Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Valuable lesson from my first professional job, or how much is a brownie point worth?

My first professional job was in Silicon Valley for a laser company.  My boss was Bob.  Based on my take of things, Bob was stereotypical for a guy named "Bob" in the professional realm.  I'll just leave that to your imagination.  Anyway, Bob was wise and taught this young pup a few lessons.  One that has proven exceptionally valuable is the concept of brownie points.

Brownie points are earned one at a time for doing someting that impresses the boss.  The first time I earned a brownie point for being cleaver (I can't even remember what about), Bob said to me something along the lines of,
Congraluations!  You've earned one brownie point.  It takes 1000 to cancel-out one "Oh Shit".


There it was; the formula that explained everything that happens on the job. 

1000b = 1M 

Do something impressive and you get quick praise "b".  Make one mistake big "M" and you are in trouble no matter how much good you've done.  Unlike your 401K, brownie points don't carry over from job to job either.  Get a new job - start over.  I hope this helps! :)

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Senseless Sunday: Dog's life

  1. A dog was killed by a meteor at Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911.[1]
  2. The tallest recorded bamboo is 130 feet high.[2]
  3. World's longest beaver dam is found in Alberta, Canada with a length of 2790 feet.[3]
  4. Adwaita, an Aldabra Giant Tortoise died at the age of 255 in March 2006 in Alipore ZooKolkataIndia. It was recorded the oldest Terrestrial animal in the world.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Opinion about epinions.com decline

epinions.com used to be a great resource to get real world, vetted and high quality customer reviews for all sorts of products from books to cars.  Contributing to epinions.com was actually minimally lucrative, as you got compensated for your product reviews.  Fellow members of the website would critique submitted reviews to help others improve the quality and review writing skills.  The higher quality reviews earned a larger share of whatever earnings were made.

I was never really sure just how the compensation worked, but over the years, I made less than $100 total from my nine posted product reviews.  My first review was posted in 2002 about my old Acura TL Type-S, for which I earned the coveted "Very Helpful" rating.  Over a period of one decade, that review has earned me a whopping total $20.

In the past, I've endorsed and recommended the use of epinions.com.  I frequently went there for reviews of products in which I was interested.  Then something starting changing in 2012.  I stopped using epinions.com.  I didn't really know why at the time.  It just happened.  Looking back, I believe it may have been because reviews were getting harder to find.  It was not that there was less of them, but rather the structure of the website had started changing for the worse.

Sometime this summer of 2013, I was writing a review for another product on Amazon.com and figured it was good enough to add to epinions.com.  I thought I might as well make my 3¢ a year. So, I went back to the epinions.com website and searched for the product.  It was a book.

I searched for the book and found a webpage that listed a bunch of sites that sold the book.  There was no product page.  In the past, the product page would come up as the search result.  This is where one would go to add a review.  But now, there was just a listing of other websites.  Sure, older products still had product pages, though you'd have to surf through the myriad of links to other websites in order to find them.  Much to my dismay, epinions.com had become an inferior online mall.  There isn't even a rewards program, like with higher quality online malls such as MyPoints.com.  epinions.com made itself completely irrelevant.

I guess some areas on the website are still maintained, such as electronics, where it appears to be a little easier to find the product pages for newer products.  It's just not enough to justify giving the website a second thought anymore.

Monday, September 02, 2013

William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope hits stores

William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope is a thing. Someone thought it would be funny to convert the first Star Wars movie into a William Shakespeare style play.  Old style prose is included, including the rather annoying "o'er".  It took me years to learn "o'er" is a contraction for "over".  Really?  Just say the "v".  It's not like you are actually shortening the word by not saying the "v".  It's still two fully pronounced syllables.  But I digress.

The book is is pretty funny (including the use of o'er). They really nailed the R2D2 dialogue!




Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Toby relaxing



Toby being a good Tobster

It's not necessarily a world invention, but it's a personal invention

Last night, I intended to bake some chocolate chip cookies.  I had the store-bought Pillsbury cookie dough in the back of my fridge for awhile, and it was time to use it...many months too late.  The expiration was back in March.  Apparently, the dough has been at the back of my fridge a bit longer than I remember.  Not to be deterred from enjoying some sort of cookie based after-dinner snack, I start thinking about ingredients I had around the kitchen.  (No way was I going to make cookies from scratch at that point.  Maybe some other day, but not last night.) 

Nillas!  I have Nillas!  And large marshmallows!  OK, I can make a kind of a smore with some chocolate that doesn't need melting.  Chocolate Syrup, I have that too!  Hmm, there's something missing still.  This endeavour isn't quite decadent enough just yet.

Think.  Think harder!

Coolwhip!

I piled these all together and had an awesome treat.

To repeat this achievement, take 3 large marshmallows and tear them in half.  Briefly roast each marshmallow piece, one at a time over a stove burner.  When just slightly burnt, mash the marshmallow between two Nillas just like smores.  After making 6, add a dollop of Coolwhip on each, and then drizzle chocolate syrup on top. 

Glorious!

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Boston talk


Learn Boston as a second language, repeat after me, "I luhnd on Shahk Week tha electric eels rahly shak shaks in shaks."

Monday, August 12, 2013

The River of No Return book review

The River of No ReturnThe River of No Return by Bee Ridgway
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Though the concepts introduced in this book are an inventive twist on the time travel idea, the character dialog and motivations are dreadful.  In this story, there are competing time travelling organizations struggling for control of time travel throughout human history.  Nick, an English nobleman who fought in Spain in the early 1800's finds himself in the 21st Century just before he is about to die.  This is the story of his struggle to dance between these two organizations while sorting out his own role both in the 21th Century and the 19th Century.
I did enjoy reading much of the book as the plot unfolded, but found myself suffering through some dreadful character interactions. Some of this was due to character development that was somewhat engaging, but drowned out by the chorus inauthentic thoughts and experiences. The leading male character, Nick, was a noblemen from the 19th Century and only spent 10 years in the 21st Century, but somehow seemed more in tune with 20th Century social and entertainment elements than us normal people that lived through that time period, even though he did not. His experience with the 20th Century would've have been more authentic if it had been taken from the approach of a child growing up in the Aughties (2000-2010). Also, the characters of British origin often felt more like Americans, often using Americanism and seemed both out of place globally and chonologically.  Additionally, the writing of the characters while in the 19th Century felt more like rejects from Jane Austin novels rather than real people.
This book appears to be the first of a new series. Will I look forward to the next book? Eh. The author has to polish her skills of writing for characters with more authenticity, as her first attempt to do so is a distraction from an otherwise good concept and plot.


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