@ReporterHaley Love the food at Lucille's. And they make a very good mint julep… in reply to ReporterHaley # RT @capricecrane: I was trying to make exercising fun but apparently after a certain age its no longer "appropriate" to play Ding Dong Ditch # Read more →
August 2009
The Death of Ivan Ilych
It occurred to him that what had seemed perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend. “But if that is so,” he said to himself, “and I am leaving this life with the consciousness that I have lost all that was given me and… Read more →
Magic Johnson at USC Scrimmage
White House Adds $2 Trillion to Deficit Forecasts
The nation would be forced to borrow more than $9 trillion over the next decade under President Obama’s policies, the White House acknowledged late Friday, bringing their long-term budget forecast in line with independent estimates. The new projections add approximately $2 trillion to budget deficits through 2019. Earlier this year, the administration had predicted that Obama’s policies would require the government to spend $7.108 trillion more than it collects in tax revenue over the next decade. An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report will not be formally released until Tuesday, said the change is due primarily to updated projections of economic growth that are far less rosy than data used when the White House released its first long-term budget outlook in February. — washingtonpost.com I think I’d be way more upset about this if the numbers weren’t beyond human comprehension . . . Read more →
Famous Quotes Revisited
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. — Martin Luther King Jr. The staircase?! That doesn’t make sense. Why can’t I see the staircase? Am I drunk? Read more →
HW ‘s Presentation Tips: Get to the Fucking Point
Here’s a simple presentation tip that would help a lot of people: Get to the fucking point. At a meeting this morning, the company sick time policy was explained to 100 people over the course of 30 minutes time via two PowerPoint presentations by two different people. I’ll summarize it here: If you’re well enough to work, you should come to work. If not, stay home. BUT — if you stay home too much, it may negatively affect your annual performance review. That’s the policy. Let’s open it up for questions. Don’t take 15 minutes to say something you can say in 15 seconds. Don’t feel like you have to include a historical introduction to the topic, charts, graphs, trends, industry comparisons. Other people are not in love with the sound of your voice the way you are . . . Read more →
Reduce Your Worries
Pug Photos on Flickr
Originally uploaded by Kerbear…NYC bound….. Originally uploaded by Madness Rivera Originally uploaded by wombatarama Originally uploaded by geraldbrazell Still want more? Here’s a bonus set. Read more →
Twitter: 2009-08-21
Want to buy a customized Michael Vick Eagles jersey for your dog? http://tinyurl.com/la3o36 # Obama: "We are God's partners in matters of life and death." Good mission statement for the death panels! # RT @diablocody: Obsolete memory: pushing card catalog drawers in and out at the library. Also, the tangy smell of the old cards. # Read more →
We Apologize to Jackasses for the Unintended Insult
TV listings: The Prime-Time TV grid in Thursday’s Calendar section mistakenly listed MTV’s “Jackass” show on the MSNBC cable schedule at 7 and 10 p.m. where instead MSNBC’s “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” should have been listed. — latimes.com Read more →
Twitter: 2009-08-20
Orange County Superior Court case search — more addictive than crack! http://tinyurl.com/ypkfqn # Read more →
Twitter: 2009-08-20
Orange County Superior Court case search — more addictive than crack! http://tinyurl.com/ypkfqn # Read more →
There Are Good Places to Hike Right Here in America
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — Iran confirmed Tuesday the arrest of three American hikers who crossed into the country from neighboring Iraq and said they have been charged with “illegal entry,” a semi-official news agency reported. — Iran confirms U.S. hikers arrested for ‘illegal entry’ – CNN.com When you hear about people doing something pointless and stupid — and not just pointless and stupid but elaborately pointless and stupid — like traveling halfway around the world to take a frigging hike along the border of a totalitarian regime that hates Americans, don’t you secretly hope that something bad will happen to them? So do I . . . Read more →
Twitter: 2009-08-18
If you can substitute toothpaste for spackle, can you substitute spackle for toothpaste? Might be good for whitening your teeth… # RT @paulandstorm: [S] Today's trillion-dollar idea: patent the concept of "technology" # Read more →
An Obstacle Course
Pretend that your project is an obstacle course and you want to get the biggest obstacles over with in the beginning. Here are some strategies for being on time or early: You want to know what all the obstacles are as soon as possible. You want to deal with the biggest, hardest obstacles first. You want to complete every obstacle as soon as possible, rather than “on schedule.” If you can go around an obstacle or skip it, do that. Your team has to stay on the same course. You don’t want part of your team on a different course. Getting your team aligned about the blocks and how to deal with them using the entire team IQ is much more efficient than “working hard” or pounding away at the problem. Look for the big ideas. Make sure team members aren’t going over obstacles that don’t exist. What’s the biggest… Read more →
Twitter: 2009-08-17
My uncle fell down and cracked his head open. He's 80. No, he's not a member of Aerosmith. # RT @ericmusselman: Jerry West "Sometimes talent gets in the way of people being able to play well together " # Read more →
Family Happiness
I was reading a Tolstoy story called “Family Happiness” in bed last night. It was close to midnight when I finished it. “Good story,” I announced to my wife, although she was 90 percent asleep by that time. Without opening her eyes, she asked, “What was it about?” “A man and a woman fall in love and get married. They’re very happy for a while but then the marriage starts to come apart.” “Because the husband spends too much time on Facebook?” she asked. “No, they didn’t have Facebook in 1860. What I didn’t see coming though is that the story turns out to have a happy ending after all.” “Perfect,” she said. “What did you learn from it?” “The past is gone, but you can still find a new life and a different kind of happiness.” “With the same wife?” “Yes.” “Perfect,” she said. Read more →
Twitter: 2009-08-16
There's always plenty of time, right up until there's no more time… # Read more →
Comfortable With Our Stupid Children
Researchers have found that generic American parents, faced with a child who can’t do math or science, will say “Don’t worry, Johnny, because you have so many other talents.” Asian parents, supposedly, will say “Since you aren’t apparently naturally gifted at math or science you’ll have to study extra hard in these areas,” and not stop nagging until the kid is doing well. — Philip Greenspun Read more →
New Used Books
I paid a visit to The Bookman — a local used book store — today, spent $36 and came home with the following haul: The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories, Leo Tolstoy Despair, Vladimir Nabokov Hunger, Knut Hamsun The Lover, Marguerite Duras New York Trilogy, Paul Auster Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray The White Hotel, D. M. Thomas Read more →