GRIZZLY PEAR
Now starts my first day on the job. Its been a hectic three weeks since I was first contacted by Mr. Ziegler during the first week in January and now its the end of the month and I’m now about get dressed up and go corporate. Lets hope the last few years of training at John and Suzanne’s place will have been good preparation for going corporate
So just a quick note….other than HAPPY NEW YEARS! This a a great website to get the etymology for chinese words on the fly. Nciku is my primary dictionary and generally its word “decomposition” entry at the bottom is enough, but when there are words that make me scratch my head, this is the site I go to. It handles both simplified and traditional and is really good a showing how we got from there to here. Here’s to a happy 2011!
So during near the end of the trip I took some notes of things that struck my attention. I’ve finally gotten around to going over them (very lightly) and added a couple at the end. I wish I had gone over the list earlier, I’d bet I had have more things to add, but here it is.
I would emphasize the idea of process. Be more organized and scheduled. But also work on ways to streamline each piece of the process. Pre-design meetings with the whole team. I’d have to figure out how to integrate modeling as an integral a part of the process (just more practice using them?) Spend more time setting things up office standards, cad blocks, etc. Draw just enough, not too much not too little. Post occupancy review (what went right and wrong, with the client and the contractor). Aesthetic style isn’t particularly important to me but green is. And contextually, I’d love to work close to home.
This is a tour de force in the quintessentially American genre of self help literature. A mix of down home wisdom and stuff pulled from the classics and the bible. Optimistic and upbeat with a pull yourself by the bootstrap message. All of it written in very plain simple English with plenty of takeaway points at the end of each chapter.
And hey there’s a few good ideas in there too!
Well worth the read.
I have been reading various books dealing with business and issues related to finding work. Along the way a couple years ago, I picked up a little book by Frank Bettger called “How I Raised Myself from a Failure to a Success in Selling” at a local thrift store. I finally read it this past week. And the best part was his last chapter. Inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues Frank Bettger made his own list of 13 key skills for selling. Like Benjamin Franklin, he then advises the reader to make his own list, and then spend a week emphasizing each virtue/skill. At the end of the year, that would mean that you’ll have gone through the list 4 times and he swears that it is a great way to grow and get better at selling/etc.
The super powerful idea behind Frank Bettger’s chapter is that he takes history and makes it useful for his own purposes. I think there is a tendency to say “if a great guy did it, then that’s how it should be done.” However, I think that often leads to inaction since the great person was doing something in the context of their life. Instead one ought to take the example of history and make the most of it in the context of our own lives.
And in that spirit I decided that it couldn’t hurt to try something similar, though I am kind of switching it a little to include fields of study to emphasize in my spare time. We’ll see where it goes, I’ll start it up in a couple weeks which will time me perfectly at the halfway mark of this year.
Now that I have a little free time again, I’ve rediscovered goodreads. I really should just say discovered because even though I signed up a couple years ago, I never really explored the site. It seems like a really nice intuitive focused social site. Fun stuff and it will a place to help me at least collect my thoughts after finishing each book.
I wonder if this should be a 5 star because it has been in the bathroom for almost 5 years now. It still manages to entertain with quick hits as always before and I still seem to find things I hadn’t read though I must have gone through it several times by now (albeit not systematically). Fun stuff and full of weird entertaining errata about life.
Hehehe…since I’ve announced it everywhere its not really news, but just for the record…I passed my last test!
down the back 9?
who knows…but I scheduled what may be my last archi test….if I pass it (and the one I took last week). I’d get contemplative but I really don’t want to jinx myself.
In other news, my girlfriend got a Netflix account. For 9 bucks a month, I’m surprised people don’t just get a decent internet account and netflix and just skip the whole cable tv thang.
Hopefully I passed, but yeah, basically it was tough, but not particularly hard. Hopefully that means a pass, but if not, fair enough and I’ll be back. Fortunately the servers for my lab room (the test center has 2 computer labs) didn’t crash like the other side so I didn’t have to sit around for half an hour while waiting for them to get things running again. That must be quite a nervewracking sort of wait….
On another note, we went to visit the Friday night game group in our area and wow! Really nice group of folks and we played Tichu which is basically big 2 with partnerships and scoring. It makes for a pretty complex game but I see why that group gets addicted to it!