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For This is my moment. My destiny calls me. For once in my lifetime I'm gonna do great things.
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| Saturday, June 5th, 2004 |
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| my car got broken into today, but i also found my palm pilot and came up 10 bucks in poker | ||
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| Friday, June 4th, 2004 |
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| I'm not sure why but my hotpop account was deluged with viruses, I do not recommend them for your e-mail needs. | ||||
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| Friday, May 21st, 2004 |
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Got my tax return today! yay I got it over 300. |
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| Thursday, May 20th, 2004 |
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| http://ninjai.com | ||
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| Wednesday, May 19th, 2004 |
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| http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/content/ninjai/index.html | ||||
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http://www.ninjai.com/ did you like ninja scroll? I'm 3/4 of the way through it, this is excellent. |
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| Tuesday, May 18th, 2004 |
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I just finished reading a book. To Understand is to Inventby Jean Piaget He talks about how kids need to learn actively, that reciting something is not learning it. He talked a suprising amount about some UNESCO or UN proclamation that ecucation be available to all children and that higher education be available. That part was not so interesting. It was cool to hear Piaget talked a little about how children know that they are not very powerful and so it is important to build self esteem/self reliance by allowing the child to have some power. John Holt (How Children Learn) talks about it a fair amount, the idea is very interesting. Perhaps I'll finish this entry better later on. ps they talked about kids getting addicted to weed today on Forum (national public radio) |
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| Thursday, May 13th, 2004 |
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http://www.lldkids.com So a couple of months ago I started working for Mark Icanberry. He's my dad's contractor (Well not exactly contractor. He doesn't really contract out. Just does all the work himself with a helper, but whatever. He's pretty talented at making shit.). Here's his deal. About 8 years ago he made a children's book with a pretty cool idea. First there's a story, then at the back of the book there's a couple pages about the history of the subject of the story and then how to build the subject. The first book is Picnic on a Cloud, where the main characters see an airship, and then build their own. The company evolved. He started doing shows at schools to drum up media exposure. The shows were a hit. He builds a giant 50 ft. blimp and then does some simple science experiments with it. He's been doing that for the past 3 years. Then some shady shit went down. I don't think that I'm getting the whole story from Mark. He says that he got too stressed out in the "multi-media meat-grinder", he was hosting T. V. shows, going all the way to the Missouri to do shows and so on. I certainly believe that the got too stressed doing all that stuff. So about 7 months ago he closed his company down. I'm pretty sure there is something else going on here. It doesn't make much sense to me that when he was being so successful he decided to shut it down. Why didn't he just scale down? Oh and he keeps blaming everyone except himself for the failure of the company. So about a month or two ago he asked me to work for him. I wasn't really doing anything so I said sure. I thought it would be a good chance to learn all aspects of a small business. Since it's just Mark and myself I get my hands in pretty much everything. Originally he asked me to just get him booked. Of course this too has evolved. He is now doing arts & crafts workshops and staff training as well as his assemblies. We are working with SETA Headstart, Sacramento Start, Sacramento's 4th R programm, Boys & Girls Club of San Francisco and the Fremont YMCA. SETA Headstart and Sacramento Start have asked us to create a training manual and arts and crafts/science program for them. So it is definatly exciting. Mark does not have much schooling. He "grew up in Berkeley in the 60's." I don't think he went to Jr. High or highschool past Freshman year. As such he's great and building, making and creating but not so hot on reading and writing. So writing a Teacher Toolkit/Training Manual isn't really up his alley. So it's neat that I get to have a huge part in that. Problems Mark is extremely difficult to work with. He talks a lot. If anyone knows my mother then you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about, except he's worse. Mark also doesn't really listen. It's very frustrating when we go to meetings and conferences. Mark will sell the product very well. Then we'll start getting into the technical details. The client will ask a question and Mark will go on about how children need to build stuff to get life skills. But what about the q? "Oh I get sidetracked sometimes." One our clients was making the point that she loved our product, but there was no money. Mark goes on a tirade about how kids need the skills we teach. Clinet: Yeah you've already sold me when I spoke with you on the phone." One of the reasons Mark works so well with kids is probably because he has ADD. For all Marks talk he doesn't have much content. It's funny. There are a couple of things Mark talks about, a couple of points he trys to make to me, that I either don't get or don't demonstrate that I get. More the latter. So he'll say stuff like, I'm just saying the same thing just in different ways. And I'm like, yeah I noticed. He'll talk for 45 minutes, and he's made his point in the first 5 minutes. One of the real problems with this is that he's usually talking about whats wrong with me. Now I know I have problems. I don't talk on the phone particularly well. I don't really have a schpiel down (I havn't been working on it for the past 10 years like some people). I "act like I'm a trust fund baby." Now I can take criticism and try and better myself from it. But I don't need to hear the same point made for half an hour. Now he tries to give advice and I've gotten some good stuff from him, but he'll talk about what whats wrong with me for half an hour then he'll tell me what I need to do for half an hour, which boils down to being more like him. More Problems Mark and I are very different. He's a morning person and I'm definatly not. He's neurotic about being early. We get to meetings an hour early. He starts to freak out if we're only 10 minutes early. Yeah, not me. I mentioned that Mark is not very good at reading and writing. So he thinks out loud. I usually write my ideas down. Take this entry for example, I am more comfortable expressing myself in writing than speaking. This doen't work well. When working on the training manual, for example, I'll start writing a first draft for a paragraph. Mark keeps telling me to stop writing and to think out loud. So I'll stop writing and start searching for words, and Mark will yap and yap. So now I have trouble thinking of my own thing to say cause I'm listening to Mark. I also have to start writing this stuff down. Mark is not good at remembering something he just said, and he definatly won't write it down. So now I've contributed nothing and Mark will start berating me again for not speaking ideas. "Say something". Grrrr. I (as I feel most people are) feel that content comes first, layout second. Mark not so much. So when working on this training manual I'm trying to think about what to say (I'm trying to get down a first draft of a paragraph). Mark just wants a header and then wants to see it own the paper. How many pages will this part of the manual take, whats the layout. Who the fuck cares. We can figure that out after we have something down. Who knows how many pages it will take until you know how long your paragraph is. And no Mark you can't just make a box to represent the paragraph. Thats fine if your making a style sheet for a magazine or a website, but this is the first manual we're doing. This is not a series. Mark is also a great hypocrite. He keeps talking about how all work is work, it's not fun you have to work hard, make it your life, etc. for it to suceed. And then he'll talk about trying to find the easiest way to do something. For example, he doesn't want to make more projects that are more science oriented, he'd rather just use the activities he's already made (there's only 4 that are in the format we need, another 20 or so that fine as ideas but need a lot of work from the layout side, there basically 4 or 5 steps written out). These programs often want more science, so how can we work science into the projects we have? Well why not come up with projects that actually have science in them (example, most of the activites are just making modesl, planes, boats etc., but there are plenty of projects that are out there, stick a stick of wintergreens in a 2 litre of coke, and Mark has the skill to make these activites very accesible to children, he just doesn't want to put in the work, which I kinda understand because we don't have an agreement that this manual will actually be bought). Another example. We went to sacramento today for a meeting, then we were gonna meet with this guy, Bruno, just for a bit. We had done a show for him and we wanted to talk to him to see what he wanted to see in a staff training manual. But Mark just drives back to Berkeley because he's "tired". Well jesus, this is suppose to be work. I got plenty of questions to ask him, you want to stay in the car fine. Of course tomorow he'll tell me I'm not putting my heart and soul into this. Whatever. Which brings me to my last point. All this would not be so bad, IF I WAS GETTING PAID!! I've worked for about 2 months, and have recieved all of $400.00. He owes me about another $400.00. I'm working for $100 dollars a week and I'm working 9-5 3 days a week. The other two days I volenteer at the local Jr. High, but I've missed a lot of those days going to meetings with Mark. Now I've agreed to this for a couple of reasons. 1) The company was shut down and it's not really making any money right now. We're going to a lot of meetings and setting stuff up but we have not recieved any money yet. So there's no money for me to be paid. 2) I figure it's mostly a learning experiance. I don't know another job where I would get to be so actively involved. I'm in the meetings where we negotiate contracts. Thats cool. Now when money starts coming in over the summer things will be different. I hope. Well I feel better now. Thanks for listening. I'll let you know how it goes. |
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Things have been going fairly well, ergo nothing to talk about. Blurty has been so neglected. I started doing capoira. Soooo much fun. It's so great to have your body swinging around in a dance of a fight. I'm slowly getting more flexible, I can't wait till I can stand up and touch the ground (keeping my legs straight). Gymnastics has really helped me. One girl there spent a year learning how to do a cartwheel, another still can't do a handstand. I'm so ahead of the curve. Wrestling hasn't helped me as much, I keep wanting to grapple, instead of flowing around. Oh well, I'll learn. I haven't played poker in a while. I think I'm gonna play tonight though. I'll let you know how it goes. I think I'm up ~10 bucks since I started keeping track. My palm pilot is still lost. I feel so bad. I have no idea where it could be. I thought I would find it when I cleaned my room, no dice. I hope it turns up soon. I saw The Fog Of War. Excellent movie. Robert Strange McNamara is this genius guy who was the secretary of defense during the Vietnam war. The movie is broken up into McNamara's 11 rules of war. Very interesting stuff. I mean he was in the thick of it from WWII to the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I think that's all my general news. |
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| Friday, March 26th, 2004 |
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I'm excited about raising kids. I have been looking forward to it for most of my life. It's like the greatest scientific experient, and nearly anybody can do it. So a couple of ideas, we'll see if they ever actually go into practice. 1) A. Always hire nannys that speak another language fluently, and have them only speak the foreign language around my kid. B. When i let my kid watch tv try to work in as much as the spanish as possible 2) When the kids grown some, put the tv on a timer, so it can only be turned on from 8-10, for example. |
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Enjoy 1 other contribution. |
| Friday, March 12th, 2004 |
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breathe in turn (wrist) breath out |
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| hi gon | ||
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| Thursday, March 4th, 2004 |
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i had a job interview today. it went well. i don't know if i want the job, its a health insurance sales rep job. i have orientation tomorrow, i'll make my decision then. maybe i'll take the cbest and go into teaching. |
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so this last weekend was off the hook, i ran into sooo many people i knew that i had lost touch with (plus other festivities but that'll comprise a different entry). One of them was Dina (friend of Tiffany and Mark) from ERC at San Diego. She's now working as a high school teacher at San Jose. So she tells me about a poetry slam at the Starry Plough Wednesday's which is just across the street from my dad's office. Marissa and I went tonight and it was amazing. Dina's friend was one of the poets and she made it to the last round. Her first poem was about how she was in a love hate relationship, very good. This other fool did a beat box session with a flute that was awesome, and was intended to promote his show (i'm so going). The poet guest of honor was Paul Libeman who came all the way from colorado! He showed us his tats two of which were for dead poets and then he did a poem dedicated to "the survivors" awesome. This one fool Charles should have won the contest with his two poems one about anthrax scandals in the us and how horrible bush was the other about averting statutory rape, but both his poems ran long. There were also poems about not having an ass (it's a genetic disorder), not having game, waiting outside your bathroom while your friends have a fuck session, breaking up with someone because you love them too much, breaking up with them because they can't fuck and a host of others. Great night. |
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| Sunday, February 29th, 2004 |
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http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/sage/ss2004-02-24.htm http://www.salon.com/opinion/huffington/2004/02/25/global_warming/index.html |
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| Friday, February 27th, 2004 |
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Sucess! So I had to be DD but whatever. I still had a good time. Drinking began before I arrived. Mountain Dew and Vodka? Well somebody liked it. Luckily I wasn't drinking. Though I did bring Mojito Club (just 7 bucks!) and Liquor de Ron, which was not as good as I was hoping for. I also got Speights which is an ale from New Zealand. It was much better the first time I had it though Micheal Moewe said it was quite good. Speaking of Moewe, how lucky were we that he was able to come! We had the lap top downstairs blasting tunes (there is a musical entertainment vaccuum at marissa's house. no community boombox.) and Marissa saw Micheal online and gave him a holler. Mike came through, we picked him up at blockbuster and he joined us for our bar hopping evening. It more than made up for Unit A (the next door neighbors) flaking on the party. Oh did I mention the White Trash Lawn Ornament Pink Flamingo theme. Very nice. Even had a tropical fish pinata. Don't say I never got you nothing Bree. The pinata didn't hang very well since we were using present ribbon, but after attacking it with a wrench, a mallet and a hammer the pinata went down. So we went to the Hotsy Totsy at first, completly empty. Another group about as large a ours came in like ten min. later but they started playing shufflepuck. We went to Club Mallard to play a real game, 8-ball. Club Mallard was the highlight of the night, for me at least. I ran into a fellow UCSD Cog Sci girl, Han, whose number I lost when I lost my phone last year. Very nice to reunite with her. She is currently taking capoira lessons and invited me to come. I am so juiced for it. I also ran into some people I know through my ex Saph. Mallard is the place to be apparantly. We left Mallard at 1:10 or so and I made a mad dash for Acme and got ther not 5 min. before closing. It was an exilerating drive. Another fun story. We took two cars out. Nick had already been drinking some but decided to drive anyway. His headlight also looked to be out. When we went from the Hotsy Totsy to the Mallard (about 2 long blocks) Nick gets pulled over as he was parking. Apparantly someone stole his regisration sticker so he has a 2002 sticker on his liscencse. Us in the other car did not know this and were quite worried. But then the cop left, phew. And nick pulls into the spot and we all hear a crack. turned out to be his hubcap, but it made a horrendous noise. So that's abou it. |
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Enjoy 1 other contribution. |
| Wednesday, February 25th, 2004 |
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So yesterday I got to break up a fight at the Jr. High. Here's how it went down. I was in a teacher's room supervising kids. It should be noted that the teacher left the room unsupervised and she did not even know that I was in there. It was during lunch. Both girls were kinda ghetto. I had my back to the beginning of this but here's what I gathered. Venus was sitting at the computer with some other girls looking up Nelly songs. Another girl, Shauna (or something), was standing behind her talking with somebody else. Some random girl tickles Shauna causing her to laugh and spill the soda she was holding on Venus. Shauna runs to the other side of the room. I see this and think nothing of it. Venus walks over to the sink fills up a glass of water and walks over to Shauna and throws it on her. I saw that. Shauna flips out and tries to kick Venus' ass but I get in the way. Shauna starts saying shit like she's gonna break Venus' face and stomp her into the ground. Other children start laughing and try to incite. I walk girls to the VP. Ms. Ryan (whose room this happens in) is met on the way and I hand off the girls. The End. Good times good times. |
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Enjoy 1 other contribution. |
| Sunday, February 22nd, 2004 |
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i thought of a great vignet in some American Pie type comedy... a guy is at his friends house party cruisin for chicks. meets hot chicka and they make it to a bedroom and hotbosx it. while getting their groove on chicka slips a See's Toffee Bar out of her purse. The dude is already naked lying on his back. chicka unwraps the hunk o'chocolate bar and sucks off a bit. chicka hands the remaining candy to dude who bites some off the siren reaches over fool and breaks off some See's Toffee Bar and drops it at the foot of foolio's happy trail they both grab for it, but the vixen agile hands strike first. the bit o'candy is in her mouth in a flash her face changes and pulls out a pube -rin- epilouge: (some time has passed) & (the lights are out) the girl, naked now, gets out of bed and notices a crumb of candy, perhaps a piece of toffee meanwhile guy notices a piece of candy on himself guy: "Is that a piece of candy?" fairer side of the sex: "Yeah." homeboy pops the See's Toffy Bar piece in is mouth sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo gooooooooooooooooooood!! mmmm on the other side of the bed girl pops her self discovered piece in her mouth chicka: "That's not candy." |
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Enjoy 2 other contributions. |
| Saturday, February 21st, 2004 |
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Vegas was great. I made hella money, got to see hoover dam (which is awe inspiring though my visit was tainted, marissa got a ticket for sitting on the wall. at least we left a nasty note). Also sad (though not quite as sad...) I had a smudge on my digi lens. :( I ended up only taking pictures at hoover dam, but you can see the evil cop http://www.shutterfly.com/os.jsp?i=67b0de21b34bb7f50512&open=1 Much thanks to Michael Moewe for distracting my mom during the car ride back. I think this was one of the best vegas trips because I spent so much time off the strip. Outlet mall/ross shopping was cool. I loved going into that seedy pawn shop. Oh and the second time I went to downtown (marissa bought a sewing machine at the pawn shop) I stayed in the car while everyone else checked it out. While waiting I saw to men rummage through garbage, pull out an old burger king burger and eat it. That was perhaps the most memorable experience I have of vegas. I guess it helps that I was sober at the time. Next time we will get drugs! This I swear. Vegas just cries out for psychelics. Oh and to all ya'll who think everything that happens is on the strip, guess where the world series of poker is held. Bunions, downtown! IHOP was also great, go Steven (that was his name right) way to hook up the info. and one more link http://www.elfrigo.org/flash/chowmein.htm |
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Enjoy 1 other contribution. |
| Tuesday, February 10th, 2004 |
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| synchro porn! | ||
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Blurty for Zac D..
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