We in Washington DC are on our 2nd blizzard and we are supposedly expecting another snowfall next week.  I thought I left the snow when I came here. It is a new year and I hope to work a little more on the site.

I got to meet the creator of sudoku about 2 weeks ago. It was really nice and I got to talk to him in Japanese. My husband was there too.

So I am now living in DC! It has been a fun time and I have been seeing great art. For Jon's birthday, I went to Sei which was a great sushi restaurant that I want to go back to.

I discovered a place that apparently is a best kept secret of DC. Teaism. I just bought "make your own" tea bags and my own green rice tea leaves. It was awesome. I want to go back to have lunch at the Teaism restaurant because it sounds like such a great place to get tea.

Some good news that I now can officially report. I have been officially accepted into the correspondence Masters program of University of London, Master of Finance (MS). This is what I wanted and I am thankful.

I have been suffering with my computer lately with my screen going black and then claiming that my drivers are having problems. My husband says this is probably from something called "kernel panic". All I know is that my C:/ drive had started to fill up rapidly. I take lots of pictures so I thought it was my fault but it was starting to get ridiculous. My C:/ drive went from about 100 GB to only having 2 GB left at 287 GB. I tried to figure out what could possibly be wrong. I had a feeling that it had a problem with the System Restore points but I couldn't be sure. So we logged onto my computer's dos prompt and found a startling issue:


I felt like Strong Bad in the virus episode on Homestarrunner.com, "Holy Crap. That's a big number!" What this means for those who have no idea what this is: Vista system restore had filled up my computer with 120 GB of restore points. I had heard on the internet about this problem that Vista should naturally have a 15% of drive limit. My computer had no such limit, thus being unbounded. It could have potentially gone on and on if there was unlimited space. This makes me think of my calculus courses where I could make a word problem about this. I wonder though if I get the award for most storage space used up by the system restore points.

How could this have happened? Thank goodness I have IT knowledge and knew to look for this but this was difficult to figure out what the problem was and it was making my computer crash in kernel panic. 

I want to thank How to Geek for his recommendation for solving this problem at http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/reduce-system-restores-disk-usage-in-vista/

Have you ever said thank you to your elected officials? To celebrities?  To people you admire? I recently sent thank you's to some people I met while I was at 80 million strong and I have gotten addicted. After visiting the congressional offices and seeing the phone calls they get from people that complain (and I was there for only 5 minutes), I realized the volume of negativity is up and not many thank yous for public service. How many times have I stopped to send a thank you in letter (not email because that’s really easy) form and expressed gratitude. I think mostly people don’t because of two things: Access and the complaining factor.

 A lot of people don’t think it will make a bit of difference. Most mail is handled by someone else and most get a typewritten form letter for their support.  There was a person I used to work with who would always send a Christmas card to the president of the United States every year. He would get a Christmas card back (generic form) but he still did it anyway. The White House probably gets millions of Christmas cards each year. That is a shining example of why people don’t do it. What’s the point? I think the point is to keep on doing it. It says more about you than it says about them.

It’s also easier to complain to our public service and people we admire. This is true in most things. We might not necessarily like some our officials and a person in the public eye, but it is truly lonely at the top.

So I decided to “sin boldly” and started writing simple thank you’s to people I don’t have a chance of ever getting anything written back or acknowledged. There is a mostly guarantee that it will be read by someone else. So far it has allowed me to think for a minute and reflect on the good things they have done and why I picked them to write to (because I don’t have the money to send letters to everyone).

The Art of Selling an Expensive Watch

    I read this article today and as many people may be struck of talking about luxury during a recession, I was quite amused. I think the salesperson was correct when they said that luxury is selling an emotion. I know that I can go get a cup or mug from a dollar store and be thrifty. However, whenever I'm at TJ Maxx and see an individual cup in a satin box I instantly feel more gratification from buying that cup. Am I stupid? maybe. However, I think that I know what a lot of people know: It's all about presentation. A lot of people and a majority of spiritual people would say that we don't get lasting happiness from our things. That may be true, but I argue that we do get some form of happiness from our attachment to things that have an emotional connection. Establishing that emotional connection is what companies strive to do when they sell us products. I have an attachment to some companies because of emotional connection, not because they are the best product. The good thing is that I'm self-aware of this. People are economic animals and will weigh the costs and benefits analysis. Emotional connection does carry weight in the decision and should not be dismissed so easily. However, if a product is of obvious shabby quality, utility will outweigh that emotional connection.

When, Oh When, Will HELP be found

    This article is nothing new, but very troublesome. We have a situation where those who are already not going to have jobs for a long time are going to further suffer by falling into long-term unemployment. One of the biggest problems of this recession will be those who have fallen through the cracks and have become unemployable. There was an article this week in Business Week that a lot of business schools are looking at job history before accepting candidates for MBAs. Basically, you have to be employed to get into business school. This is very troubling of the catch-22 that is coming up of some people not able to get a job unless they already have a job that was reported in the WSJ. Iwould even further say it will become a problem with skilled people who get lost in the cracks. You are too much in debt or don't have any money to further your skills, which if you are already skilled, takes more money to become even more skilled. Maybe  you need to switch industries, and if you can't because you still have not seen the payoff from the skills you earned before that.
    

    First of all, I would just like to thank 80 million strong for giving me a scholarship for my bus ticket to get to DC. If it had not been for that,  I don't think I would have been able to attend. Going to the event, I feel I kind of have hit the lowest of the low points of my decline and this provided a bright spot in my life while I have been going at this. I come from State College, Pennsylvania which is a town that most people go to for Penn State. But I'm actually from that town, so my life story is somewhat more rural than most people who attend the college. I have not had the opportunity to meet so many congressman and senators, and I am very very grateful. I didn't realize we were actually going to have the opportunity to lobby congress and that is a new skill that I enjoy. The summit was web cast, so I don't think I have to do much describing the summit. I felt it somewhat frustrating sometimes because I don't see the end result being more jobs for congress, but I think 80 million strong is in the right direction and I will cheerlead them for a long time. I think the greatest thing to come out of this event is the idea that we young people need to be more active in our communities. I feel ashamed that most of my efforts have been sporadic, but I don't think that is so bad because I was just "trying to survive" during this period. I want to help out more in any way I can and help with the movement.
    So many young people impressed me with what they were doing in their communities, their towns, and their states. I want to aspire to be like them. There were several people that were influential in that regard and I will not forget these memories as long as I live. I want to thank some of our elected and appointed officials who were there that inspired me with their words. I think sometimes there is a disconnect between what we think government officials do for us and what they actually try to do. I want to thank them for reminding us that no matter what side of the aisle they are, they are fighting for us.
    I don't want my activities to end with the summit and I want to continue going along this path.