Paying it forward

So last night I was in New York City with Shawn (guy from Google who also happens to be on vacation on the east coast) and his friend Josh. Anyway, after a long hard night of trying to keep up with New York and their late bar-closing times (4am!)...we decided to grab some cheap Mexican food. So this was 3 in the morning and we were all at least a bit drunk. The chick working the counter was super nice...even at 3 in the morning. She was so extremely pleasant to every person in the store that we were kinda taken aback. Shawn then told us a story about how when he worked at Dominos this guy once told him that his nice attitude once made his night and that, in turn, made Shawn's life. Shawn wanted to do the same for this woman. Only he expressed it a little differently. He took a $100 bill out of his wallet and looked at it for a little while. He dropped it in their tip jar and we left. I hope they were pleasantly surprised!

Dream that caused me to be late for work

I had a really crazy dream last night.

The first part I remember is that I was supposed to be getting married to Nik. I was thinking about calling it off because I didn't think it was right to be getting married. Then I saw there was a timer in this room I was in that displayed how long it was til I was supposed to get married - 12 hours. I kinda freaked out and I called Nik on the phone to tell him and I think he knew it was coming. He was mad at me and put me on speakerphone so everyone (his family, including his mom) could hear what I had to say.

The next part of my dream I remember was Steve dropping me off at my house. My Korean grandmother was there for some reason. Steve walked out of my house and she watched him leave because she was very concerned about some Korean thing. Basically, there were a lot of clouds in the sky (which was no good) but she realized Steve would be fine when a balloon floated up into the sky and spread the clouds a little.

The next thing I remember is being home and being forced to take my brother shoe shopping. I was waiting in the car (which was a minivan) and I think i was watching an infomercial...anyway my mom drove by in a truck and I was really unhappy about having to take Michael shoe shopping.

The last thing I remember was that I was hanging out with Steve, this girl Hannah from middle school, and some other guy. We were talking about what we were going to do that night and I was laying on the floor and Steve was laying on the couch above me. Hannah whispers to me that whatever we do we can go cheat on our boyfriends. And I am shocked and tell her I wouldn't do that. Then I look at Steve and get upset and say "I can't anyway...because I don't have a boyfriend"

Weird.

Ooooh Google

While I was walking around in my pig pjs today I saw this and it makes
me appreciate where I work. But at the same time I wonder why this
person didn't put away their big red ball when they were done playing

Izzle

So I got an email in a mailing list that read "Happy Fridizzle, my nizzles!" I turn to my friend Sasha and we have a short conversation that goes a little like this:

Me: What's a nizzle?
Sasha: What?
Me: A nizzle
Sasha: In what context?
Me: As in 'Happy Fridizzle, my nizzles' - it's in an email
Sasha: What? Let me see [walks over]
Sasha: Oh, I think that's like 'homies'
Me: But aren't you supposed to add the suffix -izzle to words that already exist?
Sasha: Yeah...
Me: So what word is that?
Sasha: [whispering] I think it's the n-word
Me: oh.
Sasha: You're so innocent.

Perception and decision making

This is going to be a fairly crude assessment of things (at least academically)...

Rational decision making consists mainly of a few things
1) Perceived risk
2) Perceived benefit
3) Assessed likelihood of various outcomes

Of course there is a LOT more involved than that, but those are the basics. Which is the problem with rational decision making. There's emotion (i.e. fear) that could skew, either positively or negatively, one's view of decision at hand. And yes, there are times when emotion actually leads us to make better decisions than cognition alone, but I'm not getting into that here. There are general biases that most everyone face, my favorite being regret theory. Regret theory is the idea that the regret one might feel by making a decision that results in a negative outcome can have a very strong impact on that decision.

So, it is actually impossible (I think) to assess every aspect of a decision. It's kinda like the idea of traveling back in time and changing something that might set off a chain reaction that changes history; see this Simpsons clip for further info. It's hard to take into account the affect one small decision might have on other aspects of your life that you might never have thought of. In high school when I found myself daydreaming I would catch myself, note whatever it was I was thinking about, and try to trace it back to whatever triggered that thought - just for the fun of it. For example, let's say I found myself imagining various ice cream flavors Ben and Jerry's should try, which was a result of me thinking about weird food combinations, which was a result of me thinking about a sign I saw at 7-11 for slurpee flavor combos, which was a result of me thinking about how I lost my 7-11 receipt, which was a result of the teacher talking about the importance of keeping receipts for tax purposes. From the topic of taxes to Ben and Jerry's...well I don't know where I was going with this. Perhaps I'm trying to say everything is/can be related to everything else. Which is why I believe that it is impossible to assess every aspect of a decision before making it.

Basically, we can't tell the future and what the results of a decision will be. So we have to make decisions based on how likely we perceive various outcomes to be. I'd like to note that i said "perceived" likelihood. Naturally, humans are extremely biased creatures. So, for example some people think that using significant lottery numbers, like birthdays or anniversaries, make them luckier. If you're reading this you no doubt understand that that's not true. However, those people *perceive* their potential outcome to be of greater likelihood, and there's little you could do to convince them otherwise.

Why am I talking about this? To remind myself to be rational and that my perception of the state of things differs greatly from others.

I <3 Firefox 2.0

Here are my reasons for loving FF 2.0. I'm very dedicated to explaining this to you, so read the whole thing and if you learn something new I think it will improve your life - no joke.

1. More streamlined RSS feedreading experience.
Have you ever wanted to add an RSS feed to your Google Personalized homepage? (In case you don't know, an RSS feed allows you to be able to go somewhere like Personalized homepage and see updates to a blog or news site without visiting that site and checking - huge time saver on the stalker front). Anyway, before it was a long and complicated process that required you to somehow figure out the feed address...basically it was a lot more difficult than it should be. But now with FF 2.0 , you can just click on the feed button in the URL bar...



then you get this and you want to choose Google Reader. I guess you can choose the other ones, but I don't see why you'd want to. :)





Then you get another page, click Add to Personalized Homepage and it appears on Google!






You guys are on my Google Personalized Homepage...so everytime I open my browser I get to stalk you and see if you'd made any updates. Except it's like passive stalking since Google just gives me the info without having to check your blog everyday.

If you're not familiar with Google Personalized Homepage, I don't think I could live without it honestly. It's how I get news, keep up on you guys, and read other blogs as well. It has a bunch of other tools and fun stuff in the directory (labeled "Add stuff"). Check it out if you haven't already.

Back to Firefox...

2. Search query suggestions
Firefox has always had a Google search bar but now it offers query suggestions as I type! Sometimes this is useless, sometimes it's amazing because it prevents me from typing a long query, and sometimes it helps me remember what I'm searching for.

Let's say I'm searching for the Tenacious D movie but I don't remember what it's called (oh no!) All I do is type is whatever I can remember (in this case "Tenacious D and" something). FF offers me suggestions! Woot.






3. General amazingness by saving me time and frustration
Firefox just crashed (which I actually think was Blogger's fault and not FF's) while I was trying to upload these example photos. Yeah, tragedy...but wait! When I opened firefox it asked me if I wanted to restore my session. I did and this whole post was waiting for me even though I hadn't saved it. Thank goodness. You wouldn't have gotten this valuable information if Firefox hadn't been so amazing.

The relationship between emotions and cognition

I studied this. I should have more insight.

Feel like writing

I'm writing my Christmas cards...and it's hard to decide who to send them to. I've got my family and Tridelt so far. Hm. I want to send one to you, but I don't have your address. Please give it to me. :) I was thinking of sending cards to Steve's parents...but I don't know his Dad's address. And it's not fair to only send a card to his mom. I also don't know how to address it. Ugh, complications. I also don't want her to think I'm a freak for sending her a card. I also don't know if I should write Merry Christmas. Steve pretty much called me lame when I said happy holidays or something...but perhaps his mom is more sensitive. How am I supposed to know these things? I think I know the answers but I'll ask him just in case.

So the holiday party was fun. I wish I had taken pictures so I could show you the craziness.

Caryl - if you're reading this, what the heck? Do you have a blog anymore? If so, why was I not notified?

Rose

Today while sitting and reading email I made a silly putty rose. Here
it is if you're interested. :)

By the way, yes, I know I'm lame.