After tweeting about my latest work for Everlasting Eye Care, I received the following praise and correction from Dr. Bonnie Shaver-Troup, EdD, Creator of Lexend:

Hi Donny, I loved the story of your “forever” friendship with Dr. Nguyen… nothing better than forever friends! I am thrilled to see you are using Lexend for your website. However, I am the creator of Lexend fonts and would ask if you would please correct your tweet. I am honored that you made the important decision to focus on both legibility and readability for Everlasting Eye Care. It would seem important, but many still do not know the importance of the fonts that we present. Kudos on both your design choices and content for the website! Lovely!

PS I love the wordmark that you created—it is beautiful. #beautifulartwork

I apologize for the wrong credit in my tweet, but the case study on my website is always correct. I assumed that Thomas Jockin was the co-creator of Lexend with Dr. Bonnie Shaver-Troup. It turned out that Dr. Bonnie Shaver-Troup had created Lexend in 2001 and Thomas only digitized her fonts for Google Fonts. It is important to get it right; therefore, I decided to delete the incorrect tweet and created a new one.

Nhân dịp kỷ niệm 19 năm thành lập iLoveNgocLan.com, tôi có viết lên vài lời. Không ngờ tôi đã duy trì và nuôi dưỡng trang nhà đó đã gần hai thập kỷ. Trong suốt thời gian qua tôi đã học hỏi rất nhiều từ cách làm việc với ban quản trị cho đến cách xã giao với những người ái mộ.

Lúc đầu nhận lời lập ra iLoveNgocLan.com, tôi chỉ nghĩ đơn giản là có một nơi để những ai yêu mến Ngọc Lan được trò chuyện và tâm sự với nhau. Thời gian trang hoạt động nhiều nhất thì tôi nhiều áp lực nên đã rút lui một thời giang. Tôi chỉ đứng ở đằng sau để chăm sóc ngôi nhà nhất là dọn dẹp những thư rác rưới (spammers).

Trong nhóm ban quản trị lúc đầu có bốn người nhưng rồi hai người đã từ bỏ. Chỉ còn lại tôi và một người anh cho đến giờ. Đã 19 năm tôi và anh cũng chưa từng gặp mặt. Rồi không biết có chuyện gì bổng nhiên một người hâm mộ gửi thư yêu cầu tôi xoá hết những bài thơ anh đã làm cho Ngọc Lan. Người ta yêu cầu thì mình lấy xuống thôi.

Có một lần một trong những người hâm mộ cô tổ chức một buổi dạ tiệc gây quỷ cho căn bệnh Multiple Sclerosis. Tôi sẵn dịp bay qua Cali thăm thằng bạn cũ và đến tham dự. Hôm đó ban tổ chức mời tôi nói vài lời về sự thành lập của iLoveNgocLan.com. Không chuẩn bị trước tôi cũng lên kể sơ qua chuyện tôi được một người hâm mộ Ngọc Lan hỏi thành lập trang nhà cho cô. Lúc đó chẳng ai lắng nghe vì đang ăn tiệc. Mỗi lần nghĩ lại tôi thật xấu hổ không dám nghe lại những gì mình đã nói.

Giờ đây trang iLoveNgocLan.com đã không còn nhộn nhịp như ngày nào nữa nhưng tôi sẽ cố gắng cập nhật những gì tôi tìm được để trang nhà không bị trống vắng.

My friend showed me pictures of his cribs
And all I could show him was pictures of my kids
He said he got a brand new sports car
And all I got was my sons’ brand new report card

Base on Ye’s original lyrics

Việt Thanh Nguyễn gave a short, inspiring commencement speech at F&M college. He touched on failure:

Now, you have just spent four years of your life here, and probably many years before, trying not to be mediocre. I’m here to give you permission to fail. Your parents might not want to hear that. But you should listen to Samuel Beckett: “Ever tried,” he wrote. “Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Also kids, take note: “a B+ is an Asian F.”

Sáng nay đưa thằng Đạo đi học như thường lệ. Sau khi cho nó xuống, tôi lái xe ra thì có một cô Á Đông mặc chiếc áo giao thông màu xanh lá cây chặn xe tôi lại. Cô vẫy tay chào và ra dấu hiệu cho tôi quay kính xuống.

Cô hỏi, “Anh có biết đây là bãi đậu xe của nhân viên không”? Tôi trả lời, “Biết chứ nhưng tôi đâu có đậu xe. Tôi chỉ dừng lại cho thằng con tôi đi bộ vào trường”. Cô lắc đầu nói, “Lần sau anh thả con xuống ở trước cổng trường”. Tôi gật đầu đồng ý cho xong.

Thú thật thì cái hàng đến trước cổng trường rất là dài. Lúc đến đó sẽ trễ giờ học cho nó và trễ giờ làm cho tôi. Giờ bị bắt quả tang rồi thì phải làm theo thôi.

I added a handful of brand designs to my professional portfolio. Take a look.

I received the following sponsored message in LinkedIn from some dude:

Hello Donny,

As a Director of Design & Web Services at George Mason University – Antonin Scalia Law School, I thought this report would interest you on how to drive campaign success through TikTok.

I couldn’t help but thinking of a few bars from Ye’s “All of the Lights,” in which he rhymed:

I’m heading home, I’m almost there
I’m on my way, headed up the stairs
To my surprise, a nigga replacing me
I had to take ’em to that ghetto university

I thought the dude replaced my job.

The following post is literally about pain in the ass. Stop reading now if you want to spare the details. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Last weekend, I started to feel a sharp pain in my ass while camping. I wondered if a bug bit my ass while I was sleeping in the woods. I thought it might be the hot sauce I ate that burned my ass. I don’t know. I just hope it will go away because taking a shit is just painful.

When I reached down my hand and touched it, I could feel a lump on my left cheek. I tried to take a selfie of my ass, but I couldn’t. I am thinking of paying my family physician a visit, but the thought of her looking into my ass is just too embarrassing.

I am just going to wait it out for a few more days to see if I get any better. I don’t think I ever had any symptoms like this before. What a pain in the fucking ass.

Adam Phan was my web design student and teacher assistant. He’s a charming and caring guy. In a recent fire incident, Adam lost his home and his belongings. He shares:

To be honest, I’m not all right as I witness my home and everything I’ve worked for go up in flames. It was traumatic and surreal. When I was finally able to walk up to my apartment building, it did not look anything like the home I had known.

It was dark, heavy with smoke and debris. My friend and I were escorted by some firemen up to the building. My building looked like a bomb had gone off in it. Inches of water mixed with wet drywall, insulation, burnt cinders and neighbors’ belongings. And when it came to my apartment—it was something out of a horror film. I woke up to a beautiful condo loft home and came back to a burnt down, flooded shell.

If you can, please help him out.

I removed the blogroll from my homepage since many blogs on my list are inactive. Bloggers don’t write like we used to anymore. I just found out that Ms. Nguyễn has made her blog private. I followed her journal for a long time. She was my only Vietnamese blogger left. She was like my blog confidant. I am going to miss her writing. It is hard to find passionate bloggers to follow nowadays. Of course I could turn to books to read, but I have always loved the raw form of blogging. I appreciate the unfiltered thoughts as well as the immediacy of publishing to the whole world to read.

I still love writing and I have learned that this is the only place that allowed me to write freely. Facebook is not a place to post lengthy journal. No one reads my writing when I cross post my blog on Facebook. As a result, I just post everything on here only. Maybe it is the fact that I don’t know who is reading has allowed me to just write. I don’t care about the likes and the comments. I just dash off a few hundred words off my head and hit publish.

Since I removed the blogroll off my homepage, I am just going to keep it here as an archive. I am not going to curate it. If the blogs go inactive, let them be. I might go back to add more in the future if I find blogs worth reading.

• Adactio
• A Working Library
• Bảohouse
• Colly
• DJR
• Ethan Marcotte
• Frank Chimero
• Hey Georgie
• I Love Ngọc Lan
• Lilgui
• Lil Xuân Shine
• Maggie Appleton
• Matt Mullenweg
• Ms. Nguyễn
• Robin Rendle
• Sơn Phước
• Susan Jean Robertson
• Tinigui
• Winnie Lim