Shrimp on a salad

Tried to make a salad, adding shrimp to it yesterday. Looking online, there are a few ways to cook shrimp, I ended up boiling it, because it seemed to be the quickest/ easiest. Took the shrimp, put it in hot water, added some spicy sauce, let it boil (only 2 minutes, actually possibly too long), and than pulled it out, shelled it. Made a simple salad out of some different ingredients, than added the shrimp to it. Verdict – it was pretty good, although not quite the equivalent of something that I’ve ordered from Baja Fresh before. A few things that I think I could have added to improve the flavor are taco strips, along with a variety of other simple ingredients. It was actually pretty good though, and one of my first attempts at using shrimp in a meal (on my own). I think that next time I might try something involving shrimp and soup etc.

Running / Sales attempts

My running (still in hiking/ warm up mode) attempts have progressed to a strong level, to the point that I’m getting around 2-3 miles in every day, only problem being that it is hot out or I’m on a mountain so I end up walking after about a mile into it. In any case it is getting me warmed up for the real run. Interesting considering the value of a run in my life — as an exercise, a meditation, a gift to self? For example, running before/ after work are two different options in life — if I do it too much before I’m tired out, too much after and I can’t sleep at night. Strangely it almost seems like running in the morning tires me out while running at night wakes me up.

Second thing I’ve been working on recently has been organizing and selling things in my house. There are a ton of guitars, tools, books, etc, and I’ve come up with an easy way of taking pictures and getting them setup on either craigslist/ ebay/ amazon — just need to execute the actual process asap. The basic idea goes — take pictures of the things I’m considering selling, using instagram, estimate a price, than go online to view the picture and check out an actual price, than post it wherever. The thing that I really like about instagram, is that it makes it so quick and easy to have your pictures accessible right away on the internet. I’ve been reading that users are browsing phones more than computers now these days, and I think that in this ‘cloud’ age, being able to upload data instantaneously from your phone to the net is invaluable. I think it would also be cool if this feature were added on SLR digital cameras, for example, so that my pictures would be instantly accessible. The process of hard copying and uploading data is slow, painful, and expensive, and I look forward to its extinction.

Ip Man

Watched a cool Chinese movie called ‘Ip man’, story of the teacher of Bruce Lee and his resistance against the Japanese invaders. Typical of Chinese anti-japanese type of television/movies but interesting nonetheless in terms of the quality of the fight scenes, along with the story line. The Japanese opposing general wanted to fight IP man to prove that japanese martial arts were stronger than Chinese, but IP man, using “wing chun”, managed to beat the hell out of the japanese general. Unfortunately the generals assistant shot IP man (in the movie). The movie is definitely a ‘loose’ representation of the actual story, because according to Wikipedia, IP man actually died of throat cancer at the age of 79, and not from the bullet of a Japanese solider.

Hike/ run/ proactivity

So, first of all managed to complete a hike two days in a row, so well into the process of getting some sort of a habit started – - haven’t been doing complete runs, but rather, a combination of running and walk/hike, which has proved to stimulating and entertaining, following it up with a glass of watermelon juice or three makes the whole experience much better — one of the major things that I’ve noticed is that the actual process of refueling after the hike/run is an interesting one, because if I don’t drink enough fruit juice I usually end up tired (during an early day run) but for runs / hikes later in the day, I will generally be awake all night as a result of the exercise.

Second thing, I’ve been reading “7 habits of effective people” recently, and finding myself re-reading the preface and initial chapter over and over again to fully absorb it. The preface gives a summary of the different levels a person can go through from dependent to fully interdependent, and the author discusses how setting effective habits can be useful in creating an environment for doing this. In the first chapter, the author describes how being proactive is better than being reactive, as a way of dealing with life and creating progress. The main ideas are, that we need to focus on our areas of influence as opposed to areas of concern. The difference is, that our areas of influence are those in which we can make change, such as setting or changing habits or behaviors, while the areas of concern are those in which we expend our thoughts, but perhaps don’t actually do anything. For myself, I had somewhat of a hard time differentiating fully between my circle of influence and circle of concern, but I think examples of circle of concern might be, things we think about but that we will never do anything about etc. To really comprehend this fully, I think it is necessary first to be able to understand the current situation and goals that I have. For example, right now I’m considering looking at an apartment, but if I’m not sure that I’m going to be living in this area, than I have no need to think about the apartment until I can resolve the issue of where I’m going to live in terms of area. Anyways, that’s just an example that has come to mind, but I’m sure that there are many other possibilities out there.

Good hike today

Went/ hiking / running today, good exercise, also interesting to see how quickly running endurance builds up . The sun is painful, afterwords, as usual grinding up juice to make some smoothies, working on building network, getting into contact with ucsd classmates etc.

Second, interesting thing, have been reading into proactivity, along with other psychological/ ideas etc. Seem to be quite a range of views out there. Major point seems to be in finding the ability to control your reaction to different situations, as opposed to just reacting like an animal without / pre thought or planning

WordPress just got a lot more complicated

Wow, very interesting to see logging into wordpress.com recently, that they are adding a ton of new features that I haven’t seen before. There are all kinds of different switches etc on the sides, which are creating a whole variety of new functionality. Alot of this functionality is also not present in wordpress install on a server, unless you use very specific plugins, so it is interesting to see how wordpress are evolving in a force that allows this type of functionality. Also, interesting to see how simple blogs have evolved by adding a bunch of their own functionality – - I feel like there is a little bit of ‘looking down’ on blogs themselves versus a full “web site” but it seems like blogs are becoming quite powerful applications on their own. One example that I came across recently which truly interested me involved someone who was using a wordpress multi – install to run a company generating 10k+ a year income simply from ad revenue. I think that there were about 13 blogs going on, and he was some how able to partner/ create the advertising income himself, and charge the bloggers a fee of some kind. Not sure if this would be something I could get into, or something potentially profitable, but interesting nonetheless.

Investment account

Finally getting into the process of hooking up an investment account, will be interesting to figure out how it all works, and whether money etc can be made. One thing that I think may be a pain will be related to dealing with transfer etc fees. Also will have to do some research on what the best stocks are to invest in etc, don’t really want to throw all of my money into anything without some in depth knowledge.

Celebration of 3 years blogging

Have been blogging with this wordpress site for 3 years to this month now, starting in 2008 when I went to work for HP in Dalian. Has been interesting, but I’ve managed to keep writing for the past 3 years on a fairly consistent basic — perhaps a representation of how much free time I have – - – anyways, it is something that has provided me with a constant output for my thoughts and a place where I can practice my skills. I’ve never really done it very pointedly for attention, or money, but rather simply to keep my thoughts flowing. I can’t even imagine how I’d start trying to make it a source of income and whether or not it would be worthwhile.

Biking vs Running

Still trying to get myself motivated up enough to get in a run, a few obstacles that I’m dealing with are -

-it’s really hot out

-not wanting to run at night / wouldn’t be able to sleep

-living in a location far from shops etc – makes it hard to run to a shop and get gatorade

-no recent practice etc

-laziness

-psychological / etc — people telling me running is bad for the knees

La Scala – instagram continued

At cafe la scala, walnut creek – - really full of people today. As continuation of previous post, I’ve really gotten more into Instagram, now have multiple family members on it taking pictures on a regular basis. What I’m liking about it, is that it provides an opportunity to quickly view what people are up to on a daily basis, sort of like a picture blog of a person’s daily activities. There is also an artistic aspect to it which is refreshing, giving you an opportunity to choose multiple frames of color that you can add to it, changing the style etc. What I think could really make it more interesting to some degree, would to expand the functionality, and give people an opportunity to add multiple plugins to the package itself. For example, you could download optional picture frames, or allow video clips in place of the a picture. On the other hand, what I like about it is it’s elegant simplicity — instead of having to go through the process of uploading the photos via usb, or even deal with any complex configuration, you can immediately have your pictures uploaded to both your instagram account and facebook/twitter etc, whatever. A big thing for me, is that it is simple, facebook offers a lot of information, but some of the features are a consistent pain in the ass, such as group requests, etc, which should automatically be turned off rather than vice-versa. Anyways, as I consider the idea of building communities etc, especially private/ small in a quick – easy way, I’m finding instagram to be extremely useful, as opposed to facebook which is public, and somewhat random rather than directed. Considering how easy it is to build your own group on instagram etc, I think that things like this will become preferable to larger “all encompassing’ solutions such as facebook etc.