Hung Truong: The Blog!

The Last Lecture – Book Review

I grabbed the audio version of The Last Lecture onto my iPhone a while back for a long car trip, but in typical Hung Truong fashion I didn’t take advantage of my over-preparedness. Recently I’ve been riding the bus a lot, and I recently took a series of long flights, so I had a chance to listen to the whole book over a span of a few weeks.

Randy Pausch’s story is pretty interesting. He was a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer – not the most survivable. His diagnosis gave him 3-6 months, and for his “Last Lecture” he showed people how to live their childhood dreams. The video really caught on! I watched it quite a while ago and it really is incredibly inspiring. You can see it here.

The Last Lecture: The Book, goes into further detail on things that Pausch touched upon during the lecture. It’s a more thought-out version that makes sense as a book, since a four or five-hour lecture might be a bit rough on the audience. Randy’s main points are that if you try hard enough, you can get what you want. Persistence pays off. Enabling others to succeed is often more rewarding than serving yourself. Throughout his life, Randy got to do all sorts of stuff that he dreamed about since he was a kid.

Maybe it’s a product of having a one-sided view of Randy’s life, but it seems like this dude is a total saint! He even jokes about it in the book. I personally think that he probably was a really awesome person who deserved everything that he worked for. While it really is sad that he died, he crammed in a bunch of cool stuff in his life! To his credit, he says in his book that the thing that bothered him the most was that his kids wouldn’t be able to grow up with him as a presence. It’s really wonderful that some people can be so selfless, even when they have a very limited time limit.

I think we all need a reminder sometimes that our time is limited. In some cases, it can be extremely short. One thing that I have struggled with, given the reminders I have had that life is short, is that I really get antsy when I don’t feel like I’m moving forward. I can appreciate that patience is a virtue, but I also think that being proactive is one of the best things a person can do for him/herself.

I often think of my lifespan as a progress bar (think a file transfer dialog box or something) that is always moving towards 100%. But you can’t see how close you are to 100% (unless you’re Randy). So how much of my life would I like to spend unhappy? 1%? That’s more than a year, if you assume <100 year lifespan. Oh, I guess I’m not really reviewing this book anymore, am I? One thing I noticed about the audiobook version is that it’s not Randy reading the book to you. This makes sense since I’m sure Randy would have rather spent the studio time doing stuff with his family. But it’s also kind of weird listening to this dude who isn’t Randy talk about all of his awesome life experiences. Maybe they could’ve just recorded all the possible syllables Randy could make, then piece them into words and sentences? Nah. Anyway, The Last Lecture is a really nice companion to the actual last lecture. It puts things into perspective. I personally strive to make the most out of every day. I hope I have a lot of quality time left doing the things I love. But if I don’t, at least people will know I made the most of it!

Connected: The Surprising Power of Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives – Book Review!

I just finished reading this book with a really long title: Connected: The Surprising Power of Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. Whew. Being a connoisseur of social network research, this book was very relevant to my interests. Previously I had read Six Degrees by that Duncan Watts guy.

Save the Date! Attend My Panel at SXSW 2010! 3/15/2010

Wait, did I really forget to mention that my SXSW Panel submission for Student Startups was accepted? I really have been busy at work.

I just got news from Hugh (the guy who invented SXSW) that my panel is going to happen on Monday, March 15th 2010! That’s 3/15/2010 for you numerical types. The panelists will be Ellen Chisa from Alight Learning, Ben Congleton from Olark and Rishi Narayan from Underground Printing. I’ll be moderating the panel.

Please comment if you are going to be at SXSW and will be attending! If there’s anything you want me to cover, you can note that in the comments, too. See you at SXSW!

The Worst User Experience I Have Ever Seen

For some reason Chase “upgraded” my card to some random blah thing instead of my Freedom something something. That’s not the point of this post. The point is that I was looking at the ways I can redeem my bonus points. There’s a way you can “pay yourself back” for a previous purchase you made.

It’s pretty obvious the people who handle Chase’s rewards site are total hacks. They want you to type in the purchase date and price of something you bought. Think about that. You have to go grab your statement, find the date, find the price. Then you insert it by hand. WTF? No interface to see what you’ve bought that is eligible for redemption? It’s like they don’t want you to redeem your points. Oh. Wait.

I titled this post “The Worst User Experience I Have Ever Seen.” But I don’t think this even counts as an experience. It’s more like a total disregard for usability.

Grocery Store Antics!

I had a really weird dream in-between snoozes this morning. I’m writing this post on my iPhone on my way to work (don’t worry, I commute by bus).

The first part of my dream was at some kind of museum. It was a place where I had gone as a kid. I saw a hallway with a bunch of mechanical educational arcade type games. They were old. I think one was of Dick and Jane. I felt the kind of nostalgia that you get going to a place you used to frequent as a kid but rarely as an adult. Think back to elementary school when they’d send you to the same place every year or semester. Like the natural history museum for me.

The museum quickly got boring so my dream transitioned me to shopping at a grocery store. I think it was Meijer. Shopping got boring in the dream (which strangely never happens in real life) and I resorted to riding my shopping cart around with another dude who kinda seemed like my friend Matt Strand. But I don’t think it was him.

Then some security guards came up to us with “energizer” brand binders (I could tell because they were drumming them like the energizer bunny, except vertically because the bunny has a bass drum and these guys were playing them like snares). They were going to take us to the manager’s office on the 9th floor or something. I tried to make small talk with the guards. Like “I bet a lot of people mess with the shopping carts and ride on them!” I was trying to make it appear less lame that a 26 year old got caught goofing off. Then my second snooze alarm woke me up.

It seems impossible that my long dream happened in the span of 10 minutes but I guess that’s how our brains work!