Picture of me

I currently reside in Ewa Beach and I commute to school everyday with my mom who works in town as an assistant at, Lynette Lo Tom Communications, Inc., a public relations firm in downtown Honolulu.

Picture of my family

I generally like to spend my free time hitting the weights, boxing, or playing basketball. I’m fairly active and take it to heart in maintaining one’s overall health and fitness.

My family got our first computer during the early nineties when we purchased a, then brand new, Macintosh Classic. I must admit, at the time, it was a marvel and cost a pretty penny. Looking back on it, the Classic had no color monitor and it was incomparably slow to the computers of present. Our next computer was a Performa 636 CD, but even at 33mhz, it was still a dinosaur. It was only until 1996 did we finally get a much fabled PowerPC. Running at 166mhz, our Power Macintosh 6360 accomplished tasks at a mind boggling pace. Hmm...perhaps our next computer will be a G3?

Which comes to what I plan to do after High School. All throughout my junior year and much of my senior year, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be and do after high school. I wasn’t quite sure whether I was ready for college because college is a fairly big commitment. Make that a 4+ years commitment. Already the drop out rate for incoming freshmen is rather high and I didn’t want to become a part of that statistic. I knew I didn’t want to leave Hawaii to go to college because I didn’t want to place the financial burden on my parents of having to pay out of state tuition, so I decided on applying to UH. Now, I’ve heard all the negativity I can bear to stand about UH and how it’s many people’s last choice school, but I figure that an education is what you make of it. I think there’s some misconception here, among many high school seniors, that UH isn’t a very good school.

After getting my acceptance letter to UH, I was jubilant upon hearing that I was accepted into the College of Engineering. Now, I never really thought of myself as being an engineer until my cousin Dane, who is an engineer at Intel, got me interested.

All my life I’ve been fascinated at how highways and buildings are constructed. Hopefully, I will learn how they are built when I attend classes at the College of Engineering this fall.

Whether we’re in class or monitoring the e-mail/word processing lab, we’re all expected to uphold the 4RP system. It consists of: RP1-Respect for People, RP2-Respect for Property, RP3-Respect for Policies/Procedures, and RP4-Respect for Performance.

Each of us is also expected to designate a time to monitor the e-mail/word processing lab, located in the high school office. The job involves monitoring traffic, if any, in and out of the lab while also, if required, to start up or shutdown the computers and printer in the lab.

We’ve worked on various projects in this class. They include:

"We Are the World": This was our first project and it enabled us to tell a little about ourselves, ethnicity, personal background, family history or stories, and languages spoken understood.

"What’s Med. Tech?": Enlightened us at what exactly medical technologists do. We were given the opportunity to converse with a medical technologist at the UH medical school via a lumaphone and television monitor.

"What’s Thailand?":This project allowed us to converse, over e-mail, with students in Thailand. Given the great distance between our island and Thailand, e-mail was helpful allowing us to forget that and establish communication with the students there. We were also able to find out the similarities and differences between our cultures, environment, etc...

"What’s Eco-tourism?": This project allowed us to get to know better about an industry that is becoming popular all over the globe. Amazing that people are now willing to pay big bucks to visit far and away places untouched and unharmed by man.

"What’s Malaysia?": This project allowed us to converse with students in Malaysia, over NiceNet, and find out about their country.

Oceanic Net Meeting: This project allowed us to converse with an engineer at Oceanic Cable. He discussed the new technology that Oceanic Cable is using to push modem speeds over the edge. The RoadRunner service allows everyday people and businesses surf the web at blazing speeds w/o dishing out thousands of dollars for a T1 line or an ISDN line.

"What’s Teleclass?": This project allowed us to talk with students all over the globe and get to know who they are as well as their culture and environment.

College/Career Project: Working with the college and career counselor, Mrs. York, the class worked together in putting together a website containing college info in hopes of aiding the up and coming juniors and seniors.

Smart Schools Project: This project allowed the class to post messages regarding life in Hawaii on NiceNet, thus allowing students from around the world to ask and post their own messages in response.

"What’s Cambodia?": We were given the opportunity to talk to a survivor of Pol Pot’s military regime in Cambodia over the lumaphone and television monitor.

"What’s Japan?": Two survivors of the Kobe Earthquake, in Japan, came to talk to us and gave their accounts of what happened that fateful day when countless thousands were left homeless caused by the earthquake.

"What’s Slovakia?": Two visitors from the country of Slovakia came to talk and enlighten us about their country that is thousands of miles from Hawaii. Slovakia is very different from Hawaii because while being landlocked, it also snows a lot there. It was also noted that the majority of people in Slovakia know how to speak several other languages besides their own because Slovakia is surrounded by so many neighboring countries.

"What’s Peace Corps?": Persons from the Peace Corps gave a live lecture via the lumaphone and television on what members of the Peace Corps do. Amazingly there are members of the Peace Corps all over the globe. In times of conflict and war, the Peace Corps is there to provide their assistance and aid to the unfortunate people often caught up in the middle of things.

"A Closer View of Optometry": A bona fide optometrist talked to us via the lumaphone and television about what exactly optometrists do. Being that I have fairly poor eyesight that has to be corrected by contact lenses, I found the lecture intriguing and right up my alley. You can never truly appreciate your eyesight until you lose it or until it degrades.

Many of the questions that were asked were regarding contact lenses and their uses. It was found that contact lenses are used purely for cosmetic reasons. Which sounds logical because I didn’t want to wear glasses anymore.

"What’s Pacific Rim Consortium?": Members from all over the Pacific Rim met at our school to discuss teaching education.

We were given the privilege to sit with these members while they gave their power point demonstrations regarding their findings and research.

It was enthralling being with so many important people.

"What’s Norway?": A soon to be UHS student from Norway came to visit our school last year to get an idea what our school is like. Now that he is destined to be in our school in August, he opened a channel on Nicenet so that students from his school now in Norway can talk with students from our school. Unfortunately, I’m a senior and will not be able to welcome here to our school in the fall. Hopefully, he will find his experiences enjoyable.

Well, that concludes my personal resume newsletter. I hope it’s given you a better idea of who I am and what we do here in the Computer Technology class at the University Laboratory School.

Peace out,

Dean H. Abrigana

C/O 99