As the idiot trying to reopen America, he is welcoming the unexpected guest into the White House. One of his Oval Office valets tested positive. The press secretary of his ass-kisser tested positive. His daughter’s personal assistant also tested positive. The coronavirus is moving on him like a bitch. Let’s hope it won’t catch up to him. If it does, it won’t grab him by the pussy. It will go straight for his life. That would be a bad case.

Before the pandemic, I posted a blog post on Facebook arguing how the idiot has ruined America and our democracy. My cousin who is one of the idiot supporters asked me to prove what he has done to ruin our country. I gave her top five items off the top of my head and she refused to believe them. Seeing how his supporters, even my own family members, believe his lies more than facts, I have no hope for getting common sense into them. They will believe his lies no matter what.

As we are facing the crisis of the pandemic, the lying idiot believes in his own lies. Despite the fact that we are losing almost 3,000 lives each day, the idiot wants to reopen the country. When asked if more Americans will die as the result of reckless reopening, he replied, “It could very well be the case.” Knowing damn well that people could die, he still wants Americans to take the risk anyway. He also doesn’t want testing because he argued that, “In a way, by doing all this testing, we make ourselves look bad.” We rather look bad than die? Aren’t we looking bad already? We have the highest cases of COVID-19 and the highest number of deaths in the world. The entire world already knows how the idiot has mishandled the crisis.

As November is coming and the coronavirus is not leaving, he is terrified of losing his reelection. His only distraction is to hype up his own bullshit. Unfortunately, only him and his supporters buy his own bullshit, the coronavirus does not. He gambles with human lives for his own reelection. I don’t know about you, but I do not trust him when it comes to gambling. Look what happened to his casinos. I urge you to think about being his playing cards. You’re not only gambling with your own lives, but others as well. I wouldn’t take that chance for an unstable idiot.

Chuyện tình hai trái tim Việt trên mảnh đất Hàn. Hoàng Anh và Kiều My sang Hàn Quốc du học thạc sĩ ngành Y. Chàng qua trước một khóa nên giúp đỡ nàng trong việc học, đưa nàng đi chơi, cùng thưởng thức những món ăn kim chi, rồi tình cảm nảy nở. Nguyên một sách chỉ có thể thôi. Tình cảm của họ hoàn hảo từ đầu đến cuối không một lần giận hờn, cũng không một lần cãi vã, cũng không một lần ghen tuông vì đâu có nhân vật thứ ba nào cản trở đâu. Tản Viên là Tiến sĩ Y học nên văn viết khô khan lại xen vào những từ ngữ Anh nên đọc hơi bị choáng. Ví dụ, “[Ở] Việt Nam họ làm kim chi cho người Việt nên phải giảm bớt cay đi và modify để phù hợp với khẩu vị.” Viết mẹ “thay đổi” cho rồi. Tiểu thuyết không thu hút cũng không hấp dẫn nên đọc cũng không hứng thú.

Hai tháng nay quanh quẩn trong nhà riết rồi cũng thấy quen. Dĩ nhiên là nhớ nhiều thứ lắm. Chẳng hạn như buổi trưa lái xe ra khu Eden tìm món ăn Việt hoặc đi trượt băng cùng mấy thằng con hoặc đi bộ ra Dunkin Donuts uống cà phê. Nhưng nhớ nhiều nhất vẫn là những thư viện công cộng.

Bao nhiêu sách Việt tôi mượn trước khi thư viện đóng cửa đọc đã gần hết. Tôi đang đọc quyển cuối. Còn sách tiếng Anh, tôi lôi hết những sách cũ đã mua mà chưa kịp đọc ra đọc. Sau đó chắc phải đọc lại sách đã đọc rồi.

Thật sự nhớ thư viện lắm. Mỗi ngày sau khi ăn trưa không biết đi đâu cho tiêu cơm, tôi lại đến thư viện đảo đi đảo lại những kệ sách mới được trưng bày nhưng rồi không mượn sách nào cả vì tôi còn một số sách đã mượn nhưng chưa đọc. Thỉnh thoảng gặp chào hỏi cô bạn lúc trước làm chung ở trường. Tuy không thân thiện nhưng lâu lâu cũng tâm sự vài ba câu. Cô vui vẻ, dễ thương, và nhiệt tình.

Tôi ước gì thư viện mở cửa lại nhưng chỉ cho phép lấy sách ở ngoài chứ không được vào bên trong. Bây giờ mượn sách qua mạng quá dễ dàng. Chỉ cần đến trả sách hoặc lấy sách thì cũng an toàn. Tuy thư viện vẫn cho mượn ebooks nhưng tôi chưa bao giờ dùng. Tôi vẫn thích đọc sách bằng giấy hơn làm sách bằng điện. Vả lại đọc sách bằng iPhone dễ bị phân tâm. Tôi có vài quyển sách trong phone mà đọc mấy năm rồi cũng chẳng xong quyển nào. Nhưng nếu tình hình vẫn còn kéo dài thì chắc phải thử đọc sách điện.

I’ve lost count of how many days we have been on the lockdown. It has been way too long. Fortunately, I am even busier with work from home. After we launched a page to let faculty and staff leave messages for the Law School graduates, I am working on the online program for graduation. Under a normal circumstance, the program booklet for graduation is about 40 pages. We’re trimming it down and put it on our site this year. I am also designing an animated banner on our homepage. The banner will scroll through all the names of the graduates on graduation day. We wanted to make something extraordinary for the class of 2020.

Since the university is part Virginia, it is affected by the hiring freeze of state employees. Even part-time employees must be resubmitted for approval to continue to work. I had to provide a statement to justify my developer’s position. It was not difficult for me to write because his role is critical to the daily operations of the law school. As classes moved online and administrative offices transitioned to remote operations, he has worked closely with me to support the law school including admissions, career services, centers, communications, and library to provide technical solutions, online training, and website updates. I hope they will extend his position.

In the past few days, my heart ached when I read letters from my son’s daycare educators. They have been furloughed this month. One of the educators had taught Đạo, Đán, and (most recently) Xuân. The other one had been hired not so long ago, but she made a good impression on the kids. At the beginning of the school year, Xuân’s class had a tough time with the constant turnovers. Xuân used to cry at drop-off. He didn’t want to go to daycare. Then he got better when the two educators came on board. He liked coming to school and participating in class activities. As they were about to settle in, the pandemic hit. Now that I am working from home and trying to take care of the kids, I have a much deeper appreciation for what they do at the daycare everyday. I wrote back to each of them to thank them for what they have done for our kids and I hope that they will return once we’re back to normal.

Peters is still killing it after all these years. His materials haven’t changed much even though he got fatter. He makes fun of his own Indian fatness in his Amazon Prime special filmed in Mumbai. His subjects range from sex, race, and self deprecation. His wordplay and improvisation help brought out interactions from the audience. The special is entertaining to watch.

Truyện được kể theo một cô gái trẻ tên Huyên. Gia đình Huyên tan rã khi em trai (nhỏ hơn cô mười một tuổi) bị cơn bão và sóng biển cuốn đi. Cô theo mẹ và người yêu của mẹ đi khắp nơi với đoàn tổ chức hội chợ. Giữa những thú vị đằng sau hội chợ của hiện tại và những kỷ niệm buồn đau trong quá khứ (nhất là về người em ruột đã qua đời), câu chuyện của Huyên về tình cảm gia đình rất xúc động. Tác giả Phạm Thu Hà chỉ mới ở tuổi 20 mà viết rất chín chắn. Với cách kể chuyện gọn gàn cùng những câu văn trôi chảy, truyện dài của Hà nhẹ nhàng đi vào lòng người và để lại những cảm xúc sâu lắng. Khuyến nghị nên đọc.

For iteration 3 of this blog, I changed the big display text to Gimlet Sans, May’s Font of the Month that David had just sent out earlier today. Because of the lovely “a” in Gimlet Sans, I switched the text face back to Fragen, by Lucas Descroix. I love the way the “a” in each typeface has similar features, and yet they are different.

I also brought back the dark mode after reading Kilian Valkhof’s “Your dark mode toggle is broken.” I didn’t implement the toggle button. The only way you would see the dark mode is when you switch your operating system to dark mode. I also added a bit three red stars as end marks for a bit of decoration. Why not?

One of the best things of having a personal website is that I get to experiment and change the design whenever I feel like it. It gives a bit of a joy during this difficult time.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a tweet encouraging users to turn off JavaScript on iOS Safari to browse the web on mobile devices. Until I read that tweet, I didn’t know that I could disable JavaScript on my iPhone. I didn’t use Safari much on my phone unless I tapped on a link in email, which would bring up Apple’s default browser. I used mostly Chrome for my own convenience. My bookmarks, histories, and passwords were all synced and managed by Chrome. I tried to deactivate JavaScript on Chrome on my iPhone as well, but I couldn’t find a way to do it.

In the past few weeks, I have been browsing the web using Safari on my phone with JavaScript turned off and it has been such a pleasurable experience. Sites, particularly news, loaded much faster and without annoying ads popping up. On some photo-heavy sites, images didn’t even load without JavaScript. I actually preferred more white space than images. Hero sliders didn’t work. I just saw all the slides stacking on top of each other.

The biggest issue I ran into was the hamburger menus. Without JavaScript, these menus simply didn’t work and I could not go beyond the homepage. Everything hidden under the three horizon lines was inaccessible. We should move away from using JavaScript for hamburger menus or avoid sweeping everything under hamburger menus for the sake of convenience. I have seen sites that used the hamburger menu for just one or two items like “about” and “contact.” For longer navigation, we can use CSS grids, flex boxes, and variable fonts to control the items. A variable font with the width axis can be useful for menu items. Its narrow width can save some space on small mobile devices. It can get wider for larger screens.

For sites with tons of menu items, I don’t know what the solution is. I implemented the anchor-link technique for the Scalia Law School website years ago. Basically, I placed the menu items in the footer for mobile devices and positioned it to the top with CSS for larger screens. It still works fine without JavaScript.

As the country confirmed over a million cases of the coronavirus, the losing president bragged, “We did the right thing. We did an incredible job.” Yes, he and his administration have done such an incredible job that the United States now has more than sixty thousand deaths and more bodies to count. Yes, they have done such an incredible job that more than thirty million Americans have filed for unemployment. Yes, they have done such an incredible job that the economy is predicted to drop 30% in GDP. He boasted, “We built the greatest economy in the history of the world.” Yes, you have done such an incredible job that our economy is as great as the Great Depression.

This pandemic was inevitable, but his unpreparedness made it as catastrophic as it is today. He even admitted himself that he was ill-prepared for it when he said, “Nobody has trained for this, nobody has seen this, I would say, since 1917, which was the greatest of them all, the greatest of this type of battle. Probably the greatest of them all, right? 1917.” Never mind the fact that he didn’t even get the history straight, his Presidency now depends on the outcome of the coronavirus in the next few months. So far it is killing his Presidency.

As his poll numbers are sliding, the losing president is losing his mind. He took it out on his campaign manager. He claimed that he doesn’t care about the polls and stated that, “I believe the people of this country are smart. And I don’t think that they will put a man in who’s incompetent.” Well, look what the people had put in the White House in the last election? Yes, a fucking incompetent. Let’s not repeat that mistake again. Seriously, are you going to vote for someone who thought it would be a good idea to inject disinfectants into your body? If yes, then you’re a fucking idiot as well.