"Life has no limitations, except the ones you make." ~ Les Brown

I dream, therefore I exist.
– August Strindberg, 1849-1912, Swedish Writer/Playwright/Painter

To Have Succeeded

To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty;
to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.

This is to have succeeded.


Ralph Waldo Emerson

Big News! I've decided to sell my store! So if you know anyone who would want to own a thriving dancewear shop, let me know! :-)
It's time for me to move on to the next part of my life. When I bought the store, I never saw myself growing old with it. I have so many other interests, such as programming and math, and I want to have more of that in my life. But I'll still probably be in a job/business where I am helping people directly, because I like doing that and I'm good at it.
Right now I'm looking for a buyer for the store, which could take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. I think it's just the matter of talking to the right person at the right time. I'm sure it will all come together perfectly! :-)

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where
we can find information on it. – Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784, English Author
and Critic

I always liked open-book tests in school (Caltech rocks!) because I felt like it was more like the real world, where it matters less how much you know off the top of your head, and it matters more how much information you can find quickly and figure out how to use that information effectively and efficiently.

"The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts."
~ Booker T. Washington

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

T.S. Eliot

"Good is the enemy of great."
- Jim Collins

Never settle for just being good enough! You don't have to be perfect (no one is!), but you can always be getting better! :-)

"It is not worth an intelligent man's (or woman's!) time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that."
– G. H. Hardy,
1877-1947, English Mathematician

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to
venture a little way past them into the impossible."

*Arthur C. Clarke

Anyone want to buy me a ballet barre? (And some place to put it?!?) I just found out about a new barre fitness program called Fluidity, and of course, as with any new fitness equipment, I want one! Especially since it's a ballet barre! The only thing is that I don't know if I have room for it in my studio apartment, so obviously I have to move stuff around! It's a good incentive for me to clean up my apartment and get everything organized! :-)

Quotation about the search for a good book, from Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night A Traveller:

You have forced your way through the [book] shop past the thick barricades of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category of Book Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid manoeuvre you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everyone's Read So It's As If You Had Read Then, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress where other troops are holding out:

the Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages,
the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
the Books Dealing With Something You've Been Working On At The Moment
the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case
the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer
the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves
the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified

Are you the smartest person in the world? Find out at World's Smartest Person Challenge!


Some of the questions are fairly trivial, or just plug-and-chug problems, but a lot of them seem like interesting puzzles to solve, and a few of them are so ambiguous that I'm not even really sure where to start (they're really testing if you can think like the guy who wrote the test - but then that's what most tests truly test!)

Have Fun! :-)

“I will just create, and if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, I’ll create something else. I don’t have any limitations on what I think I could do or be. “ ~ Oprah Winfrey

Are you a nerd, a geek, or a dork? Ask Yahoo has the answer! http://ask.yahoo.com/20060818.html

I've always thought of myself as a nerd and somewhat of a geek. Now that I know the "official" definitions, I'm still somewhat of a nerd and a geek. I've definitely got the above-average intelligence, but I don't like to think that I'm unattractive, although I do play less attention to my appearance than a lot of females, but more attention than the stereotypical nerd. As far as being a geek, I'm definitely geeky in some respects - I like programming and sci-fi, but when it comes to computer hardware, I always defer to my more technical friends (the true "geeks")! And I'm glad that I never thought of myself as a dork, because I don't smell (hopefully)!
Oh, and I'm 23.9% nerd pure at http://www.stwing.upenn.edu/~ksledge/nerd.html

The Paradoxical Commandments
by Dr. Kent M. Keith


People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may
learn how to do it."

*Pablo Picasso{1881-1973}


I want to learn more of everything! Although it's hard to be in the learning stage. The initial curiosity stage is lots of fun, but to go much past that stage and really get into learning can be harder. Lots of things come fairly easily to me, so to actually have to buckle down and study something is difficult, but usually worth it!

"Whenever I see a book that doesn't interest me, I'm relieved."

Lately, I've been reading "Refuse to Choose: A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love" and "The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One". It's great to find books that seem to be written for me! I've always bought books that promised to help me find the one perfect job/career/passion for me, hoping that I could find the one thing that I'm supposed to do. But as Barbara Sher says, if I actually pictured myself doing only one thing for the rest of my life, I think I'd go insane!

I have so many different interests! I always say that I want to learn and understand everything, but as my first quote implies, I do actually have limits on my interests, but given enough time, almost everything comes into my interest field, at least for a little while!

A few of my interests...
-Dance (Ballet, jazz, pointe, lyrical, ballroom, etc.)
-Fitness, Gymnastics, Martial Arts, etc.
-Math & Science
-Cognitive Science, Psychology, Linguistics, Philosophy, etc.
-Programming & Problem Solving
-Financial Planning & Business Planning
-Languages & Travel
-Healthy Eating (Raw, Vegan, etc.)
-Kids! & Helping People

I've also been reading "Is Your Genius At Work?: 4 Key Questions to Ask Before Your Next Career Move". Through reading that and trying to figure out what my genius is, I've become intrigued with the idea of flow. Not so much flow in the way that Csikszentmihalyi refers to it, but flow for me is having everything come together perfectly. It might look all disjointed and jumbled, but as its time comes, everything flows together. A wonderful dance has flow, a good action sequence in a movie has flow, languages have flow, good programming has flow. All of the different parts work together to create the perfect outcome, although at lots of different times, it seems as if everything might crash into a huge heap. My apartment has flow - it may look like a mess, but I know where everything is, and I flow through everything. I like Steve Pavlina's Donut Factory game, where you have to guide the donuts along different paths and through different bakers & icing machines, because as the levels get more complicated, the donuts get closer and closer to hitting each other and if you try the wrong solution, the donuts crash into a huge heap, but once you've found the solution, they flow perfectly through, around, and past each other.

I'm not totally positive about my genius, but I like "Choreographing Chaos"! I need to have the idea of flow in there, of living on the edge between chaos and order. I like the alliteration of the C's. Choreographing has the dance connotation to it, and Chaos has a math/science connotation to it. I had been thinking "Finding Flow" (again with the alliteration), but it seems kind of passive compared to "Choreographing Chaos"! I'm also thinking about "Integrating Information" (can you tell I like alliteration?) - it does have the idea of flow, and I am definitely into information, but it's not quite as ME as "Choreographing Chaos" But I hestitate to say that I'm certain about "CC" because I also have a part of me that really likes/needs to discover & understand. I can kind of make the point that in order to choreograph chaos, I have to understand it, but the understanding aspect is implied, not blatantly stated. Oh well, it will all work itself out - because the universe flows! :-)

I'm off to indulge in some of the chocolate that my parents sent me for Easter!

So last night, I saw the Caltech Dance Show up in Pasadena. It was so cool! Way back when... gosh, it's been almost 7 years... Anyway, back when I started at Tech, the Caltech Dance Troupe was just a little club that sometimes had workshops, and now they're organizing a whole dance show with the other campus dance organizations! I had so much fun teaching classes back then, and planning the summer children's camp. And now I'm so proud of them now (even though I don't know any of them anymore)!
The Dance Show was really nice. They had lots of different types of dance, and everyone was so enthusiastic to be dancing. There was one couples' ballroom dance that was quintessential Caltech - and then one burlesque style dance that was definitely not quintessential Caltech. It was a fun evening, and I got to show a friend around campus. He was very intrigued by the whole Caltech culture, so I was telling him all about house life and dinners and swimming with the Whirling Blades of Death. And my South Master key still works! :-) Being on campus always brings back so many memories; there were so many good times! And yet I'm glad that I left when I did, because I think if I had stayed, I might not look back on my Tech times with such fondness.

I went to Vegas recently for a conference, and it was so nice to be able to get away! Even though the conference was about store stuff, I made time to get a massage, which was so relaxing, and to go see a show. I saw Le Reve at the new Wynn. The show was absolutely spectacular! I always like Cirque shows because I love to see the limits of human potential - all the different acrobatic and aerial acts just amaze and inspire me! Le Reve combined aerial acts with water. The theater was specially built for the show. It's theater-in-the-round with all the seats surrounding the water. In the middle of the water, the stage can be lowered and raised from a totally open pool where the artists dive into from high above to a multi-layer "cake" that they dive off of. I loved the water aspect of the performance (the Pisces in me), and I loved the extremely buff guys in the performance (watching them do acrobatics and dives is so much better than any Chippendales - functional fitness wins out over muscles-for-muscles-sake!), but the best part of Le Reve was that it really was an ensemble show. The Cirque shows I've seen before tend to be different 1-5 person acts loosely strung together into the show. But with Le Reve, most of the different songs/acts included at least half the cast, all performing full-out, into and out of the water and back again. It was like a chorus musical without singing and with lots of water. Anyway, to paraphase, I loved Le Reve! :-)

What if we didn't have to sleep? Would we actually get more done? Or would most people just end up indulging their bad habits more? I just came across an article from Entrepreneur.com about how in the near future, it's likely that we'll be using drugs to stay awake longer and increase our memory. It's certainly an interesting topic, especially considering my interest in psychology and the brain. But what would these drugs do to the brain? Believe me, I often wish for more time to do everything that I want to do, but I don't know if I would take drugs in order to accomplish that. Even if the doctors say there aren't any side effects, everything has side effects. :-)

I finally got Apache, php, and mySQL working on the store computer! I've been wanting to start programming in php, but Apache would just not work on the store computer. After playing with the windows firewall and turning on and off Norton and installing and uninstalling, it's finally working! (Although I'm still not entirely sure why it's working now, because I swear my computer is in the same configuration as when I tried to install it yesterday- but whatever, it works now! And will hopefully keep working!)

Yes, I am a nerd - I am really excited to be programming again! It's been over 2 years since I've really programmed. (I TA'ed for Intro about a year and a half ago, but that was just grading code, not actually writing code.) Not being in school, combined with the fact that Red Zone (the company where all of my programmer friends used to work) is no more and that I'm not dating a programmer, means that I've been without geeky stuff in my life for a while. And yes, I do love my store and all its pink and fluffiness, and I definitely have my feminine side, but frankly I've been missing video games! I need more testosterone in my life!

Last Friday I went up to LA to visit one of my friends who is working at EA now. I got to see his office and had lunch at the EA cafeteria. And I bought some games at the EA gift shop (They have a gift shop!?!?!): Black&White2, The Sims2, and SimCity4. I don't know when I'm going to have time to play them, but they were only 10 bucks, so what the heck! And I renewed my WoW subscription last night, and played a little. It felt good to be back in world (although the updates took like an hour to download and install!) But I'm not sure what server I want to play on, because all of my friends are on different servers and have higher level characters. And frankly I don't know how much time I'll actually be able to play, but I can have fun by myself even if I can't keep up with everyone else's characters.

Ok, back to learning php so that I can get my ecommerce site up and running...

An interesting look at our (possible) future...

http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/


I tend to think that personalization is a good thing (I love Amazon recommendations!) But it is possible to take personalization too far, like anything. However there is definitely a need for some sort of organization and prioritization of all of the information out there. I think I've heard some statistic that we receive more information each week/day/hour than our grandparents received in their lifetime. But how do we know what is correct, what is important, what we should remember? Or do we even need to remember anything now, since we can look it all up on Google?

One of my goals for 2006 is that I want to start selling dancewear and shoes online through our (currently informational) website www.superdancewear.com

So I've been investigating different ecommerce shopping cart software, and now sometimes when I go to different ecommerce sites, I know what software they're using, because of the template and features. It's kinda cool!

If anyone out there knows of an excellent POS/CRM/ecommerce software solution, please let me know! So far I have been able to find good solutions in the separate fields, but I have not been able to find good software that integrates them all. Or if you want to program a custom solution/help me program it, that would work too! :-)

Upside-Down Christmas Tree!

What would happen if you turned your Christmas tree upside-down? The upside-down tree needs less floor space, the ornaments hang away from the tree so you can actually see them, and best of all, there's more room for presents under the tree!

http://www.hammacher.com/publish/72376.asp

http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2005-11-07-christmas-trees_x.htm

A very interesting concept - whether it's a 2005 fad or something that will actually last longer is yet to be seen, but it certainly made some companies extra money this year.

What every-day concept can you turn upside-down? What if instead of lamps and lights that shine down on us, we had floor lights that shine light up? What if instead of having the freezer over the fridge, we had the freezer on the bottom and the fridge section on top (I think I've seen an appliance like this already)?

"Celebrate what you've accomplished, but raise the bar a little higher each time you succeed."
Mia Hamm (1972 - )American soccer player, Olympic gold medalist


HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope that everyone had a great 2005. Now is the time that many people assess what they've done in the past and make resolutions for the future. What went well for you in 2005? What did not go exactly as you might have hoped? What can you learn from your successes and your failures as you go forward in life? What would make 2006 a fabulous year for you? A year from now, what will you wish that you had started today?

Ok, now that you've thought about it, what will you actually do in 2006 to demonstrate how fabulously cool you are? Planning is wonderful, but you must take action to for your life to actually get better.

"People are anxious to improve their circumstances, but often are unwilling to improve themselves; therefore they remain bound." - James Allen

What steps will you take this year to improve yourself? What steps will you take this month to improve yourself? What steps will you take this week to improve yourself? What steps will you take today to improve yourself? Ok, now stop reading my blog, and go do those steps!

Go do them now! Yes, it's nice to procrastinate, but the longer you procrastinate, the longer it will take you to get to where you want to be. Don't you want to get there sooner?!?

So stop asking, "Are we there yet?" Get off your butt and go take action right now. I'm going to go take action towards my goals right now; you can too! :-)