Old alumni page

One thing I’ll always be grateful to my father for was buying me a lifetime Caltech alumni membership on my graduation.

Dear Terry,

We are writing to share news about your Alumni Website. You may have received this email already, and if so, I apologize for the duplicate announcement. For those that have not received it, we are aware that many of our emails are being caught by Spam or getting lost so we want to make sure you are aware of this news.

We are upgrading the SquirrelMail server to Microsoft Office 365. This means that your alumnus.caltech.edu webpage will not transfer and we will no longer be able to host your site. You will need to transfer any photos or documents you wish to keep. The current alumni server will be decommissioned on December 17, 2018.

If you would like to keep your website address, we are able to provide you with a redirect. This will only provide you with a redirect and will not transfer any documents or photos to your new site. Please fill out this form: Alumnus Website Redirect before December 15, 2018. If you do not have a webpage address ready, we can also create one at a later date.

To log in: please go to: https://alumnus.alumni.caltech.edu/wp-admin
Your website is: http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~tychay/

The Caltech Alumni Association has been working diligently to help support a widely inclusive and connected alumni community.
Thank you for your understanding. If you have any questions, please email us at email@alumni.caltech.edu or call us at 626.395.6592.

Thank you,
The Caltech Alumni Association

First of all, wow, we were using a WordPress install for authentication for a CMS? Since when?

Second of all, I had a alumni page? Since when?

Hmm…

<HEAD>
<TITLE>terrychay</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY>
<P> My homepages
<OL>
<LI> <a href="http://www.pws.uiuc.edu/~tychay/">Old physics page</a>
<LI> <a href="http://guava.physics.uiuc.edu/~tychay/photo/">Photo Album</a>
<LI> <a href="http://guava.physics.uiuc.edu/~tychay/swing/">Swing Society</a> (site I designed)
<LI> <a href="http://phy290p.physics.uiuc.edu/">Personal Webserver</a> (intermittent)
<LI> <a href="http://game1.zipasia.com/actions/">Adobe GoLive Actions</a>  (may be moved)
<LI> <a href="http://www.zipasia.com/">ZipAsia</a> (current employer)
<LI> <a href="http://game1.zipasia.com/">Zip2Games</a> (current project)
</OL>
<P>I'll consolidate this sometime. It'll be so 3leet that it will be 4leet!
</BODY>

Wow, that’s some old shit. I must have done that over 18 years ago. None of the links there even work. The days when we used to capitalize HTML tags, which is the reason why PHP functions are case insensitive by the way.

I never did get 4leet status by consolidating all my internet sites. They just all went down the memory hole. I think I’m going to let this one go that way also.

Our real selves

Twitter has all of the sleaziness of stalking with none of the messy work of having to actually leave my desk. But I found a dark underside to it: it makes stalking way too easy. Sometimes I get caught in my laziness:

Out in the real world, a girl comes up to me. “Hey!”

Me: “Hi. I’m Terry Chay.” Hello, very pretty asian girl I don’t recognize.

“I know that! 😀 It’s me.”

Me: “I’m sorry, we met at a Lunch 2.0?” Oh shit! I must know her. Good thing I’m a banana—I can drop the “All of us yellow people look alike” joke if things get bad.

“It’s me, C—.”

Me: “Oh! You’ve got a new haircut. It looks nice on you, by the way.” Shit, how could I forget you—I totally twitter stalk you! Hope this dodge works.

“I had the same haircut at CNET.”

Me: “Oh, I was so busy there, you know how it is.” Please ignore the fact that I do nothing at Lunch 2.0 other than eat people’s lunch and claim credit for their work.

“Yeah, I do.”

Whew! That was close.

Now somewhere in the conversation, she mentioned that she would have never thought me a physicst until I mentioned it in my blog. On one hand, I’m thinking Whoo hoo! nine readers! On the other hand, I’m now thinking After she reads the above, I’ll be back down to eight.

But the thing is, I could never really picture myself not majoring in physics. Every choice I’ve made, even the f—d up one as majoring in physics, is part of who I am.

Cal wrote:

In other cases, blogs like my friend, Terry Chay, support the character that he is building up around himself. In both cases, with wildly different styles, the same results are achieved, a deeper understanding of the blogger.

But really, is this blog a character I’m building up, or is it my real self?

[A little bit strange after the jump.]Continue reading