Why is Seth Godin so awesome?

Yes, indeed.
quite awesome my friends


Click here.

things I dont like

1) people who leave foreign languages in their away messages. Or people who spent a semester abroad and start talking like everyone can understand Italian.

2) my server Raj at Denny's who kept trying to make it sound like all the "sides" he was offering were free. Oh, would you like hash browns with your grand slam breakfast?
Oh yes FUCKER. Thanks for making me rack up a 30 dollar fucking breakfast at Dennys.

DAMN. I hate chain stores.

neat!

Spell with Flickr

dreams

i've been having rather strange dreams lately. in it i'm often not part of any of the action that is going on, instead i am seeing things from a removed "god-like" perspective. Things happen, the characters in the narrative interact with each other, and I weave in and out of different camera views.

yesterday a character said in the dream. The government was built on the idea that it will evaluate and then enforce what is going to be the maximum "good" for the maximum number of people. However, what the government has turned into is to enforce the maxiumum "good" for the minimum number of people within strategic "interest" groups with enough power to tip the scales.

Its strange, its hard for me to come up with things like this when I am awake, but its really opened my mind to a new framework of understanding politics and the world. Something dealing with minority/majority and decision making and it makes me sad.

Its too bad that I've always been a de-facto minority and every since I started to think for myself have always had rather progressive tendencies. Strange.

All this from a dream.

rectangles

nerd speak

"I like moving through potential gradients."
-- Jon, on biking downhill

So True

pineapples

Today my apple stick tasted like pineapples.
I hate it when they confuse the pineapples and the apples.
Don't people get the fundamental difference between these two fruits?
But then again, I guess apples and pineapples do look alike in paste form.

I've been listening to the Smiths obsessively recently. I am supposed to not listen to it too much because its depressing, but I really enjoy it.

walk to work

Before i left for work today, Jon said "life is always good if you can still afford tea." I drank some green tea when I got to work. Its warmth was very soothing. I don't think I've ever had any beverage that has had the same effect on me.

I walked past the school right next to my house. A woman just dropped her child off at the side of the road. As her daughter ran out of the side doors, she said, "be strong minded!". I thought that was a strange parting comment. Most moms say "I love you" with their children hastily mumbling a response. I thought I would like to say that to my children right before they go to school someday. "Be strong minded!".

This reminded me of the time my grandfather used to pray over me right before I had to take exams. He would ask god to help me, and to give me presence of mind. I always liked that too, when he asked god to give me presence of mind. It always made me feel more confident right before tests.

I wonder what I will tell my children, have presence of mind! Or be strong minded! Im not sure. Depends on the occasion I suppose.

It was the evil bus driver who picked me up at the bus stop again today. She is very particular about people not stepping over the "yellow line". Despite our efforts, the bus always gets very crowded, and invariably someone spills over the yellow line. This bus driver will most definitely flip out, and bitch about the yellow line. It is very distressing. I hope she gets transferred to driving another bus line.

I got two applesticks instead of one today. I told myself I would only eat one on the walk to work, and then eat the other one on my desk with a cup of tea. I couldn't help it and ate both before I got to work. Rats. Although, the two applesticks was characteristically soggy today. I really dislike it when my foodstuffs are soggy. It is possible that my obssesion over the right proportions of meat and starch in my mouth could be related to this.

There was a charming two year old girl who said hello to everyone on the street right before I got to work. She said hello to me, with her wide brown eyes. Children are lovely things. I don't know why I've grown to be fond of them; It must be part of growing old.

in the grand tradition of this blog

getting life lessons from CEOs :) weee



Find and follow your passions; develop a culture and live it. Positive financial results
will flow from that

Learn the business from the ground floor up – not from the top floor down.

Ask lots of questions! And, when and if you get the chance to travel, always look for new
ideas to bring home! Set your goals and never give up!

Have great focus, set high but achievable goals and work EXTREMELY hard at achieving them.
Be flexible and ready to adapt to change.

You are the next wave, and all of our shoes will be filled by someone. It may as well be YOU.
Never give up trying.

Never give up, and have a positive reaction to failure.

Have a passion for what you do, work hard, have great people with good personalities, enjoy the
ride, but balance work and family.

Accumulate a lot of singles and gradually get into the doubles and triples before you try for the home runs.

Listen to yourself. Be guided by your real passions and convictions, not just by what you think might get you ahead in life.

Identify where you have or can create an edge over the rest of the world and doing something you enjoy. Then push that advantage to extremes.

Be curious. And ... the more you give, the more you get. It’s as simple as that.

Identify and affiliate with creative talent. Brainstorm concepts and analyze constantly, but at the conceptual level, not the spreadsheet level

To succeed, you have to put in the hours and when you think you are there, put in more.

where is the madness that you promised me?

Where is your sense of indignation
You are too kind
Much too kind

No one will ever love you honestly
No one will ever love you for your honesty

But you're not here to make my sad songs more sincere


I'm so glad this song doesn't hurt as much as it should have.
You mean relationships didn't have to be a long, drawn, out
self-loathing piss fests?

Wow

Interesting new Sony Bravia ad

Design in the Philippines

This is interesting

Pandora!

I just discovered
Pandora try it. It creates a radiostation from an artist or music. Its pretty damn good.
I have so far listened to Neutral Milk Hotel and the Pillows (the latter had better results)

I've already discovered two new songs... in the last 5 minutes that I really like!
Freebee Honey by the Pillows
President Kochalka by James Kochalka Superstar (kind of.. .)
All These Things by All Systems Go
Trust Vs. Mistrust by The Spinto Band

And I got tired of listening to the Neutral Milk Hotel station because it started playingi songs that started to sound too much like country music, but I did like this song:

I felt your shape by The Microphones

passage from Kerouac's Lonesome Traveler

There was a little alley in San Francisco back of the Southern Pacific station at Third and Townsend in redbrick of drowsy lazy afternoons with everybody at work in offices in the air you feel the impending rush of their commuter frenzy as soon they'll be charging en masse from Market and Sansome buildings on foot and in buses and all well-dresses thru workingman Frisco of Walkup truck drives and even the poor grime-bemarked Third Street of lost bums even Negroes so hopeless and long left East and meanings of responsibility and try that now all they do is stand there spitting in the broken glass sometimes fifty in one afternoon against one wall at Third and Howard and here's all these Millbrae and San Carlos neat-necktied producers and commuters of America and Steel Civilization rushing by with San Francisco Chronicles and green Call-Bulletins not even enough time to be disdainful, they've got to catch 130, 1321, 134, 136 all the way up to 146 till the time of evening supper in homes of the railroad earth when high in the sky the magic stars ride above the following hotshot freight trains. It's all in California, it's all a sea, I swim out of it in afternoons of sum hot meditation in my jeans with head on handkerchief or brakeman's lantern or (if not working) on book, I look up at blue sky of perfect lostpurity and feel the warp of wood of old America beneath me and have insane conversations with Negroes in second-story windows above and everything is pouring in, the switching moves of boxcars in that little alley which is so much like the alleys of Lowell and I hear far off in the sense of coming night that engine calling our mountains.

But it was that beautiful cut of clouds I could always see above the little S.P. alley, puffs floating by from Oakland or the Gate of Marin to the north or San Jose south, the clarity of Cal to break your heart. It was the fantastic drowse and drum of hum of lum mum afternoon nathin' to do, ole Frisco with end of land sadness -- the people -- the alley full of trucks and cars of business nearabouts and nobody knew or far from cared who I was all my like three thousand five hundred miles from birth-O opened up and at last belonged to me in Great America.

Now it's night in Third Street the keen little neons and also yellow bulblights of impossible-to-believe flops with dark ruined shadows moving back of torn yellow shades like a degenerate China with no money -- the cats in Annie's Alley, the flop comes on, moans, rolls, the street is loaded with darkness. Blue sky above with stars hanging high over old hotel roofs and blowers of hotels moaning out dusts of interior, the grime inside the word in mouths falling out tooth by tooth, the reading rooms tick tock bigclock with creak chair and slantboards and old faces looking up over rimless spectacles bought in some West Virginia or Florida or Liverpool England pawnshop long before I was born and across rains they've come to the end of the land sadness
end of the world gladness all your San Franciscos will have to fall eventually and burn again.

From the first day of school

Be happy. If prozac/booze/crack cocaine does not work, a
fine-looking stalkee will do the trick. Not that I'm encouraging your talents in
this aspect of human indiginity or anything.

- Jolly (from a letter trying to cheer me up about hating Stanford the moment I got there)


Very soon I will be graduating. I'm going to miss Stanford.

hmmmm

after watching myself on video for 6 hours now, OMG, I didnt know I was THAT nerdy.

I hate girls who look like the girls who have/had the hots for my boyfriend.
Gwoss..

graffik!

wasn't accepted... trying a nonzombie looking one.

but those hands are so evocative!

holy shit

I have so much work these upcoming two weeks. WTF.
Also my boyfriend has been swallowed by finals and apparently will never resurface, or perhaps will after next week? Or after he graduates? Or I'm not actually sure.

OMG OMG OMG I have so much work *shrivel*
I hate me216b... its been VERY STRESSFUl. Is this what I want my life to be? me216b and ulcers forever?



I better suck it up and descend into the world that is hard work these next two weeks. Damn it.