The Blog of Elaine Wang

Banana-chocolate cupcakes

23 September 2015

I don't know man. Today was the last meeting before you have to turn in your forms, and I'm still so conflicted on my decision. I guess I was hoping that some great revelation would come to me and make the decision for me, but obviously that's wishful thinking. I just feel like whether or not I join won't impact anyone in the delegation because nobody there even really knows me. Even beyonce stopped coming to the meetings so I don't know what I should do. I know I shouldn't always live in hope that someone else will be there for me as that's a surefire way to disappoint yourself, but isn't it also normal to feel lonely in a place where you don't have friends? I wish I was charismatic, and people would want to talk to me instead of the other way around. There was this delegate last year (who graduated) that was just charisma embodied into the shape of a human. Literally I could not believe. He was extremely smart and, at times, aloof, but he wasn't quiet/shy either (in fact, he's really vocal when he wants to say something). I don't know how to describe it. Just everyone, in some way, wanted to be acknowledged by him; it was really weird. He had people he knew there, but a lot of the times you wouldn't see him talking to anyone, you would see him reading a book. Anyway, the point is, he didn't give off that feeling of a person who just wanted to sound smart, he actually was smart, and everyone could feel it in the air. I don't even strive to be like that because I know you need to have a certain personality and air for it: I just want to be the person who knows what the hell is going on because right now I'm unknown and unintelligent so of course people wouldn't want to talk to me. But at least if I were smart then, I don't know, I would have something? Whatever. It's useless to think like this.

I'll see.

17 September 2015

These days I'm so tired from doing nothing. I come back from school, and I just feel so tired. I don't feel like doing anything. I feel like my whole life is deteriorating, and I'm just sitting there. But the thing is, I have a strange feeling that I can't identify. It's there. I'm not freaking out right now, which is worrying, but I'm silently watching as my grades just drop around me. I don't know. I don't know what I'll do. It's so easy to say that I'll just shape up and start doing work, but when I wake up the next day, I, again, feel so tired. It's a never ending cycle of non productivity.

I need to fix this. I don't want to get to the end of the semester and have 3 B's and 1 C and wonder where I went wrong.

I have to fix this.

The inside of the bathroom stall. Not that you would want to know that.

3 September 2015

Killing the dog is literally the fastest way to make me ditch the movie/TV show/game. I cannot deal. How could you kill the dog??? Or the cat??? Or the animal????????? pls.

My bro dog, Kyle

23 August 2015

My American Lit. teacher definitely thinks I'm a dumbass now. Which is unfortunate because I was really good in Lit. last year, and I'm pretty sure the teacher I had liked me (I TA for him now), and even more unfortunate, the teacher I have now is good friends with my last year teacher. Literally in the first week of school, I already forgot to do some random Benjamin Franklin reading, and the next day there was a reading quiz. I just laughed. That moment when you finish the quiz first, not because you knew your shit real well, but because you wrote bullshit. AND THEN, he does the cold call note-card-with-names thing and asks me a question about our discussion. I was honestly only half listening and trying to get the offline dinosaur game to work on our school Chromebooks (the owner disabled it, probably to stop people like me), so I just took a random stab at the answer; obviously I got it wrong, and it was just awkward because that was about the 5th time I answered his question wrong/made it clear I wasn't paying attention. Seriously not on the ball at all.

My AP Comp Sci teacher probably thinks I don't know shit. During class the other day I had my phone in my pocket, but when I sit, the power button and volume buttons get hit randomly, so I accidentally booted the phone into safe mode. In order to avoid that, I just took it out of my pocket and put it on the table face down. In the middle of class, he walks over and he's like I don't want to see this out during class (not in a mean way). I just said sorry and dropped it in my backpack. After class, I'm always the slowest person to leave the room because I am really slow at packing up. As I'm packing up and everyone is gone, he asks me how I'm doing. I say I'm fine. He then asks me if I'm having any trouble. I say no. He looks at me with this unconvinced face and's all like, "are you sure?" I say yes. He says okay in, again, an unconvinced voice. We exchange the usual words of goodbye, and I leave. I guess it could just be regular teacher-making-sure-you-aren't-failing. On the other hand, he could think I'm a delinquent.

23 August 2015

A few minutes ago I checked the time on my computer and it said 10:37 AM. That's a problem. It was most definitely not 10:37 because I woke up at 10:30, so unless I was able to use the bathroom, watch a 6 minute biology video, check what homework I have, think about a JAVA recursion problem, and eat a rice ball within 7 minutes then damn; I must be sonic or some shit.

But really, I was actually sort of confused because the computer is almost never wrong about the time. It's still not fixed so hopefully it does that like it should.

By the way, the title is a stupid reference to the Youkai Watch opening(?) song that my Japanese teacher made us listen to.

20 August 2015

And I'm already stressed out about stuff. I don't even know. I just don't ever feel like doing anything. I open my biology book and I'm like ugh. I open APUSH and I'm even more like ugh. Math is going over my head, and I just don't want to move. And my mom keeps getting mad about stupid shit on the side it's like I don't need your shit. I feel so uncomfortable right now. There's an APUSH reading quiz tomorrow on the first 3 chapters and I haven't even started yet. I'm so screwed with everything.

11 August 2015

So back in June I went to my first hackathon and got second place for the category my group entered (social hack). I was kind of miffed that I got second because obviously I would have preferred getting the first place prizes, but mostly it was because I hate that feeling of being so close yet so far (it's a matter of pride). There was an award reception around a month/a month an a half later, but I didn't go because the winning and runner-up groups had to do another speech explaining their app, and I just was not mentally prepared for that (I have stage freight like many people). I guess I should have gone, but another girl in my group couldn't go either so I don't know; we only had 3 people on our team. Anyway, at first only first place winners received prizes while runner-ups only get a silver trophy (made of plastic mind you). Not to mention, they only give one trophy so only one group member can keep it. That doesn't really matter to me as much though.

Later on, the organizer mentions that the library (the hackathon was held at the library overnight) was kind enough to also provide 25 dollar amazon gift cards to the runner-ups. Naturally, I emailed him and asked when I could pick up the stuff. Apparently, one of the girls in my group had already picked the stuff up, but it's weird because she never emailed us about it. I don't know if she was hoping to just get away with keeping everything, if she just forgot, or if she was planning on doing it later. The thing is, according to the organizer (Matthew) she had picked up the stuff a week from when he replied to me. Meaning she had the stuff for around a week. The reason I'm kind of annoyed is because she (Anika) did the least work in the group. I could see that she was getting kind of annoyed because the other girl in the group (Johanna) is very controlling and, I guess some might say, bossy. She would constantly berate Anika for "not knowing how to do anything right". However, at the same time, Johanna did the most work and was the most experienced with app creation. I was in charge of the design: I created the logo and icon for the app. So in terms of how much work I did, I would say I did not do much of the actual coding (but then again we used app inventor so there wasn't much coding involved anyway). At least I did something though. I honestly believe that if I hadn't made the banner and icon, regardless of how good or bad it was, we wouldn't have gotten second (Man I sound really narcissistic here, but it's like if you create a product, put it in a white—or some other color for that matter—box, put it on the shelves, and expect people to buy it. Honestly, it's not like you own some famous brand. I guess people might just think your refusal to use labels or pictures is "edgy" and "new", but anyway, I digress). I can't really blame Anika either because I can see how it would be hard for her to do things if she would always just get yelled at for trying. I could tell she wasn't really having much fun. We were just not a very cohesive group.

What I think is shady is that after I asked who picked up the stuff, Anika replied and said that she would be at the library from 11-3 and for me to let her know if I could go meet her. I know she didn't mean today from 11-3 because it was already past 3 when she replied, meaning that she most likely meant tomorrow or sometime soon. Then later I remembered that all she had to was scratch off the metallic-looking stuff from the back of the cards and send us the codes for us to redeem. After I tell her to do this, a good while goes by when she replies that she is traveling this week and will send us the codes when she gets home. How can she be traveling and at the library from 11-3 at the same time? It's probably nothing, but I just thought it was kind of weird.

Here are some screenshots of the app we made.

App Icon

App Banner (Light)

App Banner (Dark)

11 August 2015

This post is mostly for testing out the featured tag banner of my blog.


It will also show my fabulous dog, Kyle.

11 August 2015

Oh my god I can't seem to center align the continue reading button but keep the actual text in the post (after clicking the continue button, not the preview text) left aligned. Long posts that are center aligned are no bueno.

11 August 2015

As you can see (and by you I mean basically nobody 'cause almost nobody even knows this blog), I changed my blog template and hella messed around with the HTML shit to make things look right. Also had to search a bunch places for different widgets/badges to make the blog look like how it's supposed to. Uploaded a bunch of photos to Flickr as well just so stuff would actually show up. Thinking of also uploading pictures to Instagram (that's the picture you see of my dog; yes, I only have one picture uploaded on my Instagram which is why it looks so shitty right now), but that's more annoying because other people will actually get flooded with my uploads. I was conflicted on what Facebook page to put as the "Like us" thing cause I can't put my own since it has to actually be a likable page (like a company/community page for example). I put my youth impact page at first but my friend (who created it) and I basically abandoned it, so I just ended putting my YMCA Y&G page up for now. I might change it some other day.

10 August 2015

I hate it when it happens. Just now I wanted to type out a dream I had last night, but now I can't remember it. The thing is, I always wake up and think, 'Wow, that was such a great dream, I should write it down." But then I think that I'll just do it later 'cause I'm too lazy to do it immediately. Then I forget. Amazing.

[This happened a long damn time ago; I mentioned the profile picture thing in the "Stuff I've Been Thinking About" post and decided that I might as well post my opinion on it here since I was too lazy to type it all there. Blue highlight is me in the first two. In the third one it's mostly me talking so it shouldn't matter that much. I'll highlight it now to make it clearer. By the way, sorry if any of you end up seeing this and didn't want me to post it, but I doubt it. I should probably ask but honestly though.]

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