In less than a month, I switched up the design of this blog again. I still keep the typefaces: Loretta, designed by Abel Martins and Joana Correia and Captura Now, designed by Anita Jürgeleit. I got rid of the random Unsplash photos. They made the website fun, but I got tired of them quickly. They overpowered my words.

For the fifth iteration, I refocused on the typography.I increased the font size and made the layout wider. Nothing is groundbreaking, but lots of whitespace to breath with an imageless design. I hope this is the last iteration until 2022. With that being said, I always make changes this blog. It’s my personal playground where I get to experiment quite a bit. I am glad someone noticed:

I like how @visualgui handles this: he updates the fonts on his blog frequently … like once a month, I think?

I hope you like this new layout.

While waiting for my kids to take their ice skating lessons, I asked Eric who is the director at Fairfax Ice Arena who will be teaching Freestyle 2 for adults starting next Thursday. He checked his computer, but he was not sure if he would start the class with only three students. He needed a minimum of five students, but he doubted that there will be any more registrations since not too many adults take this level. He told me if I sign up, he would start the class.

I hesitated at first, but caved in. I handed him my credit card. Why not? I looked at the curriculum and I have been dappled with the ballet jump and the half lutz. I can do the one-foot spin and two arabesques, but need more practice. I don’t know what the jump sequence and dance step sequence are, but I am ready to take on the challenge. I wanted to see how far I can level up with ice skating.

Compared to rollerblading, ice skating is much safer. I injured three times from rollerblading, but none from ice skating. The skate parks with ramps and bowls are a bit dangerous, but thrilling. I don’t focus on techniques with rollerblading. I just wanted to ride the ramps. With ice skating, the techniques are more important. I tried to transfer what I have learned in ice skating to rollerblading, but I didn’t have much success. Transferring the other way was a bit easier. My kids preferred rollerblading more because they liked the excitement of skating down the ramps.

I am looking forward to taking Freestyle 2. Eric told me that the instructor might be Kim Nguyễn. I had seen her teaching private lessons. She is very young and talented. I liked my previous instructor, but I am ready for a change.

When a reader recommended that I should look into moving my sites from the terrible share hosting HostPapa to the cloud hosting DigitalOcean, I hesitated. Setting up the Droplets seemed to be overwhelming. Fortunately, DigitalOcean has excellent tutorials to guide me through the entire process.

The command line is still daunting to me, yet it is so awesome at the same time. I moved six static (somewhat dynamic) sites into one Droplet and this blog, which powered by WordPress into a separate Droplet. Setting up WordPress is a bit more complicated. Although DigitalOcean offers a one-click install for WordPress, I did the long way to have more control of the environment.

Here are the tutorials I used to setup my Droplets:

1. Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu 20.04
2. How To Install the Apache Web Server on Ubuntu 20.04 and Setting Up Virtual Hosts
3. How to Set Up SSH Keys on Ubuntu 20.04
4. How To Create a New Sudo-enabled User on Ubuntu 20.04
5. How To Install Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) stack on Ubuntu 20.04
6. How To Install WordPress on Ubuntu 20.04 with a LAMP Stack
7. How To Secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt on Ubuntu 20.04

How to Upgrade Ubuntu

Once SSH in, look for the number of updates can be applied immediately. If updates are available, shut off the Droplet power:

sudo poweroff

or

sudo shutdown -h now

Then take a snapshot of the Droplet through the control panel on DigitalOcean. Once the snapshot is taken, turn the power back on, SSH back in, and follow this tutorial: “How To Upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa.”

Here are the steps to update:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt dist-upgrade

To check for a new Ubuntu release:

sudo do-release-upgrade

Remove unused packages (Don’t run this on the WordPress Droplet):

sudo apt autoremove

AutomaticSecurityUpdates

To automatically install security updates, the “unattended-upgrades” package was installed:

sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades
sudo dpkg-reconfigure --priority=low unattended-upgrades

Last month I migrated all of my sites off HostPapa and onto DigitalOcean. Since ilovengoclan.com is on a different account, I was not planning on moving it, but HostPapa kept trying to make me upgrade. I am not sure how it keeps reaching its CPU and Input/Output usages when iLoveNgocLan.com has been inactive for years. No one has written any new post and no one had made a comment for a long time. I had done all that I could to optimize the resources, but it was not enough.

HostPapa warned me that I have to resolve the issues by the end of the week or upgrade my plan from $9.99 to $23.99 a month. That’s almost 240% increase. My solution was to migrated to DigitalOcean as well. I no longer had the time and the resources to deal with WordPress anymore; therefore, I used SiteSucker to turn the entire site into static HTML files. For years, ilovengoclan.com has not been active. Keeping it in WordPress is just too much maintenance and time-consuming. I have thought of just either shutting it down completely or keep the legacy online. I settled on the latter. The site is now read only. It can no longer be updated or added comments.

Now I am completely off HostPapa. Both accounts (visualgui.com and ilovengoclan.com) had been paid to HostPapa until February of next year, but I rather take the loss than hanging in there. If you are hosting with HostPapa, you should consider getting out. My sites were fine with Lunarpages for years until HostPapa scooped them up. HostPapa is greedy as fuck. They all about forcing you to upgrade. Server technologies are cheaper now and they should offer more resources for our money, but they want to go the opposite direction so fuck them.

Victoria Rushton, a talented type designer who I had the pleasure to work with on Vietnamese diacritics, has just released a typeface named Kadabra. She writes:

I inherited this typeface. My love, Dai Foldes, killed himself in April, and suddenly everything that was his became mine.

The release note is heartbreaking and beautiful. She goes on:

I don’t think this is his “legacy.” Everyone who knew either of us knows how much we loved each other, and that’s what matters. These are just vectors. He loved me more than anything, and this is just a font. He’s gone, but it’s here, I’m here, it’s mine now and I have to take it and try to keep going. Wish me luck.

This is the first type release note that puts me to tears. The scripted face is just stunning. I bought a license to use as drop caps in the near future.

Klim Type Foundry has released a gorgeous, genderless serif family named Epicene. Kris Sowersby has written an in-depth essay on his research, thinking, and process went into Epicene. He writes:

Epicene is not a straight revival of any of [J.M.] Fleischmann or [J-F.] Rosart’s fonts. Rather I’ve reconciled details from across their body of work, integrating gestures and forms into a cohesive whole.

Epicene supports over 200 languages, and yet no Vietnamese. How disappointing? I was going to tweet about this, but I don’t want to be the Vietnamese guy who has written a book on Vietnamese Typography keep beating the drum on Vietnamese support. Since this is my blog, I can rant all I want.

It hurt when my wife talked nicer to other people than to me. Our marriage has come to the point where anything I say annoys the heck out of her. Last evening, she told me that she was feeling sick. I asked her why and she flipped out: “What do you mean why? I don’t know why. I am just feeling sick. Do you have to know why?” Maybe I was asking the wrong question, but I was genuinely concerned. I wanted to know what caused her to feel sick. Did she come down with a cold or a flu? Was it because of a lack of sleep? She just came back from the dentist. Did she have an extraction or a crown that made her sick? Just a simple question that could make her furious. If I didn’t say anything at all, she would say I don’t care.

Nowadays, she yells at me like I am one of her kids. I miss her soft voice and gentle tone when we first met. She used to laugh at my jokes. These days, my jokes have become either satirical or mockery. I have been pondering how we got here. It’s my fault that I have turned a sweet lady into a cantankerous wife. I wish I could turn things back, but there is nothing I can do to right my wrong. I have become a thorn in her eyes. Without telling me that I am lazy, she often hinted at how I didn’t do anything around the house. On weekdays, I went to work, came home and took the kids out to ice skating or rollerblading. Would she rather have them sit in front of the screen and play video games instead? When we started skating, she was the one that pushed me to take them. I hesitated at first, but I was hooked when I put on those skates. On weekends, the kids had activities like Scouting or ice hockey, which required me to be out. I mowed the lawn every two or three weeks and tried to fix things around the house. When she did the laundry, I folded the clothes and put them away.

I had always been grateful that she cooked for us. I helped out by doing the dishes or giving the kids a bath. It was not like I just sat around and did nothing all day. Still, my efforts were never enough. When we were on vacation, for example, she often cooked for everyone including her brother’s and sister’s family. She not only cooked, but also served everyone. I felt guilty and asked her not to serve me anymore. I can do it myself. Even our kids, I made them serve themselves and help set the table.

She is a caring daughter, kind sister, loving mother, and a wonderful wife. Unfortunately, I have failed to bring her joy and happiness. She has become grumpier and crankier. I understand raising four boys isn’t easy. I struggle everyday, but we can do it together. I apologize for my shortcomings. I apologize for not holding up my end of the bargain. I apologize for being a shitty husband. I don’t apologize, however, for loving her. Maybe I don’t know how to love her or how to show my love to her, but I love her from the bottom of my heart. I hope underneath all the harshness and bitterness, she still has some love left for me as well. I am not going anywhere unless she wants me to.

Friday evening after work, I took Đạo and Đán to their Scout meeting. I spotted some new parents taking their kids to join the Cub Scout. At the hour-long parent-leader meeting, most parents who had been with the Scout for a year or more helped out with something. One parent handled the logistics. One volunteered to teach Vietnamese. One took charge of outreach, which included designing the website. The leaders asked me to run the lion dance group, but I turned them down. I can’t take on anymore responsibility. The Scout ended at 8:30 pm. There went my Friday evening.

Saturday morning, I woke up early to take Đán to ice hockey. I also made him practice for half an hour. We didn’t get home until noon. At home, I went up to the attic to check on the fan. My wife kept complaining that her room was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter; therefore, she thought the fan was broken. I worried and couldn’t sleep for a couple of nights just the thought of having to replace the fan. I avoided going into the attic if I could. I didn’t realize that I needed to walk on the beams. As I stepped on the dry ceiling, I heard a crack. I quickly stepped onto the beam. Luckily I didn’t break the ceiling yet. I walked around the dark- and-hot-as-hell attic trying to find a fan and we don’t have one. I was relieved. I went back down, cleaned up, and vacuumed all the rooms. After lunch, I went rollerblading at the school’s parking lot near our house. I practiced the 180 jump on and off the sidewalk. It was a great exercise. I sweat profusely. An hour later, I was exhausted and took a quick nap on the coach. I woke up and my legs were soaring. My wife complained again. I was supposed to feel better after exercise, not more tired. I am old and I used too much energy. My body couldn’t keep up. I felt tired, but I also felt great that I made myself active.

Sunday morning, my sister-in-law dropped her boys off at our house so she and her husband can fix their own fan in the attic. I took the older kids to ice skating from 12 pm to 3 pm. For three hours, I got a lot of practice in. I improved my backward edges and my waltz jumps. I reviewed my half-flip and ballet jumps. I did some one-foot spins and learned the new half-lutz jump. I felt productive and eager to get back to ice skating, which I hadn’t done much when I injured my knee. After ice skating I took the kids to High Side for some snacks and some craft beer for me. We ordered tornado fries, sweet potato fries, chicken baos, and beef teriyaki skewers to share among the four of us. I had two glasses of sour ale with Magdalena River Mango, Tangerine, Pineapple and Calamansi. The bill came out to almost $100. Nothing is cheap anymore. After our overpriced street food and craft beer, I went over to my sister-in-law’s house to help her husband replace the motor fan in the attic. I went to the roof to unscrew the fan while he was in the attic holding on to the motor. The process took 15 minutes. We went to our house and had a hotpot my wife made for dinner. It was delicious. I always loved hotpot.

Those are the highlights of my boring weekend. The lawn still needed to be mowed. The HVAC still needed to be opened up and vacuumed. The basement still needed to be reorganized. The list of home maintenance goes on and on. My weekends are either filled with stress or guilt. I get stressed out because I could not get the things done around the house. I feel guilty if I push off the housework and go out ice skating or spending time with the kids. The struggles never seem to end.

While waiting for my kids’ ice skating group lessons, I heard Vietnamese adults gushing over their kids. The father said in English, “You have done so well for the first time.” The mother said in English, “Yes, I am so proud of you.” The grandmother said in Vietnamese, “You were so good.” They took turns and repeated their praise over and over again as they took off the kids’ rental skates.

Is it just me or do Vietnamese parents tend to over compliment their kids? This is not the first time I have heard something like this from Vietnamese parents. Sure, encouragement is good, especially for doing something new for the first time, but do you have to overdo it? It felt like giving kids false hope or toxic positivity. I give my kids compliments too, but I also try not to exaggerate their accomplishments.

I know kids who think they are the best at everything because their parents kept bragging that they are the best. Being competitive is good. It makes the kids work harder to achieve their goal, but when parents make their kids think they are the best, they set them up to fail. They put their kids on the pedestal and their kids can’t reach it. The kids threw tantrums when they lost in a game. When the kids can’t be the best, they just quit.

I rather have my kids keep working to improve their game than just giving up. Then again, what do I know? When I taught my kids how to skate, I just left them on the ice by themselves. I didn’t hold their hands. I didn’t help them get up when they fell. I just showed them how to get on their feet again. Đán didn’t hold on to the wall at all. He just walked like a penguin until he found his balance. Đạo used the wall until he found his groove. Xuân fell a couple of times, but he picked up quickly. I haven’t been able to get Vương into the rink. He isn’t quite ready yet.

After stopping private lessons for Đạo and Xuân, I enrolled them into group lessons again. Private lessons were expensive, but Đạo told me he was not interested in competing. Neither of them wanted to practice. If they don’t practice, they won’t get anywhere. Group lessons are not only cheaper, but they also come with free public sessions for practice. If they don’t use them, I will. Ice skating is still a fun sport for the kids even if they don’t take it seriously. Xuân is taking Beta. Đạo is taking Freestyle 1. I am looking into taking Freestyle 2 at the end of this month. With my knee injury, I haven’t practiced much. I still have a minor pain, but hopefully I will fully recover by then.

As for Đán, he seems to be sticking with ice hockey. He is doing well in class. He has the speed and the skating skills. He needs to work on his hockey skills. He needs to learn to control the puck with his stick. He needs to learn the strategy of the game. Fortunately, hockey is similar to soccer; therefore, I can provide him with some tips such as working with his teammates and passing the puck away from his own goal. We’ll see how he does.

Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings is filled with major thoughts. From an Asian-American lens, Hong provides a clear-eyed view on race and racism in America. Hong breaks down complex issues with her impeccable prose. Her investigative profile of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, in particular, is heartbreaking. I want to get my hands on Cha’s Dictee. Reading Hong’s personal, historical, and analytical accounts, I am glad that she represents Asian Americans. We need more voices like her. This collection of essays is a must read not just for Asian Americans, but anyone who is interested in the race issues in America. She is a damn good writer and thinker.