Pseudo-Enterpreneurism

I’ve (very) recently developed a borderline obsessive love for Google Reader.  For those that don’t know what Google Reader does, it allows you to compile all of your RSS feeds into a convenient, well-designed, gmail-like interface.  For those that don’t know what an RSS feed is, wikipedia is your friend.

Now, I subscribe to a lot of feeds; I’m talking over 40 subscriptions.  Yes, suspend your disbelief; I am that much of a loser.

A few of my favorite ones:

• Open Culture – “The best free cultural & educational media on the web”
• Give Me Something To Read – “Selections from among the most frequently bookmarked articles on Instapaper.”
• Big Think – “Big Think is a global forum connecting people and ideas.”
• MajorityMag – “A majority of the world is good.  Together we can make it even better.”
• Slate Magazine – “Slate is a daily magazine on the Web. Founded in 1996, we are a general-interest publication offering analysis and commentary about politics, news, and culture.”
• Salon.com – “The online arts and culture magazine, with regular features on or by various literary luminaries.”

Despite my predominantly negative experiences with academia, I really enjoy the experience of learning things that explain or expose parts of the world that I know nothing about and find value in.  My exposure to the arts, culture, politics and similar right-brained concepts has been fairly limited in school and life, partially at the fault of completely rigid and mind-numbing engineering academic requirements but more likely a result of my own apathy and complacency.  I would like to think that there might be some correlation between completing my academic requirements and my renewed interests in learning, but I don’t think it’s that ironic.  To put it simply, I think the older I get the more I want to learn about the world around me.  After all, being on the cusp of joining society on a full-time basis, the best way to contribute positively to something is to gather some domain knowledge first.

I’m also big on personal development.  “Personal development” is sort of a vague term, but it’s essentially becoming self-actualized in the best way possible.  There are a ton of blogs/sites on personal finance, getting things done, career development, entrepreneurship, etc.  I don’t think it’s so much of an obsessive-compulsive impulse that makes me care about these types of things than my really strong sentiments towards maintaining personal responsibility.  At the end of the day, nobody is accountable for yourself but yourself, so do things right.  And to those ends, efficiency never hurt anybody.

One thing I have found through my treks through the blogosphere is that a lot of people use blogging as their primary sources of income.  Revenue is generated through advertisements and book deals, and people can actually bring in six figures a year typing 500 word blog posts about how Brangelina is better than Bennifer.*

(I’m not going to lie, it kind of disgusts me that I just linked to that page.)

There are even blogs dedicated to the generation Y crowd, written by post-grad 20-somethings about the ins and outs of working full time and paying off college debt.  I’m not saying this is the most intellectually riveting stuff, but it’s something.  And they make legitimate money from doing it.  It’s a great source for secondary income.

The idea intrigues me.  I know I’d have the technical know-how to pull it off, but becoming “big” in the blogosphere is no simple task.  You need a lot of dedication, a lot of material, a fresh perspective, a niche market and a pretty high degree of transparency.  This may sound stupid coming from someone who writes so frequently in a blog already, but I’m not sure if I’m entirely comfortable with the prospect of letting the whole world know everything about me.  This wordpress is a very limited audience, mostly (I think) to people I’ve at some point met in real life.

If there was a market for liberal, Christian-minded, Asian American hip-hop/guitar enthusiasts in an existential flux with technological/culinary/political/intellectual/frugal interests, I’d be in freaking business.  Unfortunately, I might be the only one interested in reading that blog.

Anyway, nobody get their hopes up.  On a scale of 1(no) to 10(yes), my desire to see something like this actually materialize right now is a 2.  But who knows what the future holds.

RIP Howard Zinn

I only got through the first 50 or so pages of his most famous publication, but once you start reading it you can tell immediately it’s one of those books that will blow down many of your misconceptions about the world.  The one thing I remember is that while we do celebrate Christopher Columbus’s legacy for mistakenly “finding” North America, few people know the horrendous acts of genocide he committed against the indigenous populations in places he landed.  Dr. Zinn was very much a red-pill type of guy.  If you can’t tell by now, I’ve got mad respect for red-pill people.

There have been various tributes to Zinn on the web lately, and one of them described his political philosophy.  I think we share similar sentiments:

Q. What is your philosophy?

I believe, I suppose, in the one that could be called democratic socialism because I believe that we need a society where the motive for the economic system is not corporate profit but the motive is the welfare of people — healthcare, jobs, childcare, and so on — where that is dominant, where there is greater equalization of wealth; and a society which is peaceful and which devotes its resources to helping people in the country and elsewhere.  And I believe in a world where war is no longer the recourse for the settling of grievances and problems.  I believe in the wiping out of national boundaries.  I don’t believe in visas and passports and immigration quotas.  I think we need to move towards a global society.  They use the word globalization, but they use it in a very narrow sense to me — the freedom of corporations to move across boundaries — but what we need is the freedom of people and things to move across boundaries.  When I talk about socialism without jails, I mean, yes, a greater societal intervention into the economy but without deprivation of civil liberties.  Don’t trouble the Hollywood writer.  Put it very simply: yes, he said “socialism without jails.”

(link)

R.I.P. Howard Zinn.

On a semi-related note, JD Salinger also recently passed away.  I finished Catcher in the Rye for the first time a couple months ago, and to be frank, after I read the last page I was left thinking, “so what?”  Maybe my reliance on sparknotes throughout high school doomed my ability for literary analysis.

The NYTimes says that generation Y can’t relate to Holden’s character anymore.

Some critics say that if Holden is less popular these days, the fault lies with our own impatience with the idea of a lifelong quest for identity and meaning that Holden represents.

These critics are morons.  What annoys me about Holden Caufield is that he bitches and bitches about his situation — the inability of the world to cater to him, the fact that everyone else is a dumbass — but does nothing to proactively change his situation.  If anything, Holden should be more popular today than ever.  I see no difference in this kid than the jobless NOVA burnouts who drive their BMW’s to bars every night to drop $500 on their parents’ AmEx.  I believe in the idea of a “quest for identity and meaning,” but you reap what you sow in life.  The quest can’t be a complacent, unguided expectation for answers; without effort you’ll get nowhere (and slowly).

Grow some balls, Holden Caufield.  “Get a life” indeed.

On that note, I’m an engineer.  Reading comprehension is not my forte.  If you have a different perspective on this, then I’d love to hear it.

Slow and Steady

I was going to title this post “Nice and Slow,” but I reconsidered because I felt like that was too suggestive.  With a title like that my post would have to be either really inappropriate or a tribute to Usher.  Unfortunately (or fortunately), I feel like writing neither of those sorts of posts right now.

So let’s get down to it:

Slow cookers have intrigued me for a while now, because of all the legitimate (see: not the microwave) cooking means available they seem to have the highest taste-to-lazyness ratio.  Discovering how to use an oven a few years ago revolutionized my extremely limited culinary skill set, and from what I’ve read online about slow cookers I expected them to result in similar zen-like moments of enlightenment.

Over winter break I asked my mom if we had a slow cooker anywhere, and to my delight she mentioned that we had a brand-spankin’ new one in the basement that she bought years ago and never got around to using.  Being back at school means I’m cooking for myself again, so I wanted to test the rumor that I could throw a bunch of cold/frozen/completely uncooked vegetables/meat into a slow cooker in the morning, turn it on low, go about my day and come back 6-8 hours later to a fully cooked meal.

Findings show that the rumors are true: slow cookers are the bomb, especially for people who don’t really have time to prepare elaborate meals after coming home from class/work/life.

Tonight’s dinner: Pot roast, onions/potatoes/garlic, asparagus
Another true rumor: asparagus freaking makes your pee smell

Cut up some aromatic vegetables (carrots, onions, celery, whatever) and throw them on the bottom, put in the meat you desire (I’ve done bone-in chicken and a 3-pound pot roast), top it with any desired spices (spice packets from grocery stores work well), and put a little bit of liquid to move the spices around (broth, water, diced tomatoes, etc.)  The best part is none of it needs to be defrosted, so meat or vegetables can go directly from the freezer to the cooker, and you can use as tough of a cut of meat as you want to because by the time it’s fully cooked it’ll be falling apart anyway.

Next on the agenda: pulled pork, made with Coke and BBQ sauce.

Am I going to make a fantastic house husband or what?*

*Underlying sexist connotations aside, I think it’s pitiful when guys are completely incompetent in the kitchen.  It’s like some self-perpetuated social stigma rooted in insecurity drives a lot of males away from even making an attempt at learning to cook a decent meal.  My conceptual issue with this goes far beyond cooking and the kitchen.  Nobody is better off by purposely remaining an ignoramous, especially as a result of a lack of balls just to try something, or how they may be perceived for learning how to do it.

Oh, and I updated this.

Swan Song

Question: What’s the key to keeping perspective during disappointing/traumatic life circumstances?

“And finally, I have to say something to our fans. The massive outpouring of support and passion from so many people has been overwhelming. The rallies, the signs, all the goofy, outrageous  creativity on the internet, and the fact that people have traveled long distances and camped out all night in the pouring rain to be in our audience, made a sad situation joyous and inspirational. To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life.

All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere.  Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get.  But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

- Conan O’Brien, 1/23/2010

Answer: To preemptively close opportunities for regret by always giving your best, by maintaining your integrity by always keeping your character in check, and by realizing that despite the circumstances, you are blessed in a multitude of other ways that far outweigh your momentary troubles.

As an added bonus, if you keep the first two things, more opportunities will likely come.  As an even greater bonus, even if they don’t, if you keep the third thing, that’s still not so bad.

I love Conan.

Bankers and Earthquakes

Before I get into the numerical portion of this post, a little recap of recent events may be called for.  Winter break has been, in a word, super-splendiferous (ok, it’s actually two words).  I’ve been working over break at the company that I’ll be joining full time come summer, so I’ve been busy most of the time engaging in adult-ish things like listening to NPR/Sports Talk 980 in the morning and having coffee breaks by the water cooler.  Beyond that there’s been a fair amount of people-seeing and meal-eating, with some life, love and happiness rounding things out.  It’s been a nice break, and it makes me look forward to finishing school up and getting my rest-of-life-on.

There’s definitely a very strong correlation between how lonely/bored I am and how often I write on this blog, so that’s another reason for a lack of posts.  Luckily (unluckily?) school is just around the corner and that tends to leave me with copious amounts of free/alone time, so fear not, dear readers.

And by readers, I’m referring to my sister and the three others of you who will read this.

MOVING ON:

1.  On the way to work today I overheard an NPR news brief on how President Obama plans on levying a fee against the major banks that received federal bailout money, in an attempt to receive some of that bailout money back.  I don’t have much to say about this bank-fee issue specifically or the topics the linked article is covering, mostly because I have zero understanding of how this type of thing works in the real world.  It made me think more about the public perception of Wall Street, bankers, and the financial district in general.

Before I say anything, maybe it’s proper that I preface whatever I’m about to write with the fact that I liken becoming a banker on Wall Street to joining Satan’s tax-collector army.  Well, okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but I do little to disguise my distaste for Wall Street.  I know that given the state of the economy, working in the financial sector has become much more of a polarizing issue, especially with Obama’s “from Wall Street to Main Street” rhetoric and references to 7-figure bonuses while “Joe the Plumber”* loses his job.

But despite the fact that investment banking is a completely dehumanizing,  entirely greed-driven industry while being a living spectacle of the worst motives humanity has to offer, I think a lot of the negative public sentiment about the financial world is misguided.  I think a lot of America (especially the parts that mistakenly think they relate to Joe the Plumber) think bankers are the lazy, rich prep-school kids who’ve never had to work a day in their life and order the caviar and truffles for dessert after finishing off their lobster with gold shavings and champagne main course.  Well they’re wrong, sort-of; bankers are hardly lazy.  A lot of my friends from Penn are on Wall Street now and they work their freaking asses off, with habitual 80-100 hour work weeks while averaging 3-5 hours of sleep a night.  On a per-hour basis, their salaries aren’t really that much higher than many other jobs.  They just work all the freaking time.

Although there’s ample semi-righteous indignation among many Americans about banker salaries and bonuses, generally speaking the upper echelons of the financial industry are only available to those individuals that do well at competitive schools and prove their quantitative competency to prospective banks.  True, it may seem unfair to the Detroit 100-hour/week  minimum-wage factory worker that bankers “earn” such large salaries, but one of the blessings and curses of a capitalistic society is that everyone is molded into an opportunist.  I’m not saying I think it’s fair that factory workers earn minimum wage and that they may not have been provided the same domestic or educational opportunities to succeed in higher-earning occupations.  In fact, the exact opposite idea is the reason why I’m an Obama supporter.  But to say that bankers are unnecessarily greedy to take the money offered to them for their services is ridiculous, because the factory worker, placed in the same situation, would do the same exact thing.

One of the fundamental concepts in economics is that human beings make decisions based on “rational self-interest.”  For example, you are selling cups of lemonade for $3.  Someone offers you $5 for the same cup of lemonade.  Do you refuse the $5 for a $3 payment?  No, because it’s irrational to accept less money for the same service.  Very similar idea.

On a greater scale, the work that goes on in the offices of Wall Street really does make the rest of the business world go ’round.  I think many people on Main Street fail to see the macroscopic perspectives of business — mergers, acquisitions, big-time contractual agreements, etc.  I think it takes a significant amount more work than people think to get the milk from the cow to the grocery store to their morning cereal, and I’m confident a big portion of that work occurs at some point in a conference room on Wall Street.

So as robotic and alone as they are forced to live their lives, there is a small place for bankers in this world.

*Ironically, people seemed to forget “Joe the Plumber” was making over $250,000/year, putting him in the highest 5% of income earners nationwide.  I think he became a rallying cry for people who didn’t remember the details of the original source.

2.  I don’t know a lot about Haiti, but there’s a good Op-Ed in the NYT from the author of one of the best books I’ve ever read.

As a side note, I bet devout Muslims feel the same way about Osama Bin Laden as I do about this fucking moron and all of his “evangelical Christian” racist redneck friends.  Dear Christians: don’t be Republicans.  Their most notable representatives are complete idiots and Jesus wouldn’t have gotten along with any of them.

Something I distinctly remember from Mountains Beyond Mountains is that Haitians are a very spiritual people, with aspects of Catholicism/Christianity/Voodoo integrating heavily into their perceptions of the world and daily activities.  So upon looking at the pictures and seeing the visible despair many Haitians are feeling from watching their homes crumble with their loved ones inside, I really wonder how the Haitians are spiritually reacting to their new reality.  In an already superstitious culture that seeks divine understanding of things as common as food and illness, how does one even begin to rationalize what many have been quoted to have thought was “the end of the world?”

I don’t mean to speak around or seem oblivious to the obvious suffering of the people of Haiti.  This was just something I’ve been thinking about while learning about what’s been going on there.

How you can help:

• http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/01/14/president-haiti-first-waves-our-rescue-and-relief-workers-are-ground-and-work
• Donate $10 to the Red Cross to be charged to your cell phone bill by texting “HAITI” to “90999.”

Start It Off

December 31, 2009
~11:00pm
New York, NY

“Yo, it’s almost 2010.”
Yeah, it’s crazy.
“What was it — three, four years ago that we were in your hospital room?”
Three years, man.  I barely made it to midnight I was so exhausted.
“Dang, that seems like so long ago.”
Seriously.
“Wow.  You’ve come a long way, bro.”
Yeah.

Happy New Year.
It’s a great time to be alive.

The Simple Bear Necessities

Sophia’s new Christmas bodyguard

Goin about her business as bear holds it down in the back

DAMN SHE CUTE

Gift Giving

The commercialization of Christmas has always bothered me, but it’s more of a mentality thing than an action thing.  What I mean by that is the materialism bothers me more than the gift giving, because materialism robs gift giving of the correct focus.   Materialism makes Christmas exciting because you finally received the item that you have always wanted, as opposed to recognizing that someone else spent their own time/money/thought in getting something you’d really appreciate.  Materialism turns your life/Christmas checklist into iPods and TVs rather than recognizing the love/appreciation of family and friends.

But gift giving, with the right intentions all around, can be really beautiful.  It’s such a great feeling to give someone that item that they really appreciate not because you expect anything in return, but because you know it’ll make their day that much brighter.  Their happiness is more valuable to you than the time/money it cost in giving the gift.

Like this kid:

Fa ra ra ra ra, ra ra ra ra

1.  Have you ever seen A Christmas Story?  They only play it… oh, 100 times a year.  Now I can see why this scene would rub some people the wrong way, but whatever.  I’m not one of those people who thinks every racial/non-PC comment/joke is a call to join in arms with my belligerent Asian brethren.  Anyway, all in all it’s probably my favorite ‘classic’ holiday movie.  Although in 30 years this might be considered a classic, so I may have to change my vote.

Man, I could really go for some duck.

2.  Oh Eldrick, you foolish bastard.  You cheated on your incredibly beautiful, faithful, stay-at-home-to-take-care-of-your-two-offspring wife with a smorgasbord of limelight-seeking bimbos and disgusting porn stars.  Actually, maybe that’s not a fair assessment.  There has been some uproar about the inherent sexism of the reporting and the double-standard that exists by automatically labeling all of the attached women as whores, simply because they were working as club promoters and cocktail waitresses and PORN STARS.  So before I go much further, let me make sure to clarify: these women aren’t skanks because they’re promoters and cocktail waitresses, they’re skanks because they KNOWINGLY ENGAGED IN AN AFFAIR WITH A MARRIED MAN.  And Tiger, that goes for you too.  Ass.

Oh put some clothes on for once

It’s sad how not-surprising this really was.  As Michael Jordan so gloriously displayed during his Hall of Fame induction a few months back, there is absolutely no correlation between being an incredible athlete and being a good person.  You can hit a golf ball onto the green from 300 yards away out of a sand trap with a 3 iron, Mr. Woods, and that blows my freaking mind.  But at the end of the day, engaging in extended affairs with over nine women over the course of several years are not mere ‘transgressions,’ but an intentional foregoing of your responsibilities to your wife and family as a husband and a father.  Ultimately you will break Nicklaus’ record and go down as the greatest golfer of all time, but as a person you’re always going to be a joke in my book.

And I hope she gets $500+ million in her settlement.

3.  I think it’s really easy to feel overwhelmed by unfortunate circumstances.  Personally, Christmas this year is kind of bittersweet for reasons that I don’t care to get into.  But at the end of the day, regardless of what is going on, just remember to be thankful.  For your health, and friends, and family, and for the fact that there are always people out there that love it when they see you, regardless of if they’re around at the moment or not.

You are loved, and above money and gifts and all the other things people get caught up with during this time of year, that is the single most important.  Merry Christmas.

Branding

So hearing about this idea a long time ago, here’s a relatively self-explanatory article that goes into a depth of explanation that I won’t: Your Personal Brand is Equal to Your Google Results

The crux of the article is that Google is the modern day big brother, and big brother is watching you.  I’ve heard a rumor that one of the first things HR people do when looking to hire someone is Google their name, which can result in all sorts of useful tidbits of information for screening nutjobs and likely criminals.  You can argue about the morality of this with regards to privacy issues and whatnot, but hell, I’d do it.  After all, it’s public information, right?

As a sidenote to this, I’m almost positive college recruiters check out facebook profiles before considering applicants.  The logic of applying to jobs while having a profile photo of you throwing up into a toilet while half-naked is beyond me.  This, including general privacy concerns, is why you should make your profile only visible to friends, not your networks.

Anyway, there’s really no way around the Google branding issue, and so I figure if I’m going to be searched I might as well  control some of the results.  So I made a little purchase last night.*  I’m not sure what will be on there, and I’m going to wait until I have some money to purchase legitimate hosting, but at least to some degree I control my own e-destiny.**

It probably won’t be anything of much value, to be honest.  Public relations is inherently superficial, and I think it’d be nothing more than some type of manifestation of an online resume.  But who knows, maybe it’ll come in handy someday.

*I also don’t want anybody else with my name taking up this domain, so it’s an investment.  I see all of you fools on facebook.  Imposters.

**E-destiny would be a good name for a dating site.