Do you ever bury your face in your hands...

I had three awesome lectures this morning. First, was my Communications and Networks class; learning how network devices talk to eachother is just fascinating. Next, I had my Discrete Linear Systems class; Dr. Eads exceptionally taught us how to solve discrete difference equations. It was in this class that I realized I wanted to type this blog entry. Finally, in my C++ class, we had a lecture given by our awesome TA Monty; who, I might add gave us both a good lecture and a huge amount of help on the upcoming assignment.

The purpose of this entry, however, is not to summarize my morning, but rather to relate the awesome feeling that is associated by enjoying the subject matter you are studing. I am at this huge, yet invisable, point in my life where what I do now affects everything from here on out. I was talking to Katie yesterday about the importance of working jobs in the field in which you are interested. It is extremely unfortunate that most people hate what they do for a living. It seems like such a waste. You have to think what you do is cool or you will get burnt out. My father, for example, loves developing technology, finding solutions and building things. Yet, as he progressed through the Information Technology world, his job responsibilites drifted further and further from development and more toward project management. Project management, in short, has less to do with science and more to do with nagging (or coordinating if you like) people. Slowly, this transition destroyed his will to innovate in the sector and he swore off IT forever. He then set off on a new path to the real estate sales world. This career change was short lived because he was not doing what he loved to do. He is now at a similar crossroads as I am but with less opportunity ahead. I am struggling with my own indecision but I can not even imagine how lost he feels. This brings me to my point, ask yourself if you love what you are doing, keeping in mind that what you are good at may not be what you love. Is this truly the path you want to follow from here on out or are you settling? Don't settle for money or for the approval of others, settle only for your desire.

And then nightmares will begin

I offically began the house today. I have started it multiple times before but was oft interrupted by Elphaba. My inital feelings are probably tainted by those I've absorbed from others; covering both ends of the spectrum. Peter, Anthony and Maggie raving about the novel versus Caley's professor's view that the book is the zenith example of post-modern¹ pop literature. The introduction and first two chapters left me with a feeling of uncomfortable safety, the breath before the plunge so to speak. It reminds me of the movie Capote (from which Phillip Seymore Hoffman will undoubtably win the Best Actor Oscar); both the book's sense of forboding and its spheres of context and point of view. Yet, oddly enough, it also has a strength of voice that reminds me of one of our newspaper opinion columnists: Johnathon Kastner.

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From House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski:

Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comforts of your own home, you'll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or worse you'll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.
And then the nightmare will begin.
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¹This particular reference was updated on behalf of the disgruntled reader -The Editors

ahhh, 60 degree weather in mid february

so it's gorgeous here. yesterday's high was 54 and today is supposed to be higher. that huge storm that's rockin new england right now came through on friday and dusted about two inches, but that's all gone now. this post isn't much more than a little gloating for my friends in boston but i'm ok with that...


...I had chipotle on friday too!

more than meets the eye

i'm here at work at my consultant desk perusing the headlines and i found two that were super interesting. the first is a REAL transformer; you know they kind like from the tv. it transforms from a car to a human back to a car...really cool: A Real Transformer

the second headline is more amusing then anything else:

Dick Cheney: Vice President and Failed Assasin?

the Best News in 30 Years

Please read this short article. This could be the one...the one that the whole planet has been waiting for...

http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_3482712

a telecommuter's breakfast

Freaking Awesome: http://www.wymsey.co.uk/wymchron/cooking.htm

Son of A Witch

I finished Son of a Witch today and it was sooooo yummy. Gregory Maguire is a demi-god. The following is my favorite passage from the book:
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A notion of character, not so much discredited as simply forgotten, once held that people only cam into themselves partway through their lives. They woke up, were they lucky enough to have consciousness, in the act of doing something they already knew how to do: feeding themselves with currants. Walking the dog. Knotting up a broken bootlace. Singing antiphonally in the choir. Suddenly: This is I, I am the girl singing this alto line off-key, I am the boy loping after the dog, and I can see myself doing it as, presumably, the dog cannot see itself. How peculiar! I lift on my toes at the end of the dock, to dive into the lake because I am hot, and while isolated like a specimen in the glassy slide of summer, the notions of hot and lake and I converge into a consciousness of consciousness--in an instant, in between launch and landing, even before I cannonball into the lake, shattering both my reflection and my old notion of myself...

...That was what was once believed. Now, it seem hardly to matter when and how we become ourselves--or even what we become. Theory chases theory about how we are composed. The only constant: the abjuration of personal responsibility. We are the next thing the Time Dragon is dreaming, and nothing to be done about it. We are a fanciful sketch, we are droll and ornamental, and no more culpable than a sprig of lavender or a sprig of lightning, and nothing to be done about it. We are an experiment in situation ethics set by the Unnamed God, which in keeping its identity secret also clokes the scope of the experiment and our chances of success or failure at it--and nothing to be done about it. We are loping sequences of chemical conversations, acting ourselves converted. We are twists of genes acting ourselves twisted; we are wicks of burning neuroses acting ourselves wicked. And nothing to be done about it...

...And nothing to be done about it.
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Emerson

To Laugh often and much, to win the Respect of Intelligent people and the Affection of children, to earn the Appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to Appreciate Beauty, to find the Best in others, to leave the World a bit Better, whether by a Healthy child, a Garden patch...to know even one life has Breathed easier because you have Lived. This is to have Succeeded!