that a lotus blossom is sweeter if you take the time to smell it

Or at least that is what the fortune cookie said. Personally, it sounded like the writers were kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel.

That said, I had a chance to attend a power mentoring event at work. The idea was something akin to speed dating only it was with the higher ups at work and career advice instead of singles and awkward attempts to score a phone number.

I ran out of questions before the time was up so I asked the same question that always gets asked at these sorts of events; How do you manage the work-life balance? The I got back kinda surprised me. The manager I was talking to said her most important work-life balance tip was to take you vacations and enjoy them.

She went on to suggest taking the overseas where your cellphone won't work and the laptop needs a power adapter. There are always deadlines and projects that need to be done. Sometimes you just have to buckle down and do it. The important thing is to make sure you have off time and make sure that off time takes you completely out of the office.

Lesson Learned : Cheesy fortune aside, I need to start smelling roses.

to keep tabs on the little things that can make you laugh

I rediscovered zim through the magic of Tv-Links. Every time I see Girr I crack up no matter what kind of day I'm having. Check it out for yourself with The Walk Of Doom or Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy (A personal favorite) Note : both of these are about 12 minute streaming divx files

Oh yeah... and then there is this (click it to get it to play):

Lesson Learned : **sniff** I love'ed you piggy.... I love'ed you.

to appreciate the sky

Its everywhere all the time and we so rarely think to look up. As soon as I had my camera I began to notice how beautiful the sky really was and today I got to try my hand at capturing it. Although some of these shots were from other times when I had my camera handy most were taken in my back yard right after I got home from work.

Lesson Learned : They weren't kidding when they said take time to stop and smell the roses.

that a Java interface can be kinda handy

I mostly code in c++ but I learned Java in college and I'm taking the time to brush back up on it. I quickly ran into interfaces and abstract classes. C++ has prototypes and inheritance, but none of it really seems to match up that well with interfaces or abstract classes in Java.

An interface is a contract that states certain functions will always be available for an object that implements this. This allows polymorphism in Java with out using strict inheritance.

For example: a BasketBall and a SoccerBall object could both inherit from a super class called Ball that had a virtual function that allowed them bounce. This would follow from the C++ mindset as well as abstract classes from Java.

Now take BasketBall and SoccerBall and have them both implement a Bouncing interface. There is no real equivalent for this in C++. In Java both the BasketBall object and the SoccerBall object will have the ability to bounce regardless of any other differences in the classes. There are no parent classes for either BasketBall or SoccerBall; there is only the guarantee that certain functions exist.

Lesson Learned : Java is still more than a little odd, but it seems to at least have its reasons.

how to cook "The Grocery Run"

I came up with this recipe on a whim as I was trying to figure out how to clean out the fridge and make dinner at the same time. What I ended up coming up with tasted a lot better than I thought it would so I wrote down what I had done.

I call this "The Grocery Run" because I made it out of the random bits that I had in the fridge about 2 weeks after I should have gone to the grocery store. Its also called that because it would generally take a grocery store run to get half of the things on that list. Most of those ingredients were around only so I could make something else that hadn't used them all up.

Ingredients
3 eggs
fresh rosemary
1 green pepper
Romano cheese
flat bread
soy milk (or normal milk might work)
pepperoni
olive oil
garlic

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Mince or crush garlic. Sauté the green peppers in a little olive oil and add the garlic just before they are done. Add the pepperoni to the green peppers and garlic. Toss a few times and let simmer on low heat.

In a larger pan scramble the three eggs. While they are still runny add a little soy milk and mix in. Add the green pepper / garlic / pepperoni mix to the eggs and continue to cook at medium heat. Sprinkle the fresh ground rosemary onto the eggs. Continue to toss or stir the eggs to mix ingredients. Add the cheese and a little more rosemary.

Once the eggs are cooked but not browned, add more milk. This milk won't be absorbed by the eggs. When I did it, it sat in the bottom of th pan and started to boil a lot like how you would reduce a sauce. Stir and cook till the milk is no longer visible.

Take the flat bread and place it on top of the entire mixture. Cover the pan and let the whole thing simmer for about a minute or until the flat bread is warm and soft. Take the flat bread off of the top and place it on the serving plate. Move the egg concoction onto the flat bread and enjoy.


Lesson Learned : Leftovers aren't always extra portions of something you've prepared.

about the beauty of the sound of silence

I recently bought some koss earphones that have sound isolating foam. These aren't the expensive ones I was considering earlier but they follow the same concept. They really are earplugs with a small tube that ports the sound in to you ear. Outside of being a little troublesome to put it they are comfortable and sound great.

The real upside is that they block out almost every thing. I can't hear the air ventilation, my typing, or conversations anywhere near me. I've put them in with nothing playing through them and just the quiet helps.

Lesson Learned: I work much better when I can control the ambient sound. And these things were the best $10 I've spent in a long time.

that breaks happen to the best of us.

I promised I was going to update this every day and then life got ahead of me and I stopped doing it. For that, I'm sorry. I'd say I won't let it happen again but I'm not sure I could without lying.

Anyways... Now that I'm caught back up (or at least content enough with how far behind I am to take a break) I'll be posting updates again. Today's post is more of a discovery than a lesson, but I haven't been able to get this song out of my head since I heard it last night and I had to share. Listener beware... its an addictive little tune.

'I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)' ~ by Sandi Thom

Kudos to Becky and Nanette (hope I spelled that right) for pointing it out to me. Now if I could only stop singing it...