"So I've actually BEEN to a Cheeseburger in Paradise before -- the one in Key West Florida, a year ago, as a matter of fact. It's nothing earth-shattering - think how you would "eat fancy" at a TGI…" - Ernie
“"Instructions: Take a picture of yourself right now. Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair - just take a picture. Post that picture with NO editing. Post these instructions with the picture."”
I think I'm alone in thinking that this is not as funny as the post is popular. Kinda like the blog version of an SNL skit that has gone on too long. - Ernie
I talked to one of my best friends and she made me smile in the midst of my unreasonable crankiness, rage at and disdain for the human race. - Secret Squirrel
I decided not to care what time I was sleeping, didn't force it, and thus didn't give myself migraines :P - Michael W. May
Last night's love fest w/ my 6yr-, 4yr-, and 6-mo-old godsons. - Ayşe E.
um. DAMN trish. that's a good thing... and yet, a sad thing. ... for me? best thing was a lunch date with my crush. followed closely by <90s>mad props</90s> from my coworkers and our client about a project at work. - tiffany
hmm...hmm...last week would have been a better week to answer this question. but i did get some side projects completed and made an appt with the personal trainer. - Lynne d Johnson
I actually had two friends (on separate occasions) tell me they refuse to invite engineers to their parties anymore. "All they do is stand in the corner huddled in a group and talk about work and computer stuff!" I know there are socially challenged peeps in every group of society, but my lord, we geeks / engineering folks need to chill out and/or get a life sometimes. - Adam Lasnik
How come? I mean, besides being mocked on FriendFeed. - ⓞnor
Mechanical Engineers talk about cool stuff. - John Honeck
@Adam To easily solve that problem, invite engineers from competing companies. Then they can't talk about work stuff. :) - Erica Baker
@Adam haha yeah... It wasn't so much the eng part of the conversation that got to me, but the loudness of it all when me and everyone else in the car was really tired. They could have been 4 strippers talking really loud about stripping and I would have been just as annoyed. Ok, bad example. - Roshan Vyas
I'm absolutely ashamed to say that I have done this with my co-workers as we go from Palo Alto to 22nd Street. Call me out if you see me on those trains. - Ernie
I took piano lessons when I was younger and actually regret not remembering much/knowing how to play. It's probably because my parents were a little more relaxed than most Asian parents about it, thus never fully crushing my will. Don't get me wrong, I hated the lessons, but looking back, I wish I had practiced enough to actually have a little bit of skill on the piano. - April Buchheit
It makes sense to play to your strengths in career and such, but to what extent should you push yourself to improve at something you struggle at or are not as naturally inclined toward (for the sake of discipline, personal growth, or some sort of future returns on your efforts)? - Dan Hsiao
re: Dan Hsiao. According to the book, not at all. - niniane
I bailed out from my piano lesson when i was 9. My mom told me i'm going to regret it some day. Turn out she was right. Even for a guy, I do find men who know how to play piano sexier than say, someone who knows taekwondo or plays guitar like Jimmy Page. But then I guess if getting the xx chromosomes attention is my sole motivation in learning piano, it might be a right decision to give it up back then. - Alvin Woon
I'm not naturally inclined musically or to navigating my body through space. I played piano and french horn as a kid, and have not played a note since the day I graduated high school. Turns out, I have to practice and deal with moving my body through space from time to time though. As I'm writing this, my shin is throbbing from where I whacked it into a shopping cart and my arm is healing from a burn where I dropped a plantain I was shallow frying. - Clare Dibble
The list goes on of my klutzy maneuvers; I will never be smooth. But the patience and humility that this stupid body teaches me are valuable in other arenas of life, so I continue trying to use it (at least until there is a better option). My point is sometimes there are things you can't effectively quit, so maybe there is a different lesson in being forced to take piano than crushing your spirit and creativity. - Clare Dibble
I think the best thing you can do to get your kids to love music is to constantly surround them with it and teach by example. think "Sound of Music".... there's actually a great interview this month in one of the Guitar magazines with Eddie and Wolfgang Van Halen where ed says "i never wanted to force my son to take piano lessons like my parents did - i just wanted him to pick it up in the environement" or something like that - but I think that's dead on. Of course, we can't all be Eddie Van Halen. - Steve Olechowski
There's actually a very simple way to get Asian parents to stop forcing you to play piano. Just threaten to become a professional musician (i.e. starving artist) when you grow up. They'll freak out because they actually want you to be a doctor or engineer. My parents forced me to take piano (and violin) lessons, and I hated it for years. But by high school, I started liking it enough to think about majoring in music. The lessons stopped immediately. I literally couldn't beg them to let me go back. - Jennifer Taylor
"There's actually a very simple way to get Asian parents to stop forcing you to play piano. Just threaten to become a professional musician (i.e. starving artist) when you grow up." -- Shit, why didn't I think of that? That's brilliant. It would have worked. - niniane
yes! I detested the piano.. I truly hated being forced to learn it, but no, I didn't cut off my pinky... - Jing Lim
Oh, I have SO mixed feelings about this. I played piano at 4, violin at 10. I played piano until I was in high school and burnt out at 15, but ended up playing for the church choir and a HS jazz choir. I have no regrets about doing it, honestly - it's kind of nice to be able to read music and be able to plink out a melody on the piano, something which other people take for granted. But not if I was young. - Ernie
@niniane: Do you agree with the book/author? - Dan Hsiao
yes, I generally agree with the philosophy espoused by "Now Discover Your Strengths". - niniane
It seems to me like one of those one-heuristic-to-guide-your-life books that's a single sentence with 300 pages of anecdotes. Always play to your strengths, don't try to fix your weaknesses? Seems like that depends on which one will give you more benefit, which seems like something no absolutist rule can judge. But I obviously haven't read it. - ⓞnor
First, I’ll say I wished I got to study music when I was younger and had more time. As one grows up, there is a greater diversity as to what we can learn and do, but so little time. In any case, forcing children to do something they don’t want over such a long period of time is not good for the psyche. Asian parents can be quite stubborn and care a lot about not losing face. It’s possible the child will grow up to like music more later on, but forcing destroys any such possibility. - Zelnox
@ⓞnor: If anything, the book is stating the obvious. It doesn't ask you not to try to fix your weaknesses, but to realize that you're doing mostly remedial work by fixing them, and you will likely never excel at any work that depends heavily on your weaknesses. Improving your weaknesses is beneficial, of course -- I may never be a world-class athlete or musician or writer, but this doesn't mean I should stop working out or trying to develop the artistic side of my mind. - Tudor Bosman
@Lilly: you can click 'options' and then 'hide entries like this' so that it won't show up on your feed - greg brown
For this video alone, Clinton should pull out of the race now. - Chris Reed
I, too, would like “dislike”. Greg, hiding all of Kevin's YouTube favorites isn't the same as and ought work differently from “dislike”. Popularity, total “likes”, isn't the same as good, “likes” minus “dislike” (or “likes” over “views” or some other collaboratively filtered preference). In regards to experience design, sites without “dislike”, such as Newsvine, feel oddly incomplete to me. Despite some awesome functionality there, it trails Digg and Reddit. Misused though, “dislike” could turn FriendFeed into EnemyFeed. (Apologies for jacking your thread, Kevin. I hope you find it useful as an app designer.) - John Lam
Oh I do. And to contribute: The problem with dislike (in addition to the Enemyfeed angle) is that dislike can mean many contradictory things. It can mean 'this post was bad and I wish I didn't see it' which would be useful as a negative quality signal, or 'I dislike the content of the article, but I'm glad you posted it (like+dislike?), or it could mean 'that was so bad it was good' (which might be the case on this video, for example). The latter two are either neutral or positive quality signals, so 'dislike' could be counterproductive as a quality signal if you-the-user had to absorb the content of the post before you could put the 'dislikes' in context and understand whether they were bad/good/funny. In practice, people would probably start feeling obliged to leave comments to give context to their 'dislikes' at which point the value of 'dislike' drops to almost nothing, and is outweighed by the negative social implications of telling a large group of friends that you 'disliked' a fellow friend's post. - Kevin Fox
My chime in …. What I like about this format is its not some popularity contest where all a PR department needs to do is flood a page with “digs.” (I should know… I run a PR department). It’s also not about a select few deciding what the fark we get to see. It’s the Internet’s true promise for content — you decide what you want to see. If you don’t like an item, you simply don’t read it. - Chris Reed
