I also fell asleep during the psychology research experiment I was participating in. Hope I didn't ruin the researcher's results. 

At least it's Friday and it's my last day at the radiology internship. I'm glad that it's over. I did learn quite a bit though, when I think about it. I learned how hospital exam scheduling works and just administration side of things. Also learned that I definitely don't want to work on this end of the health field. I don't think I can deal with desk job. I don't know how my mom does it, 9-5 everyday in a (messy) cubicle. I would go insane. 

I was thinking about alternative jobs that other day, upon realizing that I can't stand a desk job, and I couldn't really think of anything I'd be interested in/qualified for besides physician/nurse. I mean, I definitely enjoy reading things about design, fashion, and cosmetics, but I don't see a career in that. I'm a psychobio major who doesn't like writing. Maybe I'll fulfill my father's dream of my becoming some kind of painter/potter/glassblower and then he'll manage my shop for me. Yeah, psychobio doesn't quite apply to that either. 

My thumb is callused from playing Soul Caliber 4.

- Elbert Hubbard

Everyone seems to be awaiting Sarah Palin's fall or glory.  And nobody knows which it will be.

Just one week after presidential candidate John McCain named Alaska's Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate for the job of Vice President of the United States, Mrs. Palin has made exactly two major public appearances.

She performed like a skilled veteran on the national stage last Friday as she was introduced.  And then, in her first major address, at the Republican National Convention, most media savy observers said she performed admirably.

But the media dredged up a ton of what seemd to be dirt from the tundra of Alaska: family indescretions, perhaps a scandal, unhappy public servants, and a few rooms full of nay sayers.

And feminists are less than delighted about a pro-life, Moose hunting, gun toting, prayer spouting hockey Mom.  She just is not their idea of the "modern woman."

Just ask Gloria Steinem.

And Palin's hair is "at least ten years out of date" the fashion community says.

Bill Maher said Palin looked like a stewardess.
 
Bill Maher

So now we have to watch and wait: to see if the magnificent and wonderful frozen and baked desert called "Baked Alaska" pleases most Americans and passes muster with the media.  Or will the thing melt into a pool of useless goo?

Related:
Poll: Only 4 in 10 say Palin has enough experience

Looks great now but will the heat of the media melt it?

Her nurse-practitioner called when mom got home from their office, to apologize. They forgot to do blood work and need to do it tomorrow. She may also get Procrit and possibly another Neulasta shot. This made her even more upset about tomorrow.

She ranted for a while about how hard this has been. I thought about it for a moment, then apologized. I feel like I failed her. For most of my life I nagged her to quit smoking, and this is exactly what I was afraid of. But somehow I failed to get that message to her. She thought I was nagging because I didn't like the smell of the smoke. That's true, but it's only a small part of why I nagged so much for so long. The horror of these past few months, the fear of the future... that's why I nagged.

She told me not to apologize, and said it was her fault for not listening to me. But the truth is I didn't explain my reasons well. I suppose it's because I was a child, but that's not an acceptable excuse to me. Maybe if I had been able to get her to see the future I feared, things would have been different. And maybe we wouldn't be living that future right now.

Ashley and I went to a "Study Strategies" presentation today (which may count for PLP credit??  Added bonus!!) and we received some great tips for how to study.  You may think: "You were so successful in undergrad, why do you feel the need to go to a presentation on study strategies?"  My answer?  Law school is different; very different indeed.  The verdict?  It helped immensely!

I didn't feel well at all this morning.  It was one of those mornings.  The sky was cloudy and my attitude had a sense of bleakness.  I headed off to school with a (sinus?) headache and arrived at school with a stomachache, too.  I think that it's a jinx to say that you're having a bad day at the beginning of the day, but I really was.  I suffered through Civ Pro and went to the presentation.  Miraculously, I felt a lot better after the presentation.  Coincidence?

I used some of the strategies that were suggested, and guess what?  I finished so much work today, even I couldn't believe it.  So, I am really optimistic heading into this weekend.  My only pending assignment is for Property (it's the only class I have on Friday); other than that, everything has been assigned.  It's all about time management these days...and having a life too.

To use all of the metaphors I possibly can, I've got my nose to the grindstone and my blinders on.  This weekend, I'm focused on completing all of my tasks.  All of them.  Even Property, which will be discussed on Thursday.  Life is good.

I did not fail the test.

I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.

~ Benjamin Franklin

This article has been taken from page 8, September 4, Patna edition of Hindustan.

Manufactured desire

Not sustainable

]]> http://sportspicks365.wordpress.com/?p=41 Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:51:22 +0000 sportspicks365 http://sportspicks365.wordpress.com/?p=41  

It must be terrible to be a Redskins fan.  Down 9 points with 5 minutes left Jim Zorn decided the best way to cut into the deficit would be to continuously call run after run from the Washington 15 yard line.  No need for a hurry up offense.  It was so bad, I felt like I was watching Donovan McNabb mismanaging the two minute drill in Super Bowl XXXIX.  Damn you Jim Zorn, I guess there is a reason you were supposed to be the team's offensive coordinator and not its head coach.  Daniel Snyder, you are a failure as well.

No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one.
Otherwise, he will tear the new
and the piece from it will not match the old cloak.
Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wine skins.
Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins,
and it will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined.
Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wine skins.

Now, some sewers might understand the first part; about new cloth on old but the whole wineskin thing gets lost.  Let me explain.  With the cloth, in an age before preshrunk material the seamstress would patch the hole with new material only to have it shrink with the first wash and with that pull away from where it was patching.  Most of us can understand that.  We buy a new sweater and forget to read the washing instruction.  We throw it in the wash and when we go to put it on it fits like a sausage skin... tight and binding.  Now imagine if that sweater was attached to something that didn't shrink. 

The wineskin is a bit more complicated.  Think of leather.  Wine skins, in the time of Christ, were made from animal skins.  Leather, when it is new and fresh has some elasticity to it... it stretches -- not much but enough to deal with the gases that new wine that is still fermenting gives off.  Old wine skins or old leather is stiff and brittle, has very little give to it.  So, when new wine is poured into it, as it gives off gas there is no where for it to go and the wineskin bursts... just like an over extended balloon.  Now does that make sense?

Lets take it a step further.  This parable is placed in the midst of Jesus being challenged because they are not keeping the traditional fasts.  His response is:  "Can you make the wedding guests fast
while the bridegroom is with them?"  He is of course referring to himself as the bridegroom and the period of his life as being the time of the wedding feast.  He is challenging the Pharisees, the learned men of the synagogue, to realize that a new time has arrived; a new way to live has come.

Our faith, our choice to live out Gospel values means that we must do more then just patch our old ways of being and doing things.  If we do not reform our lives completely then there will be tearing and great holes are created that we don't know what to do with.  Another way to look at it is to imagine trying to be different people in different situations.  You are one way with your family and a completely different way with your friends or co-workers.  What happens when the two world collide.  Depending on how different your worlds they could end up imploding all over you.  Just like the old wine skins explode with the gas of the new wine.

Jesus ushered in a new era; a new way of looking at life and living in the world.  For those who are raised with values of fair play; common courtesy and kindness to others there may not be much difference as they take on a Christian life.  But all of us at some point are challenged with realizing that the way we have handled something in the past is no longer healthy for us, no longer working for us.  As we become new wine we too must change our world; change our environment so that the process of becoming can continue in healthy and healing ways.  Just writing this blog helps me to come one more step closer to living with the decision to divorce.  My marriage was like the old wineskin.  As I admitted my problems and struggled to cope and change I became a new creation.  I invited my now ex-husband to join me in creating a new marriage (new wineskin) but he said absolutely not.  I left before I literally exploded all over everybody.

If things aren't working for you look at what new skills, attitudes, changes you are trying to incorporate into your life are being stalemated because of old habits, environments or relationships.  Maybe in making a choice to become better it can only happen when you place this new life in a new environment. Its worth a try.  You're worth the effort.  Stop tearing yourself apart.  I remain, your servant in Christ

Theresa

She leaves and I am more mad than hurt:
I suppose it's just how selfish I am.
Thinking she'd want to stay here-
When there holds more to find.

Squat shoeboxes in my closet:
There I find letters to my future self.
They tell me, "Be good, be smart."
I must tell them I've failed.

told my dad just now. he was like "i knew it. you didn't study. come back home late at night. didn't focus."
asked me how many years more. asked me how much more to pay. told me that failure is nothing. told me to focus more next time.

i hate you. i couldn't believe i was so into you those time i could actually neglected my studies. i couldn't believe i was so crazily in love - or so i thought - that my studies was top priority, you were.

and my dad said, i should just forget about you. broke up with me during exams. now you're happy that i failed.

i don't know what to think.

my DD is in the LR blissfully watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the first time and reveling in the music and colour and fantasy that is a decades-old children's classic; the lyrics of one of the songs from the film just struck me: "From the ashes of disaster / Grow the roses of success!"  and yet so many of us seem of have an abject fear of failure, and it gets passed on to our children...  why is that?

Rick Ackerly, regular contributor to Divine Caroline and current Head of School at Children's Day School in San Francisco, summed it up nicely in a recent post: "Our culture has a built-in notion that self-esteem is a function of success, praise, and staying “positive.” Actually, that’s wrong. Self-esteem is a function of enthusiastic struggle, an important part of which is making mistakes."  Begging to differ slightly w/the expert, I think this misguided protectionism is a relatively recent phenomenon, as I don't recall 30-odd yrs ago any of my teachers, supervisors, my parents, etc. feeling the need to make sure I felt all warm and fuzzy even when I was doing something wrong, incorrectly, badly, etc.; I was expected to EARN the warm fuzzies by doing something good, correctly, well, etc.

I think it's safe to say I'm no stranger to "failure": I have two "failed" marriages and one "failed" long-term relationship to my credit, a string of "failed" startup businesses (some of which never sold a single product or service), a massive financial failure in my late 20s that left me indebted (still) to my parents after they bailed me out, etc.  I've failed -- frequently and spectacularly -- in many areas of my life, and yet I don't feel like that makes ME a failure; after all, I learned many ways NOT to do things (and indirectly validated the advice/suggestions/commandments I'd previously spurned)...

I forget who said "the only real way to fail is to not try at all," but it's a brilliantly sage observation -- "failure" is NOT a dirty word; failure will always provide additional data that can be incorporated when proceeding w/the next attempt...  now if we could only instill in our children the same determined persistence and courage to fall down and get up again and fall down again and get up AGAIN as we did when they were learning how to walk; why is learning any other skill any different?

This is a great question. In classic recruiter style, I’m going to be very definitive and say: I think that it depends. :-)

Startups are great because they force people to wear multiple hats, work in a resource-constrained environment, and think about how what they work on interacts with other pieces of the puzzle rather than of owning a very narrow project or piece of code.

While that entrepreneurial flexibility is highly desirable in any size org, a pattern of several in a row might unfairly brand someone as a serial startup person, likely to bolt every year or so.

Speaking of patterns, how many failed startups are we talking here? I love people who take risks and follow their passions, but if your resume lists a series of short stints at failed startups, I think it’s natural to question a person’s career management skills.

I’m always curious to get my candidate’s take on why the company failed. Were there adverse market conditions at play? Was the product ahead of the need? Was it unforeseen technology gaps, poor product or shady business dealings? I think it’s fair game to find out what role the candidate played in contributing to the success or failure of any venture.

Another thing to keep in mind is that building and scaling provide different challenges and not everyone is good at (or wants to do) both. During the interview cycle, you might be asked about whether you are solely a "V.1 person" or if growing a product/service is something you’d find as intriguing as building from scratch.

Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that failure is not an absolute. Microsoft LOVES to ask questions around what one has learned while failing. We’d be foolish to discount valuable lessons learned in defeat. I think it’s funny that I’m answering this question because my whole "pre-Microsoft" career had been finding candidates for small startups in the Bay Area and Puget Sound. During that time I learned a lot of lessons that have helped pave the way for future successes.

Anyone have a good "lesson learned at Startup X" story they’d like to share?

- Matt

In my opinion, what happened does not in any way change the power of the song. God still works through imperfection. If He didn't, He wouldn't use any of us for anything. Millions will still be reached and ministered to by the song. The power of God is not limited by our human failures.

It is super unfortunate for Michael because of his huge influence. It is definitely true, the bigger your reach, the harder the fall. I also realize that there are those in the position to get him the help and correction he needs. However we are not those people. The man needs grace, and I personally don't feel like it's our place to cast stones.

After all, "Who here among us has not been broken? Who here among us, is without guilt or shame? So oft abandoned by our transgressions, if such a thing a grace exist, then grace was made for lives like this."

What do YOU think?

They all seem to look like this:

I don't have the time, nor the ego to tell everyone what I am doing every second. If someone can enlighten me, I'd love to hear from you!

Well not anymore than these usually are. This is a post about my name (kinda, but not really). Whenever I meet people and exchange basic information people always remark on my name. More often than not I get a bunch of people talking about how they think my name is unique (even though it really isn't) or they put me on inquisition about my name. They usually ask if I know what my name is from. Being that I'm not an idiot and I live in one of the most "Christian" places on earth, I know my name. If I didn't then I would have learned it from the last one thousand pieces of crap who asked me my name. After finding out that I'm not brain dead they attempt to make a joke and ask me if I can play musical instruments. The instrument is almost always some form of jazz instrument like a sax or trumpet (Hmmm I wonder why). This usually pisses me off to the point where I become anti social and change the subject to something I deem would make them uncomfortable.

This just gets me thinking about how people perceive each other when they find out what name another person has. A few months ago when I first met my friend Wes on our excursion into Youaintfromroundhereville, TN he brought up something about how our names have been around forever and were established names. Given that my name is Hebrew (even though all the Jews were dark skinned back in the day) and his name is European (I'm pretty sure) it may seem a bit Uncle Tom, but names today suck. People can give their children unique names without having to add Qs and Ys everywhere in a child's name. People name their children things that if they were to magically travel back to the 17^th century they would be burned at the stake for the sheer difficulty in pronouncing these names with 8 syllables and three apostrophes. If you want to know why people with such names don't flourish in schools it is because they were set back three years by trying to learn the grammatical syntax used to pronounce and spell their name correctly. This yields two results. Either they spend all that time learning how to speak their own name and develop a mastery of the English language to the point where they are literally retarded at all other useful subjects in school Math, Science, Social Studies (to a lesser extent) and thus go on to major in English at college. The second option is that they become socially retarded; fail out of everything in school and end up droppin' trou' for big bubba in prison or go play professional sports (in some cases both*).

FIGURE ONE: *Only person with a normal name to do both

But, this isn't a dilemma unique to my people (Black people), but to white people as well. Although it doesn't hinder the success of White people as it does for Blacks, they are dumb names just like La'quan'sha'nika. It is a social fact that White names that suck could be good (decent) names, but there are too many of them. This includes hyphenated names, rich snobbish names and multiple first names. The hyphenated names originate from the various feminist movements in society. You end up with a woman who doesn't want a man to control her life so she keeps her last name and pisses the husband off in the process. The woman doesn't realize that her maiden name still comes from her father (most often than not) and thus looks like a douche bag for doing so in the first place. The rich snobbish names are distinguished and established names from the time of Henry the first. These are names like Sir Winston Earl Bluffington Westshire XVII. This phenomenon explains how the families stay so rich. The children not only have to learn several simple names thus gaining a mastery of English and phonetics, but they have to learn roman numerals (that most people don't even know) at age two thus gaining a mastery over patterns and mathematics.

FIGURE TWO: 5 NAMES + ROMAN NUMERIALS = ONE PRIVATE JET + TWO SNOWBUNNIES!

Lastly are the multiple first names. There is no deep meaning to the success of these people. They are just foolish and in most cases bums. Names like Jim Bob, or Sally Jane produce people that go into the world of welfare checks or automotive repair (or they call my job harass me about needing to talk to someone about a 'broked' leg.) Unlike rich White people there is no reason for these children to have multiple names unless the father is unknown in which case they are named after all possible candidates. After all…this is America and people must be civil.

SIDENOTE: About a month or so ago, my friend Koba and I were talking on facebook about something similar to this. Here is the link for wholesome fun!

Yeah, it feels a little weird.  Enough about that...  On to the real stuff.

I read this question today, it was initially asked by Robert Schuller.  I thought a lot about this question (since I had plenty of time to do this, thanks to Mr. Jesse Sherk... that's another story for another time...)  Anyhow, here's the question:  "What would you attempt if you knew it couldn't fail?"  Some of you right now are saying, I'd get a girlfriend!  Here's my question for us.  If God would bless anything that you do, what would you attempt?  If you knew it couldn't fail, what would you do?  

Failure... It is feared by most, and embraced by few.  I'm not convinced that failure means you are unsuccessful.  I'm not convinced that failure means you have blown it.  Sometimes I think that our fear of failure cripples us so that we don't do ANYTHING!  We are to scared to get it wrong to ever get it right!  I am just thinking...  What do you think?

Facial update:  since, I have more hair on my face than on my head, I decided that this might be a more appropriate use of the mask...

Day Synopsis:
Study for MCI101 test for which you have done absolutely no study.
Alternate between second and third person perspective in pointless blog while procrastinating.
Fail MCI101 test.
Come home and complain to the council that the bin men were late while procrastinating.
Finish the other half of MCI111 essay which you should've done a long time ago.
Don't make plans for the weekend because you have a tonne of shit to do.
Go to Jess' house tonight provided you have finished MCI111 work. 
Celebrate because it's the end of the uni week for me.

and Learn to write properly.
Don't start a sentence with 'and' either.

If you're unfamiliar with the game, it takes the concept that is Guitar Hero, where you have a guitar shaped controller and press buttons to correspond to notes and beats shown on the screen, and turns it up a notch by including the possibility of performing on bass guitar, vocals, and drum set, too. Of course, you can't do all of them at once, but you can play and instrument and sing vocals on your own or create a band with some friends! Now that my visit to Maryland is over, I'm a little disappointed I didn't try out the vocal part, which somehow registers the note you sing in a way similar to that of an instrument tuner, but I was too enthralled by the drum set.

With no choice of a second guitar, my brother decided our band would consist of him singing lead while my cousin played guitar and I did the drums. I had on occasion played the fight song while in high marching band, and sometimes the Hey Song, too, on bass drum, so in his mind I apparently had the background necessary to take on such a role, even if I'd never really done more than imagine myself jamming out on a drum set. Regardless of my ability on an actual drum set, I pointed the drum's setting to medium and had at the first song.

And I rocked. After a few songs, I soon coveted the necessary items that would allow me to rock out in similar fashion every night, though once I realized that might cost somewhere close to $500, I decided I could live without.  I did begin to realize, however, how one might become obsessed with such video games to the point of shirking homework and life responsibilities to gain the highest skill level possible. With that in mind, though, it is a disappointment that the skills necessary to gain Guitar Hero stardom aren't really transferable to anything useful once the power is switched off, aside, of course, from one having learned the importance of persistence and dealing with failure.

For the past 10 or more years, video and computer games have remained a bit of a novelty for me, as I've only really played them as a treat when visiting others. However, having experienced these new fangled games they've begun to create these days, with controllers too large to be held in one hand, I can see myself in 3-5 years owning one myself, jamming out in a basement somewhere, hopefully not shirking any responsibilities in the process, but you never know.