Awesome Quote

So I’m reading this blog, and the guy is talking about the farce of our long, drawn-out presidential elections.  We get to the end of the post and he write this paragraph:

You want to know what’s really wrong with all these presidential candidates? It’s not the everyday vices that make them “just like us.” Nor is it the fact that they run for president longer than the length of your average presidential term. It’s the fact that they shave. I’m sick of these clean-shaven candidates. In fact, that’s my biggest problem with Hillary Clinton. If she wins, it’ll represent the final culmination of this century-long trend away from presidents with beards.

Wuu!

I love it.

Full context can be found here.

Oh, Botheration

So I’m walking through a dark house.

My foot runs into Athena. Not very hard, but she is definitely quite forcibly moved.

This would be bad enough, but kitten is also right there and Athena had been busy glaring at the kitten. Athena starts hissing and avoiding being petted and goes to the door demanding to be let out.

That has to be the worst timing for an accidental foot contact with the cat. Combining top the two bad events, she’s just mad and won’t let me pet her and apologize. Not that she’d understand the words, but she’d get the hugging and the petting.

Back On Nova (And Other)

Well, I heard back from Nova yesterday about the interview.

No go.

Oh well. As I said, I didn’t feel confident after the interview. That in itself doesn’t mean much, as I have yet to feel confident about any interview I’ve had, but still it’s hard to be let down when you kinda expect it. That old line about how it’s better to be an pessimist because you won’t be disappointed by the bad.

As to how I feel about it, that is mixed. I’m kinda sad since it would have been awesome to go live and work in a foreign country. Visiting isn’t going to have the same effect of ‘broadening my horizons’ that living there would. I’m also a little relieved since I won’t be so far removed from my family for so long so abruptly. I do like my family muchly, and it would be a little lonely to be so far away from them. Even communication by phone and IM systems would be difficult due to time zone issues.

And, as a side note, it would be awesome to visit Izumo in October. Just the whole 神無月/神在月 thing. I would romanize Izumo as Idumo, except that it’s a ‘well known’ place name. Can’t just go romanizing those how ever I want. Toukyou. Tookyoo. Wuu!

Anyway, in addition to this, here’s proof of Japanese people being completely crazy.

Yup, that’s a real drink. And it’s popular too.

On to a few other things….

I saw a link to this video on the global warming situation on CAD.  Watched it.  I was then appalled by the fact that anyone could call this ‘tough to argue.’  It’s incredibly easy to point out one huge, and utterly glaring, problem.

Each box has either the best case scenario or the worst case scenario.  Never does it have both.  The man admits that he has simplified, but this is something too major to overlook.  The problem lies in that he says that by placing your bets in the ‘yes’ column, you completely eliminate the ‘utter and complete global catastrophe’ possible result.

That’s not true.  Working under the assumptions he lays down, if man-made global change is true and we take action we could still get that result.

It may be too late.

We may do the wrong thing.

We may not do anywhere near enough.

And, using his logic, the only proper response to any potential disaster is to take the most rigid and draconian measures.

A baby could drown in a bucket of water.  Let’s outlaw all buckets of water.  If we don’t, then we are allowing for the possibility of babies drowning, and we wouldn’t want that guilt on out shoulders.

It shouldn’t matter what side of the argument on global warming you are on, that man has a horrid argument.

Titles

For all the flak that occasionally gets directed at the term “Ms.,” it is an incredibly useful title. Miss. and Mrs. both require people to know the marital status of the woman in question. Ms., on the other hand, doesn’t.

And a person can hardly be expected to remember the marital status of every single woman that one must contact throughout one’s life. In fact, the very people that one would be using titles for—given the marked decrease in their usage—would be the people that would most likely fall into the catagory of unknown marital status.

Of Interviews and YKK

So today was my interview with Nova.

Long, long day. I had to get up at 5am in order to get ready, cook a hearty breakfast, and brew some coffee. Hearty breakfast since I wasn’t going to get an opportunity to eat for another 7 hours. Coffee because I was getting up at 5.

I got to the office well in advance. Such did pay off as I got second interview because of my early arrival. By the time the individual interviews were starting my brain was starting to fold.

The only thing that I can point to as going wrong was when I had to talk about a random subject (my subject turned out to be a picture of the drum tower for the Bon dance) for 45 seconds. At around 25-30 seconds I just ran out of things to say.

Despite that being the only identifiable problem, I have an inexplicable unease. I don’t feel like I did well. I can’t point to anything, but I still feel uneasy. Granted, I never feel like I do well in interviews. I always feel like I screw up, but for some reason I generally get follow-ups on my interviews.