Hoang Harry Tran
You can call me Harry. People used to call me Harold and Roldy for fun, and honestly those still work too.
I was born on the day Mike Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion of the world. I originally made this website over a winter break while I was an undergraduate student because my car was broken and I had nowhere to go. During its prime, the website used to have a bunch of sarcastic, fake articles. I’ve since revamped the content because AI has made my writing obsolete.
Educational Background
A non-chronological list of every school I attended, minus Robinson Middle School. I’m still salty that my fight scene for our Computer Science project didn’t get nominated for an Oscar. To add insult to injury, all of the painful outtakes didn’t even win us the video contest.
Work Experience
Optometrist
- My undergraduate research (eye stuff) led me to pursue a career in optometry.
- I’ve been practicing optometry for ten years.
- If I could uninvent one thing, it would be contact lenses.
Chief Information Officer
- I quit the lucrative field of optometry to work in Information Technology.
- Now, instead of working with patients who show up 25 minutes late demanding to be seen, I fix doctors’ urgent problems because they “involve patient care,” for example, their Outlook isn’t working.
Computer Programmer
- I was a Linux fan in middle school; my distribution of choice was Slackware.
- The first programming language I learned was C.
- I made my first website in middle school, dedicated to Pokemon and Chocobos, back when crappy sites still made $5 to $10 CPM in ad revenue.
Youth Basketball Coach
- I coached the Libertyville Ladycats in the Northern Illinois Girls Feeder Basketball Association for two years.
- Our program usually had some of the best teams. Watch out Phil Jackson, I’m coming for you.
- I’ve since retired, aside from the occasional recreational league or individual coaching session.
Personal Background
I am 100% Vietnamese, but most of you can probably tell from my deep southern accent that I was born in Georgia. I lived in Georgia just long enough to remember moving to Kansas, where I was actually raised. Contrary to popular belief, Kansas is not all wheat and farms. We gave the rest of civilization Pizza Hut and White Castle.
Hobbies
- Basketball: I’m only 5’6″ but that doesn’t stop me from trying to play.
- Biking: I used to ride a Cannondale CAAD8 that I called “The Patriot Missile.”
- Running: I ran cross country in high school and like to pretend I’m still fast today.
- Stocks: I enjoy trading stocks and options. Calculated gambling.
- Programming: My language of choice is C# and my IDE is Visual Studio. I will reluctantly use Xcode and Objective-C if needed.
- Foreign Languages: I speak Vietnamese, I’m decent at Spanish, and I’m working on Mandarin and Russian.
A heartfelt shoutout to my late uncle, Chú Sơn. While everyone pushed me to become a doctor, he saw my potential in IT when I was in 6th grade. He generously gave me his C and Java programming books, which set me on the path to everything I’ve built in tech today.