< Home

Read a recent (investing) article that quoted a convocation speech by J. K. Rowling (of Harry Potter fame), thought it was pretty good, copied the relevant section below.

Rowling’s speech was about two things: failure and imagination. As many people know, she has known her share of failure en route to becoming a literary sensation:

By any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

And although she found failure far from ennobling, she pointed out that few of us can escape it. “Some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default,” she said.

Random geeky trivia of the day!

So the Democratic nominee for my district apparently worked at Microsoft for 5 years before going to Law School. And apparently, when her “house caught fire this summer, she sprinted outside wearing a T-shirt that said “ < / war >” HTML code for “end war.” A photograph of her shirt helped raise more than $80,000 in 24 hours on liberal blog DailyKos, as readers said the shirt meant she was a kindred techie spirit.”

What a good way to raise $!~

Any chance of jamming this weekend while I’m back?

2 YFA arrangements that I tried here… which I am counting on TPX to do better :).
Blessed Be Your Name:

Rescue:

Thought I’ll contribute to the blog revival.

Just got back from my SF trip over the weekend… It was a really really really good getaway – just needed to walk away from work and life for a little bit to rejuvenate (although sadly I had to do homework every night after getting back to the hotel). I guess the best part is seeing Bel and Brent after not seeing everyone for sooo long. There really is no substitute for this kind of friendship – we really just picked up where we last left off.

Cali is super pretty – beautiful place, beautiful people. No wonder all the photogs hang out there. I brought my SLR and maxed out all my cards (4G + 4G + 2G + my dinky 128MB). Which means way too many photos to edit (this is when I’m glad my keep ratio is not very high still, har har).

As Bel put it, typical of a YFA vacation (though I swear I did minimal planning for this trip – I was so busy leading up to the trip I booked hotel/rental car < 1 week before the trip, and I basically only had one e-mail of places to go from my SF friend) the trip is jammed back with stuff and you feel like you have spent an entire week there when you have in reality only spent a weekend there. Will go into detail about the different parts of the trip as I post photos later... but for now, here is the hommage I paid to Silicon Valley.... muhahahaha! (Belinda said I wanted to take this photo to spite others, but really I was pretty excited myself).

24… the unaired pilot from 1994