So many of our peers have gotten engaged recently! There have been three couples since the summer, all of whom met working as Orientation Counselors. That’s how Panda and I, as well as Opti and Doc met! Funny how so many pairs have come from the Orientation Program staff. I’m sure there will be many more to come. There’s something about the whole Orientation thing that seems to really bring together staff.
Just wanted to share. 🙂
I thought it was a wildfire at first, but turns out it's just the normal marine layer.
Sudden gloom and doom! This was creepy.
Can't even see the ocean anymore...
I feel like I've entered into another planet's atmosphere.
I came across an article today detailing the dangers of giving too much away on Facebook. People are forced to make a choice between sharing whatever they want with their friends and not “friending” anyone at work or being very cautious of what they share on their accounts and allowing people from their company to view their profile. To a certain extent, I can understand why it is important to be more reserved and not let your wildest personal moments leak into your professional life. However, I think some companies have taken things too far and are basically stalking their employees. Are we not allowed a mistake here and there? A fun day/night/weekend out with our friends?
One of the unfortunate side effects of being involved in social media is that sometimes people get to know you too much. Whereas previously what you do on your own time rarely made it back to the office, now people don’t need to run into you to find out what you’ve been up to. Plus, since we list our professional affiliations on our profiles, we are judged much more harshly for what we do, since it also reflects upon the company we work for. It’s human nature to see one bad instance and suddenly discredit the person entirely, or even the organization(s) they belong to. And so, corporations begin to crack down on this to prevent their name from being tainted by an individual within.
I’ve always struggled with how much to share. I innately want to share much more than I probably should at times, but hiding aspects of my life just feels fake to me. I don’t want to go around living some sort of secret, underground existence! I don’t do things I’d be ashamed of and though I may not always do things I could tell my parents, I never do something I couldn’t tell my friends. Some people in the world may be too uptight to appreciate some of the fun I have, but should I limit myself just because of them? Am I not allowed to participate in silly things like Undie Run? Am I not allowed to express my femininity in a photo shoot? My actions aren’t always G-rated, but they’re PG-13 (which is probably the best you’re going to get from young adults!). That’s pretty mild, yet I still feel unsure sometimes about how older generations will view me from a single picture they may have seen.
I would hope that any employer who stalks me on Facebook would be realistic enough to understand that the two or three times a year I do something unconventional do not define who I am. I mean, I don’t curse, don’t drink, don’t smoke, and don’t even have a coffee/caffeine dependency! If I’ve got the discipline to maintain that despite everything that’s going around me, certainly I can be trusted to have some responsible fun occasionally. In the future when I’m running my own venture, I’d want to have a culture that accepts the alter-egos people sometimes have on their own time. I saw a company that gives two “I just didn’t want to get out of bed” days to their employees annually because they recognize that sometimes you may not have a family emergency or be sick enough to get a day off, but you really need one anyway. Now there’s a company that understands that employees are people!
“hey”
It’s the most common instant message I receive and the one I’m least likely to respond to. It’s an opener with no purpose, no direction. Hey can lead you anywhere, yet nowhere, which is why I usually don’t bother to reply to most people who think that’s enough to start a conversation. No, I’m a doer. I need some sort of action and interaction, whether through sharing a statement or asking a question. A simple greeting via the internet just doesn’t cut it. Imagine if that’s all you got in e-mails.
“Just wanted to say ‘hi’.”
I wouldn’t even bother answering back to that. To me, it’s like great, thanks for saying hi… now what? Why did you greet me? Did you want to catch up after a long time? Did you have a question for me? Did you just want to share a bit of your life? Give me something to work with here! It annoys me when people wait hours for me to reply to their one word before finally getting to the point. I like to get the point as fast as possible and know exactly why I’m spending time interacting with someone. And so, if people won’t even make the effort to type more than a single greeting to me so I can get an inkling of where they’re trying to take the conversation, I won’t make the effort to get the point out of them.
Even something as simple as “Hey, what’s up?” is fine! At least then there’s something I can do right away – answer the question! The conversation may last no more than two lines that way, but I’d at least give you the time of day to respond to the question. Hey means nothing to me. The most pointless conversation I ever had was an exchange of “hey”s followed by “what’s up” and “nothing much.” Seriously, you have nothing better to say?! -___- I’m not looking for spectacular conversationalists, but some people really need to get the hint that when I’m not talking to them, it’s because they have given me NOTHING to talk about.
Rant over. Thank you for listening. 🙂
Well, that must have come from the DEEP sea. I could even step on it without crushing it!
Microsoft has been working really hard to promote their newest operating system with their “Windows 7 was my idea” campaign. Though I think they’re trying too hard to some extent, I think their efforts are catchy enough to be interesting. In fact, that phrase really does hit on how many people must feel about the product. No doubt plenty of people look at the new features and think, “I totally thought of that!” And indeed, the combined wisdom of Windows users is something not to be overlooked. Certainly their suggestions were instrumental in the changes made for Windows 7.
I just got Windows 7 installed on my computer last night, thanks to Doc, who trekked out to Panda’s place to help me out. Opti kindly allowed us to use two of her CD/DVD-Rs so I could boot the new operating system from an external source. Thank goodness we had two, since the first disc Doc burned didn’t work! After many hours waiting for my computer to do its thing and process whatever it needed to, I was finally able to boot with my brand new system. Gotta love that Panda’s an engineer who gets access to a free version of Windows 7 Professional, courtesy UCLA.
Now that I’ve been using it for a couple of hours and have viewed the tutorial videos, I’m getting a good handle on its new features. One of my favorites is the rotating backgrounds, which makes so much more exciting. I’ve set my desktop background to change every 10 minutes, just to keep things fresh. It’s also so much nicer to scroll your mouse over things and get previews popping up before you commit to clicking. I kind of miss the long task bar buttons that would have the icon and first couple of words for each program you had open, but I’m getting used to remembering what each icon stands for (and I could always revert back to what I’m used to if it gets too confusing). Another thing is that the quick launch icons are gone and now any of the programs can be “pinned” to your task bar quickly and easily. They basically took the quick launch and made it the task bar, but also allow you to open up the open windows of a program using the same icon you use to open up the program in the first place. If that makes any sense.
One of the things I remember hearing about before the release of Windows 7 is the “clicking” into place. Whenever you drag a window to the left or right side of the screen and your mouse hits the edge of the screen, the window automatically resizes to fit the corresponding half of the screen. Saves me the work of resizing windows that they take up about half the screen whenever I want to see the contents of two windows at the same time. I think that’s a key feature that makes everyone exclaim, “I’ve wanted that forever!” They’re also much better with docking windows to the edges of your screen so you don’t have to approximate anymore.
Check out the cute little hummingbird!
The new library feature is something that will take some getting used to, since it’s another way of organizing things. From what I gather, it will be very useful because it allows you to group folders together without actually moving them into the same parent folder together. That way, you can access certain files across all of your documents, pictures, or videos and easily search within these libraries that you create and define. The preset ones are pretty intuitive too: Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos. Sometimes I have videos that are actually in folders within my Pictures folder, so having a Video Library makes it easier to find the videos I’m looking for without having to search all over the place. Another thing is, I can add an external hard drive folder to the library so that when it’s connected, the library will access the files in my other hard drive as well. Nice!
Seems like Microsoft is making a nice step towards better usability and functionality. I don’t believe that the Mac commercial poking fun at Microsoft is true at all. Sure, there may have been some empty promises in previous operating systems, but I never felt they were that bad. And even if they were, Windows 7 is truly a huge improvement. Besides, I don’t respect Apple for making a series of commercials where they just ridicule their competitor. Whether or not what they say is true, it’s unsportsmanlike to say it at all. If they are really that great, then they’d be just fine touting their strengths without stomping all over Windows. Yet another reason why I’m not a Mac person. But anyway, like I was saying, I think Microsoft’s done well with this new operating system and the corresponding marketing campaign.
This guy decided to drop me a visit one day. -___-
The larger they are, the clumsier they get (and easier to catch).
I just came back from watching a screening of No Impact Man tonight, which left me with a thought: it is important to have a sense of community. One of the last things talked about was what Mr. NIM would recommend for people if they were to do just one thing to change their lives to be more environmentally-friendly. His advice? Volunteer for an environmental group because with that comes the community connection.
Typical Chinese meal: lots of dishes shared between everyone.
I find that to be a really good point – we’re not on this planet alone and we shouldn’t live and act like it (though oftentimes we do, especially in the American culture). Much of the poor behavior that we’ve learned is because of this mentality. Everyone wants a house to themselves, a car or two for their family, and their own share of everything. The concept of sharing even extends to how our meals are eaten, with individual portions given out rather than some of everything that is shared amongst a group. When we’re all too busy thinking about me, me, me, we do a lot of things that benefit us, but harm those around us, humans, animals/plants, and environment. Plus, having that sense of community bond keeps us grounded and centered so we don’t lose sight of ourselves and fall into the throes of negative behavior (assuming your “community” is not a gang or drug cartel).
This point seemed particularly relevant for a poster I saw on the walk back. It was advertising a young man who was struck by leukemia and was in the Intensive Care Unit at our local hospital. He desperately needs a bone marrow match and as the poster said, he needs your help. I thought of how when we as a population share our resources (which sometimes means donating blood or cells or the like), we are so much better off as a whole. There are so many lives that could be saved if the healthy people in the world were willing to share some of that health with those less fortunate.
Typical American meal: individual portions of each dish.
I actually just made a friend with a young lady in a similar situation (she just doesn’t need to be in an ICU). In her last video update, she said something that I feel is something more people should think about: if the person who got leukemia was your mother, father, sister, brother, cousin, aunt, uncle, etc., then how would you react? Would you still be so reluctant to donate cells that your body easily reproduces to save a life? We’re not even talking about organs that can’t be replaced or something that drastic. Sometime it’s blood, bone marrow, or plasma, but it’s all things that you can make more of in the coming days, weeks, and months.
I really think that this wouldn’t be so much an issue if we were more connected to our communities and had a better sense of those around us. Honestly, how could you continue to not offer what you can if you cared for the people around you? Once people start realizing that they won’t need to undergo the scary spinal tap procedure they thought was what you need to donate bone marrow, I think they have no excuses. It’s either just like giving blood or you’ll be under anesthesia anyway. In this case, sharing is caring!
Similarly for the environment, if we just cared more about others, we’d be able to move away from the individual cars per household mentality to the public transportation mentality. One reason people tout buying local so much is because it supports others’ businesses and prevents you from getting outrageous out-of-season foods that are harder to find during certain times of year. (Local produce may not actually be better for the environment though, but that’s an issue for another day.) Other ways to be environmental and help your “neighbors” (including those in other cities, countries, and continents) is to reuse things rather than creating more trash that will end up in somebody’s backyard. Too many people are living in dumps and all because of our irresponsible consumerism.
So moral of the story? Care more about your neighbors, local and global. It’ll make things so much better for everyone.
For some Best Buy’s Reward Zone members, an invitation came to a private event from 7:30 to 9:30 last night. The rechargeable USB batteries were an incentive, to be given to the first 50 people to arrive. My mom and I decided to make the trip, invitation card and member ID in tow. We weren’t in much of a rush, arriving just 15-20 minutes prior to the start of the event. It’s a good thing we showed up when we did – a line of 40 had already formed! Thankfully, batteries were given per member card, so we were well within the first 50 to show up and get a slip to exchange for the free gift.
After waiting in the cold for anywhere from 20-30 minutes, the line began to move. We heard some hootin’ and hollerin’ in the distance, which confused us until we reached the entrance. Inside, all the employees of the store were standing facing us, clapping and cheering and ushering us in. A lot of thank yous were thrown out and one of the guys standing on the checkout counter was holding a big sign that thanked us for being their loyal customers (or something to that effect). I felt at once silly and appreciated, which was a great way to start their two-hour event. Now that’s what I call a great way to shop! It’s a pity I didn’t have my camera on hand to document the moment!
A raffle was held every fifteen minutes, with $50 gift cards given out. Employees swarmed the place, offering help to those with questions. Games of Rock Band and DJ Hero were set up for people to try and a special offer on Wiis was front and center by the checkout stations. All in all it was a festive time and a truly great way for Best Buy to make their members feel special while priming them to be in a spending and jolly mood. Now that’s the kind of service and experience more companies should go for! After all, happy customers make loyal customers.
And so my computer does, giving them the juice they need.
I got these lovely things at Best Buy from the RewardZone. 🙂
When I first heard of rechargeable batteries that can just be plugged into a USB port, I was concerned the the width of the USB port was juuust too big for the AA batteries, but alas, it’s a perfect fit! I wonder if they designed them to work together like that or if it was just a happy coincidence.
