the first days of it, I was looking for a forum software to power it. Nowadays, most online communities will look for a PHP Script that just needs a SQL server as a forum, however, even though it is simpler to set up doesn’t mean it’s good. Most of these scripts have issues with spam, where bots auto-register and fill the bulletin board up with rampant topics and replies.

I have tried out both MyBB and phpBB before. Both software have major shortcomings, one of which I find awkward is when you reach the end of a page and want to continue browsing for topics/forum posts, you have to click through clunky pages that break the site down. Not only does it cause a poor experience, it gives an outdated feel to the site. Also, the out-of-the-box UI for both forum software seem old and just not modern, especially for phpBB. Granted, both also allow you to install themes to make it more unique but most themes may also not look modern either and it just makes site owners take more steps to get their site up and running.

When I first started my online community, I wanted it to be a forum with a modern look and modern tools. This is when I discovered Discourse (www.discourse.org), a forum/bulletin board software that addressed all my needs. From a modern look to powerful moderation tools, it was the solution for an online community.

Discourse takes a dynamic approach to forums. Instead of being built with PHP, it is written in Ruby on Rails and is on the emberJS Framework. Instead of being split down into pages that awkwardly subdivide the site, as you reach the end of the page Discourse just extends it, populating it with more topics and posts for you to read.

If you’re reading a forum post that has many replies, you may notice that it is hard to navigate as it is also divided into pages, with Discourse is extends the pages for you to have all the replies without changing pages and also has a neat scroll bar at the side to scroll through all the replies. It works even on thousands of replies!

Discourse also integrates live chat into the forum, bridging the gap for people who want asynchronous discussions and who want instant messaging. You can also send direct messages to other users, create groups within the forum with special permissions, and more.

The days of people replying to a post with “+1” and “Agreed” are no more, Discourse integrates reactions into posts. Like a post someone published? Press the heart button next to it or hover over it to add a special reaction such as 🎉.

Discourse also puts site moderators and administrators in control, spammers be gone with IP/Email Blocking at your fingertips, silence users from posting, suspend user accounts for the severe rule breakers, and keep a log of warnings for each user so moderators know their violation history. Discourse also allows site administrators to view user IP addresses and email allowing audit and investigation to be simple and to see if users are simply creating alternative accounts to circumvent security restrictions.

New user? No problem. Discourse also brings “Trust Levels” to forums. When a new user first registers, they are granted “Trust Level Zero” which means they have limited access, they can only embed a certain amount of images in posts, send a limited amount of replies, and create a limited amount of new topics. As they continue to read more posts and engage, the system automatically promotes their trust level.

Finally, Discourse has a great out-of-the-box UI that seems intuitive and responsive,  the scenes of outdated forums from 2009 are gone and Discourse seems like the forum built in 2024.

To this day, Discourse has helped my online community build itself and gain traction. We’ve surpassed 100 registered users and are approaching 200 soon. Our site has also achieved 2,000 posts across the entire forum. At the time of writing, we have 177 sign-ups and are continuing to grow.

You can read more regarding Discourse at http://ww.discourse.org. If you want to see it in action, visit http://meta.discourse.org. Thanks for reading.

Recently, the old printer at my house which was a inkjet printer that runs out of ink every 20 pages was finally replaced. The issue with the printer we had was that ink cartridges would be running out frequently when we printed even though we never printed much at all. Printer cartridges for that printer would cost around 20-30 dollars for a replacement and the cartridges did not have a high yield of ink. Recently, I decided to pop open one of the cartridges with a screwdriver to try and see what was inside as the ink cartridge was already broken and causing streaks on the page. After prying it open, I found a block of foam inside that wasn’t even damp with ink, the ink almost seemed like some powder of some sort which explains why I kept running out of ink so quickly. Every time I shook one of these cartridges, I could not feel any liquid inside.

Usually, consumer home inkjet printers are subject to this problem no matter which brand you go with, so I went on eBay and looked for a business/enterprise level printer that was not subject to the issue. I found the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C8190 which was a color network printer that used four high yield cartridges of black, cyan, yellow, and magenta which could print up to 2,900 pages in Black and 1,700 pages in color. For the largest capacity cartridges the printer can take, it can print up to 11,500 pages in black and 8,000 pages in color which means the ink cartridges do not need to be replaced often. A pack of these cartridges in the standard size will run around $250 dollars, which is less than the cartridge replacements required by the older printer as those cartridges have a low yield in printer ink requiring way more ink replacements.

The WF-C8190 also has many more features than the other one, such as PIN number printing, web configuration, expandable paper cassettes, and more. With a higher page output of 24PPM for both black and color it can print more pages in less time while the older printer could take up to a minute printing multiple full black pages.

In terms of efficiency, the WF-C8190 works without as many interventions and keeps operating costs low while maximizing printing. I’m still fiddling with all the features this printer has to offer, so I might make a follow up post soon.

On Friday, we were scheduled to fly with Spirit Airlines from Florida to Arizona, but we decided to leave for the airport two hours before the flight when the airport was one hour away with heavy traffic. I’m not surprised we missed it, they say you’re supposed to be at the airport 1-2 hours before the flight, not start driving there. We ended up taking the next flight the next day in the afternoon.

Early Sunday morning is the day when all of us finally got settled in Thuclam & Thucquyen’s house. At noon, everyone drove south of Phoenix to Casa Grande, a Native American settlement that was about an hour away. After around an hour and a half, we drove back up north to Phoenix. We stopped by an Asian supermarket on the way to buy pastries that they had.

The next few days were uneventful as we stayed home, but on Wednesday everyone began to drive west to California, stopping by Yuma, Mexico along the way. I stayed back with Bac Hau until Thursday as I was going to be traveling via plane with him to Santa Ana, California (near Orange County).

On Thursday, I woke up at around 7-8 AM and prepared to go to lunch with Bac Hau before our flight at 3:00 PM. Most of the restaurants were closed on Thanksgiving so we ended up going to an Asian Supermarket and got some snacks. We then drove to the airport and checked-in. Our flight today was going to be around one hour and forty minutes, the flight was uneventful and there were free snacks & drinks available (something Spirit charges you extra for). We later landed in Santa Ana and were picked up by the rest of our family. They had passed through Mexico and finished up driving to California last night.

We went to Angel’s Grandfather’s health-care facility to meet her Grandfather for a bit. After we caught up with him, we drove to a relative’s home where the adults chatted with others. Finally, we drove to a Vietnamese restaurant and had dinner for around an hour. After we all finished, we drove to a hotel for the night.

The next day, because Y Vien wanted to see Hollywood Boulevard (just a place where names are in the floor) part of the family had to drive up north for 45 minutes to Los Angeles to see the place. They had lunch at a Mexican restaurant near the waterfront then visited a relative’s house. Afterward, they began to drive home on a six-hour journey.

Bac Hau and I left the hotel at around 9:00 AM and drove to John Wayne Airport to catch a flight back home to Phoenix. The flight was uneventful and we landed only an hour afterwards thanks to a wind-current pushing us forward. We ate instant noodles at home then Bac Hau drove off to begin his Uber rides until 11 PM. Now, we’re here and I’m currently home alone typing this blog. Around 4-5 more hours until the other group arrives, so I’ll probably be asleep by then.

Tomorrow is the day where I’ll be flying back to Florida. Three plane rides in three days consecutively.

In today’s blog, I will be reviewing the Dell Precision 3520 Mobile Workstation. This device is a business laptop, an enterprise level laptop from the Dell Latitude’s. The model I have is configured to have an Intel Core i7 6th Generation clocked in at 2.7GHz, an NVIDIA Quadro M620 Discrete Graphics Card, and 16 gigs of DDR4 memory. The particular configurated laptop I have does not come with the extra LTE card, fingerprint reader, and NFC touchpoint. The laptop has a multitude of ports, including a USB-C/Thunderbolt port, power port, three USB-A ports, a full size SD card reader, an HDMI video output port, a legacy VGA output port, and a headphone jack. The keyboard has an expanded number pad to the right of the laptop which is mainly used for typing in numbers into specific applications quickly, an approximate 14′” inch screen (non-touch), and a backlit keyboard. The computer does perform well in most applications, this ranges from casual internet browsing to watching videos and some lightweight gaming. I haven’t experienced any issues so far except for the degraded battery which I plan on replacing in the future. Would I recommend this to someone else? Yes, I would. Alternatives to the Precision 3520 Mobile Workstation would be the Latitude E7470 and Latitude 7480 from the entry-level business laptops. The successor to the Precision 3520 would be the Precision 3530, but with minimal upgrades.

A few days ago, I had spilled a bit of lemonade on my laptop. I quickly wiped it off with a cloth. Fast forward to today, I noticed the key is now sticking, this means I need to disassemble the laptop to extract the keyboard and clean it. After putting it back together, I noticed the keyboard was misaligned as it seems like it sank by 2 milometers which is a lot. This makes typing on the laptop a hellhole and I cannot stand it, so I tore it back down and re-screwed it in. That did not fix the issue, and I used the wrong screws causing it to partially puncture the wrist pads of the laptop. The puncture isn’t too noticeable, but it is visible. Now, I need to order a new battery for the Latitude as if I unplug the charger the damn thing shuts off. Not only that, because of these repairs I had to do and the fact I had to sometimes force shut the laptop down, this has caused Windows to enter a never-ending boot loop (it turns on, reboots, gives and error, shuts off, and repeats). I’ve also noticed that the CPU does get excessively hot, and when I opened it’s heat sink I found the thermal paste to be solid and that means it wouldn’t be too effective. Keep in mind this laptop is five years old, made in 2017. From the first purchase of this laptop, the system was snappy and it boots up quickly. The laptop still boots up quickly, but it isn’t as fast as before and is beginning to show degraded performance. Hopefully, my data is still on the drive and I should still be able to access it. I plan on trying to recover Windows soon, but for now I am temporarily using ChromeOS which is missing all the programs I use daily. For now, ordering replacement parts for the laptop just doesn’t seem worth it thanks to the sunken keyboard, cosmetic punctures, and degraded performance. If I do have to get a replacement laptop, it would be the Dell Precision 3520 or a similar model, however it wouldn’t be compatible with the docking station I currently own. If I do upgrade to another machine, I will most likely sell the docking station or even the laptop itself altogether.

It’s been around a week since my trip to Louisiana. I’ll give you a run down of what happened mainly. On the first day, I woke up at around 3:00 AM to drive to the airport. We parked our car in a parking garage then took a bus to the aiport which was around a 5-7 minute drive. After that, we caught our flight to Houston, TX as there aren’t any flights that go to Lake Charles, LA from our area. After we landed, we rented a car and drove to eat lunch. We stopped as a chinese resteraunt and the food quality was bare-decent, then drove off to visit a meusem. We spent around 1-2 hours in the muesem looking at the historic artifacts and attractions it had to offer, then started a 1-2 hour drive to Lake Charles, LA. The drive was mainly uneventful, but we arrived just in time for dinner. We also went to a new house my relatives bought which was in the neighborhood next to the main house, we usually bounced back and forth between the houses for lunch or dinner. We also drove back to Houston with all the relatives to stay there for a night, and we also visited another meusem where they had historic artifacts such as gems, forests, animals, etc. The next day, we ate lunch at a vietnamese resteraunt then drove back to Lake Charles, LA. Then, after a week of vacation we flew back home as the school year was starting.

Nam, Bien, Angel, my annoying sister, and I decided to go down the ravine in the forest near the house. It was around 1/4 of a mile, but the uneven terrain in the ravine would slow down our progress. We began treking down the ravine, the first part was the easiest as it wasn’t steep, and there wern’t many obstructions except the occasional fallen tree. After a bit of walking, we encountered the second part of the ravine which was a small creek. There was a “sewage” tunnel that had a small amount of water flowing out and into the creek, however, the were many rocks throughout the creek so we could practically walk on it without getting wet. Unfortunately, after a feet we encountered a roadblock. There were a bunch of fallen trees intersecting eachother which made it a bit difficult to cross without getting wet. We managed to get across though by crawling other with some rocks below to step on. After getting through the main difficult part, we went to the side of the ravine as the creek got deeper. Unfortunately, we were met by another roadblock as the side got too steep ahead and we needed to find a detour. The intital plan was to crawl across a fallen tree that went above the creek. Nam and Bien crawled across sucessfully while Vien somehow sank her foot into mud. I then found another way to cross over by climbing over stable rocks, so Angel and Vien followed me across. After crossing the creek, we continued treking down the ravine and arrived to the end. From there, we wen’t through the forest reserve and intercepted a trail that went back up to our home. We hiked the trail for around 5-7 minutes then treked back through the elevated forest for another three minutes. We esentially made a full circle and returned back to the house. I hope you enjoyed this blog and I’ll see you next time.

It was around 12 PM, noon. Everyone was packing up to go on the road trip from Cleveland to Old Bridge. There were two groups of people, the first group which contained 90% of everyone departed at noon, while everyone else departed at 5 PM. The drive to Old Bridge was broken down into two segments, the first segment went from Cleveland to a rural area in Pennsylvania, and the second segment continued to the trip to Old Bridge, NY. The drive for the first segment was uneventful, but when we were nearing the destination, we stopped at McDonalds for dinner. After that, we finished the drive to the destination. The destination was a cottage in the woods, it was comprised of a “shed” building and a main building. Between these two was a campfire and the backyard. The shed allowed for two people to sleep there, a large TV screen, foosball, a poker table, and it had decent A/C. On the other hand with the main building, the A/C did not function correctly, the TV in the living room was small, and the only thing that cooled the place down was fans. In one of the rooms, if you jumped the fan would’ve decapitated you because of how low it was. Everyone moved over to the shed to play a tournament of Foosball and a game of Poker.

The next day, we drove to Old Bridge NY. We would be staying there for a few days.

On June 2nd, my family had a large wedding event for Christina and Liem. The wedding started at 5:30 PM, so everyone got ready at around 3 PM. After we all dressed up, we piled into two cars and drove 1.5 Hours to Tarrytown, NY. The drive was uneventful, but after an hour and a half we arrived at the wedding venue. We met a few relatives at the entrance and then we went into the dining hall. The staff later moved us outside since the place was still being set up, and then everyone was called to the outdoor ceremony area. Unfortunately, rain began pouring for a big so the ceremony was expedited. After it was over, everyone was moved inside for pictures and for the Cocktail hour. During the cocktail hour, I got two glasses of Coke and loaded some food onto my plate such as meatballs, shrimp, bread, and even steak. After an hour,  everyone was told to enter a large room where there were many more large dining tables, a dance floor, and a bar. This was the reception time, and I got to eat a multitude of things. They served us a four course meal, which consisted of an appetizer, salad, entree, and desert. For the entree, I chose the chicken with some other sides. During desert, staff walked around and handed out things such as bite-sized lava cakes, pretzel cream cakes, and other things. If I had to rate this wedding, I would give it a solid 9.5/10. The only drawback there was is the rain, but other than that the wedding was good.

After the wedding, everyone drove back to Old Bridge, NY to crash for the night. The whole thing was exhausting, and I had a good sleep. The next day, we didn’t do anything for the entire day but we had a barbecue and some people went to NYC. The next day, we all drove home to Cleveland, OH. Some of the adults went to JFK and flew across the world for a trip.

I hope you enjoyed this blog, and I’ll see you next time.

I recently registered myself on the website “Fiverr”. Fiverr is a freelance website where you can list your skills and people will hire you for a price both parties agreed on. You can do things such as graphic design, IT support, and even accounting services. If you attract many buyers, you can get officially certified on Fiverr and gain advantages over other sellers. For an example, some of the skills I listed were Google Workspace setup for businesses, Phone System configuration, and surveillance camera monitoring.

ran out of things to say so now lets switch topics

Why android is better than iPhone

Android is better than iPhone because it is cheaper and affordable. Who spends a thousand dollars on a phone just for the screen to break when you drop it on your couch? iPhones are just way to expensive and are too brittle. Androids also have more features like developer mode and they even have more applications. People think androids have bad camera quality, but they actually have great camera quality. The reason why it looks bad is because if it’s sent over text messaging, the quality is reduced by android automatically to save data. I bet your iPhone doesn’t do that, which is why you have to pay more for celluar data. Android also comes out with many updates, while iOS updates come out every 1-2 years, which is a long time. Android 12 was released late 2022, and Android 13 was released early 2023, which is great for OS updates. Anyway I hope you liked this blog and bye.