When I heard George Mason working on the rebranding a few years ago, I predicted it wouldn’t be good. Today the new logo was revealed and it’s shockingly bad.

The university claims to create a brand for the future, but the “GM” monogram appears to be stuck in the 80s. The use of green and gold colors on the outlined typeface makes the monogram appear more amateurish than prestigious and more athletic than academic.

The connection between “G” and “M” doesn’t feel natural. The two letters were forced together instead of being “All Together Different” as the university has claimed.

Now we are stuck with a bad brand. Let’s see how long it will last.

My Dearest Đạo,

It is hard to believe you are turning 15. I used to hold your tiny body in my arms and now you are even taller than me. You are becoming a fine young man. I might be strict on you at times, but I am proud of you.

Thank you for helping me out when I needed a hand. I can rely on you to complete the job. I ask for your help so you can learn to work with your hands. When I was your age, I didn’t fix anything around the house. I ended up not knowing much.

When we first moved into our house, which was when you were born, I hesitated to repair anything. Unfortunately, hiring a handyman these days is much more expensive than my own income. I ended up learning as much as I could from watching YouTube videos and trials and errors.

I used to lack the confidence to fix things on my own because I was afraid of making them worse. I don’t want you to lack the confidence like I did. Having some extra skills on your hands will always be useful. You don’t need to depend on others to do the jobs for you.

In sports, you are a fantastic skier. I loved shredding on the mountains with you. I hope we can continue to do so in many more winters to come. If you ever decided to pick up snowboarding, I can give you some tips.

I hope I drilled enough in your head about the importance of education. Call us old school, but your mom and I still believe that education is the standard for having a good life later on. When I was your age, I was more interested in getting that piece of paper than learning, which was my mistake. If you have to go to school anyway, you might as well learn as much as you can. Again, don’t be like me. I learned more after I graduated than I did when I was in school.

In regard to our digital consumption, I am deeply concerned, but I also understand it is hard to pull away from our screens. I didn’t do a very good job of guiding you and your brothers through the digital temptations. As you are getting more mature, I hope that you can manage and balance your time.

Happy birthday, my oldest son. I love you with all my heart.
Dad

I gave iLoveNgocLan.com a new set of typefaces. Body copy is set in Platypi, designed by David Sargent. Headlines, UI elements, and small texts are set in Bricolage Grotesque, designed by Mathieu Triay. Just wanted to jazz the site up a bit.

Damn! I am turning 46 already. The years are just flying by. I am not complaining though. I am incredibly happy to be alive. Life is treating me well. I can still do all the activities I love including skiing, snowboarding, and skating.

I try to stay as positive as possible. I don’t let negativities, anxieties, and uncertainties get to me. I just want to live a simple, stress-free life.

I am blessed for my family. My wife and I are on excellent terms. We get along better than we ever had. Our trust is still strong. A good marriage goes a long way. It helps us focus our attention on our kids.

Being parents in the digital age is a huge challenge. I am just trying to navigate through one issue at a time. I am learning to worry less and trust them more. They will be fine—I hope.

I have been fortunate to have a few friends along the way. They help make my life a bit more pleasant. I appreciate all the bonding, drinking, and bullshitting.

As far as my professional career goes, I still have a job on my birthday. Tomorrow I will have my annual performance evaluation. Let’s see if I still have a job then, but I can’t worry about tomorrow. Today is my day.

After hooking up the pipes for the bathroom vent, we decided to give the attic an extra layer of fiberglass insulation. The installation process didn’t look so bad from watching this video.

It was the worst job I had ever done. I spent 4 hours yesterday crawling around the tight space full of nails on the top and dust at the bottom. Thank goodness the weather was not too hot. I finished spreading all of the insulations around 7:00 pm. Then I realized I covered both sides of the vent.

This morning, I had to crawl one more time at the edges to tuck the insulations underneath the carton vent. It took 2 more hours.

I hoped the insulations worked. It took 24 rolls at $34 per roll. The total for the materials was $816. The labor was priceless.

I broke my own record for the number of days I spent on the mountains this season. We started the Epic Pass in winter 2021/22, in which I spent 26 days. In winter 2022/23, I spent 37 days. This season, winter 2023/24, I spent 49 days. I put my Epic Pass to good use.

In the past few months, I made decent progress on skiing and snowboarding. My skills on both were about at the same level. It was fun learning new techniques in skiing and snowboarding as if I were competing with myself.

I was glad that I picked up snowboarding. A forty-something guy learning snowboarding for the first time was a huge challenge, but I conquered it. Snowboarding definitely had a young, punk-rock vibe to it. Although I picked up snowboarding, I made the right decision not to give up skiing. I still have so much love for skiing. It got me into the game and I got hooked.

I enjoyed the ability to switch my brain from skiing to snowboarding and vice versa. Both sports gave me so much joy on the mountains. I didn’t feel any stress when I hit the slopes. I just let myself go. I tried to alternate between skiing and snowboarding from one day to the next so I would never get bored. When I didn’t feel like snowboarding, I could switch to skiing. The only downside was that I needed to be on the slopes more to do both sports.

My wife was not happy about it, but she always supported me. She understood my relentless drive. If I get into something, I go all in. Just like when I fell in love with her, I went all the way. For skiing and snowboarding, I wouldn’t do it just for pleasure. I would need to make some progress. I wouldn’t train hard to be a pro and I wouldn’t compete with anyone else. I competed with myself. I wanted to learn something new. I am still working on my carvings.

I had a fantastic season with my family and myself. I can’t thank my wife enough for buying our passes, booking our spots, and supporting my passion. No doubt, skiing and snowboarding are expensive sports. If our family of six would go skiing for one day, it could cost us over $1,000 if we needed lift tickets, rentals, and lessons. With our own equipment, Epic Passes cost us about $2,800. With rentals and food, our entire season cost about $7,000. That was more affordable than a week of vacation, which would cost $8,000 to $12,000, or a trip to Việt Nam, which would cost us $15,000 to $20,000.

The Epic Passes were an investment upfront, but they were worthwhile since we skied and snowboarded more than 10 days. The Epic Pass was also controversial as Vail acquired more and more resorts. On the good side, we could explore different mountains. If we didn’t have all the options, we probably just skied at Liberty, which is located closest to us, and nowhere else.

My wife had already purchased Epic Passes for us. Let’s do it again next season.

As I was driving on the road, I received text messages, emails, and phone calls about our site was being hacked. When someone clicked on an email link on any page, they would get a pop-up form instead of their email client. The recipients would get an email from [email protected] instead of the senders’.

My first thought was our site was being hacked with XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) . I called my assistant on my phone and walked her through the diagnose. I asked her to look for strange scripts in our templates. Then I asked her to comment out the script tags, which included Google Tag Manager and Pixel Tracking. When she commented out the Pixel Tracking script from a third-party vendor, the pop-up form went away.

The Pixel Tracking script allowed them to hijack our site and inject XSS into our pages with any email links. The JavaScript codes created the pop-up form. The submission from the pop-up form allows them to obtain all of the email messages. This is a serious privacy concern. Email communications should be between the sender and receiver, not the third-party.

I didn’t work with them on this Pixel Tracking script. When I worked with third-party vendors in the past, I made sure that they told me exactly what they were capturing. They would need to check with me first before they implement these types of dark patterns. I would also limit their tracking to a specific set of pages under a directory instead of the entire site.

Today was my last day skiing and snowboarding at Stowe. The sun was shining bright. Unfortunately the conditions were sticky. I skied on the blue trail and I could barely move. After 5 days straight of skiing and snowboarding for 6 hours each day, my legs were exhausted. I could barely turn my legs; therefore, I didn’t even bother trying to carve.

I went on the double-black trail to see if I could ski. I could make quick turns on skis better than I could on snowboard. Somehow I hesitated on my toe side turns when I was on deep slopes with big moguls. I hit the black trails and another blue trail. By 11:00 am, I was too exhausted to keep skiing. I called the day.

I drove back to my room to rest. I cooked a bowl of instant noodle and drank a hard cider brewed right in Vermont. The alcohol kicked in and I decided to get back to the resort to snowboard. I went on the black trail and I got tired. I finished one run and I was done.

I went back to my room and booked a tour of the Alchemist Brewery. It was a fascinating tour. I am ready to head home. I miss my girl and boys.

It’s Monday night in Stowe and I needed to do something after skiing and snowboarding. I haven’t been to a theater in a while so I might as well go see a movie. Alex Garland’s Civil War is an intense, disturbing, and pretty fucked up fictionalized version of America. It’s a lot of shooting and not a whole lot of plot. Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, and Stephen McKinley Henderson did their part. Let’s hope the real America won’t get to this point of no return.

I woke up this morning and it was raining again. I went downstairs to eat breakfast and went to the car to adjust my snowboard bindings. I dialed back from +20° (front foot) and +15° (back foot) back to +18° (front foot) and 9° (back foot). I wanted the ability maneuver around the trials and not just carving.

I arrived at Stowe Resort around 9:00 am and the rain had not stopped. As headed to the lift, I found my ski poles on the rack. I brought them back to my car. I headed to the lift that took me to the black trail. This trail is perfect for me to snowboard. At the top, I had to do quick turns to get down the steep black slopes. In the middle, I had to do short turns to get around the moguls. At the bottom, I could continue to learn to carve. I was having a hard time digging my board into the snow on my toe side. Fortunately, I watched Seung’s video and he talked about digging your back knee lower will make the board grip. It worked for me. I kept going back to this trail to do my three turns.

On the last run, I decided to take the blue trail instead. The blue trail led me to the double-black-diamond slopes. I hesitated for 5 seconds and decided to go for it. They were pretty steep with big moguls. I side-slipped on my heels most of the time. I couldn’t make a turn to my toe side. At least I made my way down and I didn’t have to call the ski patrols to get me down.

Tomorrow will my last day. I will try to ski down the double-black-diamond slopes. I can do short turns on skis pretty well. We’ll see.