I'm back!

Well, like everyone else I wish Spring Break was two weeks long. Other than that, I've been really lazy since I've returned. I got my exams back that I took before break, they all turned out well. Persistence does pay off in school, hopefully that is true in life also. But I think faith plays a role too.

And my Position on GM is that the government shouldn't bail them out. They should go bankrupt and get restructured. As a taxpaying American, I am tired of corporate bailouts and golden parachutes for CEOs.

In Transit to Champaign

This morning my flight from Miami-Philadelphia was delayed about 45 minutes, due to weather. I could understand why, when I realized the pilot landed the plane in near-zero visibility conditions in Philly. Hopefully my flight over towards Chicago will take off without delay. If you got a chance to read my previous blog posts you would know, I was out of the United States for the majority of my break.

I basically left Miami International Airport, at 7 PM last night, and came back at 6:05AM for my flight out. This week, look out for a few DI articles from me, in my never ending pursuit to write for the NYT.

I also have to give the Philly airport props for its, free wifi, and street market pricing.

Sidenote

So today, I was out at my mom's sisters place, a little girl comes up to me. My second or third cousin I suppose and says with a strong Trinidadian accent can you take off your glasses, you look better without them. And I said come here little girl, have some chips you are wise. She is about 6 and more in-tuned to social images than I am.

I think style is really important, substance is part of the equation, but appearance is more important.

I was watching Ripley's belive it or not last night, and some women broke a record by swimming in their Lingerie around Sharks. Pretty damn brave.

Port of Spain-TT

Change is a very good word for Trinidad. Some parts of the country seem to improve, while other parts seem stuck in time, or are worst now then they use to be. Visiting Trinidad is always an experience. If you didn’t know Trinidad and Tobago, was the smallest country ever to qualify for a world-cup. Even though my time here is limited, my mother is from Trinidad, and despite its short-comings she is proud of it. The temperature here is about 87 degrees, without any air-conditioning. In Miami before I left it was about 81 degrees during the day. I brought some work with me to do in my free time that I have. I don’t mind visiting Trinidad there’s a lot of interesting things to do and experience, if I had more time I’d go to the beach. But life is an experience. I guess that’s all I have to say for the moment thanks to my “borrowed” internet.

Pictures:

March 24th:

http://picasaweb.google.com/sadderly/TrinidadMarch24th#

March 25th:

http://picasaweb.google.com/alvin.adderly/TrinidadMarch25th#

Dork, Nerd, Geek?What?IDK

U of I recently did a study on why girl's did not want to pursue careers in Computer Science, they came to the conclusion that some girls feared being labeled nerds and geeks. Well, what does being a nerd really mean, how do you differentiate between a nerd, a dork, and a geek?It is quite simple actually. A nerd is someone who is very smart academically but can't do anything else, these people are never able to move up in a company, or end up as boring professors. A dork is someone who can be awkward at times, not necessarily smart, but is clumsy. A geek on the other hand is someone who is really passionate about something. On one hand you have the geek chic. defined as a girl who wears black rim glasses, and buys clothing from threadless.com. OK it's my definition of a good looking geek-chic Asian girl (Sharon is still a 10 though) .

OMG-SW? You might be asking. Well these three words define who we are, there is a certain stigma attached to being an engineer. I mean how funny, some of these people are so brilliant yet so under appreciated. Darn. I guess it is true, sometime people get caught up with what they do.
I mean I do sure I was told I'm too not obsessed with pop-culture enough. I'm not jerk enough, therefore that makes me boring. SO, I thought eh OK what do I do? I gotta take care of this?

Clothing yea, OK I probably should get stylish I'm working on that. Glasses eh?I like my glasses, they suit me, black rim frames of course. What do I talk about LOST, House?My favorite two shows no engineer gets time to watch TV? Photography I'm passionate about that, I like to write. Maybe I'll just become a journalist and write for the times now that's a thought life in the big apple?But I don't really want a full-time gig. I learned to nod and smile, and avoid the questions of substance.

But what am I? I dunno maybe I'm a bit of all three, is that bad?!?Who knows?

Today, will be a particularly busy day there's a lot of things I need to work on. I hope I can get a lot of things out of the way. I hope you enjoyed this.

Bill Ayers

On Monday night, I saw Bill Ayers speak at Allen Hall. (The room was much more full this picture was taken 15 minutes into the Q and A). I do commend Allen Hall for putting on these events, and I probably made a huge mistake by not living in Allen. Anyway, I did come into the talk with a dislike of Ayers previous activities. I did get the chance to ask Dr.Ayers some questions about: education, newspapers, education segmentation by discipline, and local vs. federal funding. I have to admit he is a very articulate guy. Although, he does have a considerable amount of experience as a debater. The question and answer period got heated towards the end, in fact the gentlemen that got in a heated discussion with him, was arrested Thursday night.

The real question that was in my mind when I left the Ayers' talk is should we forgive him? In the United States during the Vietnam War many people dodged the draft. Some had violent protests, some peaceful. The things that Ayers did was to make a point, and he agrees the way he went about making his point was wrong. And I believe what he did was wrong. But do people deserve to redeem themselves, flash forward 40 years and Dr.Ayers is a distinguished professor of education at UIC. I am still conflicted about people reforming themselves, but I'm willing to give people a second chance because some people have given me that chance.

I actually found out today someone I knew dropped out of college and decided to become a minister. If that makes him happy and he feels that it is a calling. I think he should do it, I agree with him you have to do things that make you feel good.

It was really cool to interview and meet Grant Imahara. I shall post the picture once I get it.

Article

Also...

My latest story on EOH is out. Next story coming sometime next week, when I feel motivated to write it. I felt this story should have taken higher precedence due to the time sensitivity, but oh well. I'm glad it is another front page story.

EOH Story

Front Page PDF

Next time, I shall talk about something else Grant Imahara from MythBusters tonight! Maybe on life.

Madoff Continued

I have to continue my rant. I was so pissed that Madoff remained a celebrity while he was out "cooperating" with prosecutors. Do you see any of the Billion returned?Give me a brea, the SEC sleeping again, and I can't believe Madoff was covered by CNBC like a rock star they had helicopter coverage of his court house appearances as his "motorcade" with police escort made its way through the streets of Manhattan without having to stop in traffic. If you look at the photo I attached from the NYT article in the previous post, it looks like he's attending a movie premier, not going to jail. I don't understand why the justice system is so inadequate if you steal a loaf of bread from a store you go to jail, if you steal a TV from a store you go to jail, you steal 50 billion, you steal 200,000 like Martha and its a slap in the back. Give me a break. AND if you are in business and you do not know who Alan Stanford is or Madoff, please look them up now.

Madoff

It is nice to see that Mr.Madoff is finally spending some time in jail and not in his Penthouse apartment on Park Avenue. Although, I should say many questions still remain un-answered such as what really happened to the 50-plus billion Madoff is accused of swindling. I think those are the questions the prosecutors should really be seeking answers to. Some investors even have committed suicide due to the loss of funds through Madoff's Ponzi scheme. If you were wondering what the previous record for record loss of money it is held by a former trader at Societe Generale.

"But Mrs. Madoff is seeking to retain almost $65 million that she says are her own assets."

The only thing I give Bernie Madoff credit for is taking care of his family he's 70, he's enjoyed his life, now he goes to jail but his family will live in comfort while the people that lost their money suffer. Sorta like Ken lay's wife. But Mr.Madoff is undeniably a crook in every sense of the word, and I'm not sure how he lives with himself. I guess people can rationalize almost anything, to themselves, and believe what they want to believe devoid of all sanity.

Articles in Syndication

Two of my articles have been put into syndication by uwire, one which I wrote, and one I contributed to.

http://www.uwire.com/Article.aspx?id=3845550

http://www.uwire.com/Article.aspx?id=3845540

Bill Ayers coming soon

It's come to my attention that I also contribute on another ariticle I was unaware of. I will dicuss my thoughts on Bill Ayers later.

Article

Power

Last night, I was discussing power systems, and power generation with a friend, and voila we have an outage. The outage did suck, I did loose time to do work, but I did get more sleep!
Anyway the feature story that ran today, I was a contributing Staff reporter. My other article also ran today:

College Students warned about travel to Mexico

When I have more time, I will actually think of something to discus.

Chow for now

My Values

This blog post might be a bit dull, long and confusing. I know many people will miss the point or not care about these things, but I think everyone should at least contemplate some of these things.

In my value system honesty is my most important value, I like when people are truthful and open and listen to me. I avoid people that are putting on an act, I can usually see through this. Regardless of anything people have to say about me negatively or positive. I have repeated this many times before I believe in treating people with respect and dignity. However I admit, you know I'm not perfect and sometime like every person I don't judge myself against my own standards, such is life, that should not surprise anyone. I make mistakes from time to time.

The second most important thing to me is my concern for others. I would say around 11th grade I became captivated by the idea of public service and transforming the way people think about something. If we think about our daily lives, there are so many things that have enabled us to live more fulfilling lives than if we were born in the 1900s, and these things have changed our view of the world, and consequently our quality of life has increased. In an aside, to my trip to Europe last summer, I can agree with some of the European work ethic. As Americans we work harder than the rest of the world. Sure, we accomplish a lot, but we also spend more time at work, or in traffic than with people we love and care about. American ingenuity is strong, and and alive and well despite everything that is happening in our economy, we always come back no matter how bad of a situation we are in.

At the end of the day, if I lose out on certain things, because I decided that I wanted to do what I felt was right, that is just the way it is. I refuse to sell what I believe in. I also refuse to step to that lower level that I feel people go to from to time. I have always have been a non-conformist for better or worst, maybe it cost me a gf sure. But I've gotten to do what I love, and I've met a lot of good people that have helped me along the way. I think that is my secret to why I get to do the things I do, because I listen to people and I take their advice, I'm nice to them. I go to people routinely for advice that are older than me that have been in the situations I am in. I know a lot of people that have beat whatever adversity they were facing, and there is no reason for me to believe I can't either. I also think I spent a lot of time getting to know people from a wide range of backgrounds, rather than concentrating myself in one particular activity at the University. I am disappointed with the people that decided not to try and take advantage of everything this wonderful University has. I myself have still not done enough.

I had a interesting conversation tonight on nuclear and wind energy. I'll discuss these things another time.

Putin

I suppose this is opposite, the Yes We Can videos for Obama. But the music video is real.

SA

Disability

Today was rather mundane, nothing interesting. Went to a performance of the CU symphony and their tribute to John Williams. I guess one new article of notice came across to me today.

Disabled kids show host draws criticism, praise

I think the people that complained are out of touch with reality. It's so much easier for people to explain to their kids that people are different. A good point brought up by Gayathri, there's much worst on TV, than some lady on a children's show with one arm.

Some people look different from other people, some people act different from other people, and some people are disabled. I admire the BBC for brushing aside the complaints, and Cerrie for not worrying about her disability. There's not a damn thing wrong with her, she just got dealt bad luck, but that has not held her back from pursuing theatre. I think I learned a lesson here too, just concentrate on what your good at, don't worry about what your bad at. You might never be able to fix it.