The Importance of Ceremony

One of the things that I am not so good at is celebrating successes.  When I accomplish something I usually start immediately looking for the next task or project.  After I finished school I started looking for the next thing.  I have dabbled with repairing cell phones, I am considering writing a book and even thinking about going for a masters degree in a couple of years.  When I started my bachelors my kids asked if they got to go to the graduation ceremony, at the time I told them yes.  As the time approached I started to try to get out of it.   They would not allow it, and now I am kind of glad.  I have never been a big fan of the pomp and circumstance associated with graduations and stuff like that but I was again reminded of their value.  In my first blog post I mentioned that I took an assessment test that stated that I could be happy with many different kinds of jobs.  My instructor at the time warned me about a down side.  She said that I would hop from one thing to another and if I did not make sure to recognize my successes I would get to the end of my life and think that I had accomplished nothing.   So even though I finished in December I truly celebrated my graduation just a couple of days ago.  I had great support from family and friends while I was pursuing a bachelor’s degree.  I am grateful for the support and the success

testing

I have been told that the comment system on my blog has not been functioning correctly.

I am hoping I fixed that leave a comment and let me know.

Book Recomendations

Now that I am out of school I am reading for myself again.  I have a nook and a 45 minute commute on the train so reading a book is a great way to pass the time.  I have recently finished 2 books that I enjoyed and thought I would pass the recommendations along.

Atlas Shrugged:  http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9469037-atlas-shrugged

This was a tougher book for me to read because the author sometimes drove her point home with a sledge hammer.  There were several times I was reading and thinking "OK I get it move on"   Over all I liked the book it sends a good message about the importance of production and thinking.  Its a  slap in the face to some of the current political philosophy out there now and I can see why Hollywood would not like the movie.

Ready Player One:  http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12382340-ready-player-one

This was a really fun book to read.  It was full of 80's pop culture reference and geeky stuff.  I liked the concept of the OASIS.  Its technology that is almost feasible for us today and could create the same benefits and problems outlined in the book.

I am on good reads since I didn't have enough social media in my life find me there if you would like.

School = Done

The first week in December I finished my last final.  It was a great feeling to be done and now I am just waiting for my grades.  It has been interesting for the last couple of weeks.  I get home at a decent time and am not sure what to do with my self without studding or projects to complete.  This seems like a good time to summarize what I learned over the last 5 semesters.

1. The entire congress needs to sit through some basic economics courses. (most elected officials for that matter)  As a country we would not be in the mess we are in now if  our leaders understood supply and demand and other basic economic principles.
2. The teacher matters.
1. I had 3 instructors that I would never take a class from again and they have no business teaching in a university setting.
2. I had 3 that I would re-arrange my schedule to make sure they were my instructor because they were that good.
3. The rest were somewhere in between that.
4. Student should be able to get a partial refund when they are given a completely incompetent instructor.
3. Text books are still a rip off and students need to find a way to rebel and stop buying them as much as possible.
4. It is possible to have a class change your life and views (even at my age)
5. Life long learning is critical to life, you are either growing or dieing.

 I have been asked what are you going to do now that you have graduated?  I'm mulling over several ideas now expect to read about that further in future blog post.

Most useful college assignment ever.

My favorite class this semester is Entrepreneurship.  The instructor has started and sold several companies and teaches because he enjoys it and not as a career.  He has taught many things that are different than what business schools teach;  He turned my concept of risk reward on its head; He has shown that starting a business does not necessary need large amounts of capital, and he has shown that with a little imagination and hard work you can make a lot of money.

Three weeks ago he announced an assignment that was not on the syllabus.  We formed groups and were going to need to create a product.  Then we would need to spend 3 hours selling it.  He gave each group $100 seed money in an envelope.  If we chose to open the envelope we were agreeing to accept him as a 30% partner and were required to split profits with him.  (He tries to teach us to avoid partnerships)  The school paper featured our groups efforts  http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/news/campus/business-students-learn-by-doing/


For the Class we reported gross sales, our group had $400 the entire class was able to generate just over $2,000 in sales and only one group used the seed money from the instructor.  I wish that more college classes were like this one.

Electronic Repairs

One of the Xbox controllers broke.  The back lip that holds the battery pack broke off and the controller would no longer hold a battery.  The cool thing about having things break is you get to buy a new one, and there have been several special addition controllers released since the Xbox has come out.  I started my search online; deciding to check and see how hard it is to replace the back cover.  The Internet is a great resource and within about 30 seconds I learned that I could probably fix it myself and still have a controller that was as cool or cooler than any special addition.

After searching I decided to go with a setup from Amazon.

there were other kits and mods available but I really don't want a rapid fire mod or anything like that so I kept it simple



the beginning

YouTube is a great source for how to videos if you ever have a question about whether you can fix something or not. The scariest part of the repair was soldering 3 wires to the controller circuit board but as you can see below I managed.

 



All Apart



All done

The lights are pretty bright and will reduce the battery life by about 20% but they can be turned on and off.  I could have got something without lights and the soldering.  It would have been an easier repair but if you have to fix something you might as well make it cool.

Operant Conditioning

So I had to do a group project for one of my classes.  I generally hate group projects fortunately this one turned out fine and I had a good group that all did their share.  We opened our presentation with this clip.  I’ve heard of Big Bang Theory but I had never see it.  After finding this clip I watched a few episodes.  I cant believe that it took a school project for me to find this show it is hilarious. 

You never know where the value comes where school is concerned