Category: shallow thoughts

There used to be a good Chinese food restaurant near my work, and my co-workers and I would go there for lunch on Fridays.  The restaurant is still there, but the ownership has changed and the quality has gone way down since.  So, instead we’ll often go to the Spring Roll Restaurant.  Excellent food and good prices (I recommend the Special # 1, which unfortunately doesn’t show up on their online menu), but that’s not the point of this posting!

The old place used to give fortune cookies after the meal, and I collected a number of them.  I was cleaning up my office last week, and decided to throw out the fortunes, but I wanted to record them.  Here they are, in no specific order:

• Focus in on the color yellow tomorrow for good luck!
• You will run into an old friend soon.
• Tomorrow your friend or partner will tell you some exciting news.
• The next full moon brings an enchanting evening.
• Happiness surrounds your events this week.
• Others admire your assertiveness.
• You have a great appreciation for beautiful things.
• Get ready to do something daring.
• Enough is as good as a feast.
• You will obtain your goal if you maintain your course.
• You will receive a big compliment in front of others.
• A job well begun is half done.
• It’s the journey and not the destination that counts.
• You constantly struggle for self improvement — and it shows.
• A simple kindness today will bring you great reward.

Here’s a fun (and a little spicy) game — add “in bed” to the end of any fortune you get.  It puts them in a whole different light!

 

I watched the movie “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” last night. It’s been a long time since I read the book (mid 80s, I think!), so I’m not too sure how closely the movie follows the book. One thing I don’t remember from the book is the Point of View Gun. You can watch the scene where it shows up on YouTube.

Wikipedia probably has the best description of the Point of View gun:

When used on someone, it will cause them to see things from the point of view of the person firing the gun (the Guide says that it “conveniently, does precisely as its name suggests”). According to the Guide, though the gun was designed by Deep Thought, it was commissioned by the Intergalactic Consortium of Angry Housewives, who were tired of ending every argument with their husbands with the phrase: “You just don’t get it, do you?”

In a moment of serendipity, I was reading a presentation from a guy named Matt Webb, I think it’s about design, and he gives a really cool quote in there:

when people start learning something new, they perceive the world around them differently. If you start learning how to play the guitar, suddenly the guitar stands out in all the music you listen to. […] as more and more people have access to things like iMovie, they begin to understand the manipulative power of editing. Watching reality TV almost becomes like a game as you try to second-guess how the editor is trying to manipulate you.

The quote comes from this site, but that seems kind of rambling to me, so just stick with the quote above!

Anyways, I thought that was kind of cool, AND after seeing the Point of View gun in the movie last night, it got me thinking — learn something new, and you’ll see things from a different point of view. Kind of cool, and I wish I was deep enough that I could make that seem cosmic, but I’ll leave that for someone more philosophical than me.

Anyways, I highly recommend reading through that presentation, and even reading the blog post that took me there, talking about the 100 hour challenge.