the P.Pole

4 things/sayings I have heard at work:

• “See you at the top.”
• “Whether you think you can or can’t, either way you’re right.”
• “If you give up at the bleakness of your Winters, you’ll miss the potential of your Springs, the beauty of your Summers, and the fruits of your Falls.”
• “Good morning!” (regardless of the time of day)

I’m not particularly big into the whole “Think yourself to success” but you must concede that as far as cheesy fads go, it’s got a pretty solid track-record. I mean, just look at Abe Lincoln (failed pretty much everything) and Thomas Edison (like, nine hundred plus tries before he got his bulb right). Anyway, thought I’d share these with you guys here.

Update: To round out the five, “Trust is the highest form of motivation”.

I have some strange hobbies.

5 hobbies of mine:

• writing silly programs in Scheme
• tee shirt making
• SCUBA diving (had I the water + money)
• vector tracing/drawing things
• obviously, blogging

Considering what I used to post like and my habits now, I feel like I’ve moved away from any particularly creative posts as of late. Perhaps it’s a function of time and where I am at the moment. I do always try to post whenever interesting stuff comes up that’s actually worth sharing/reading. The only problem is, there has been absolutely nothing going on anywhere in Toronto or on Earth for that matter, so I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as something, anything, newsworthy comes up.

See the original post here.

I am not entirely sure if anyone else has noticed this, but as of maybe about a month (possibly longer) ago, major news stations and programs have started using Twitter for… well, to replace their actual reporting content. I mean, even CNN (yes, the one and only) uses Twitter.

For the past few days I’ve been following some of Obama’s speeches on CNN and I often hear the host say something along the lines of “Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Tweet us about ____________!”. And then, in about half an hour, they will “report” on a bunch of people’s Tweets. Now, I don’t mean to disrespect the valid opinions of others on the Internet, but I don’t turn on CNN for listening to often misinformed, disillusioned, and biased personal opinions. Actually, that’s not too far from the good old CNN we grew up with. Then again, at least with the old CNN they didn’t need to place a “CANNOT BE VERIFIED” label in the corner whenever they “report”.

What is even more disturbing is that CNN also takes material from other reputable Internet sources such as FACEBOOK and MYSPACE and handles it in a similar way. Yes, more of those “CANNOT BE VERIFIED” and “ONLY POTENTIALLY TRUE” stickers. I’m not usually a big follower of news or politics or anything like that, but this is one time where I find the trend and growing tendency towards relying on online information exchange inappropriate and mostly idiotic. I wonder how the reporters–who have likely gone through years of journalism studies–feel, now that they’ve essentially passed on their responsibility to truthful journalism to the loudest of our beloved Internet.

Totally ridiculous if you ask me.

My Windows XP desktop as of tweaking today:

I really do enjoy making things look clean. This is Milk 2 MS Visual Style, along with the Milk theme for Styler Toolbar. The bottom is a temporary Objectdock and the background widgets are made with Rainmeter. That’s Safari running as my browser and just regular old Explorer with prettiness.

I just deleted 250+ Totally Tweet posts from my databases. I realized that many of these posts are relatively short, automatically generated, and they were being counted towards my total post count. I would much rather my post counts be made up of actual posts by me. Seeing as how I’ve already disabled Tweet posts for awhile now and am not really missing it, I also went back and deleted a bunch of these. I’m now at… exactly 799 posts (before this post). Sweet!

Also, I’ve created an archives page at the top using the “Smart Archives Reloaded” plugin, along with tuning up some of my unused plugins and categories. Hopefully, these changes will make this place a little cleaner and more user-friendly.

5 things I learned to deal with at work:

• saving for retirement
• decreasing tax burdens
• consolidating debts
• determining insurance needs
• advising on investment options

For all the annoyances/”hard work” I do feel like I’ve learned a bunch of pretty damn useful stuff, for myself and whoever wants to learn. I was not crazy about the idea at first, but what work entails is not so bad at all. I can say this while I am not feeling much pressure to close sales/deals with anyone at the moment. After all, my parents pay for my housing and food (bless their hearts!) while I explore and experiment with what I want to do for a living.

I applied for a job and had an interview last week. I didn’t get the job, and I’m almost tempted to be a little upset, because I figured (and still think) I was the best pick from the lot, for graphics design anyway. In any case, with my creative energies I am considering starting a small little operation with Stephen where we’ll be making commission tee-shirts. I’ve the know-how and the practice after making so many of my own. Now, we just need some good designs and some customers willing to pay a little more than usual for a custom tee-shirt. Anyway, if you’re interested or know someone who might like one as a gift, let me know.

By the way, if you’re wondering about that design, I got the idea from Deviant Art (credit to the original artist) and it’s a girl in a trench coat holding a staff.