Cracked Up Windshield

Winshield Chip

I was on the way to school the other day on I-8 going East. I was on the highway, and so was the other huge butt truck, which eventually kicked a small stone up on my windshield.

The chip is only a size of a quarter, plus it’s only in the lower left corner of my windshield so it is not really a distraction. I drove with that chip on for a few weeks, thinking it won’t get big anytime soon.

Somehow one weekend I woke up, went for groceries shopping after 2 days not driving on my car: There was a long crack coming out from one of the legs of the chip. The crack was about the length from my elbow to my wrist. Only two days, and it went that long. Guess it was some physics involved, hot weather, rain, what the heck ever, but yeah… I was so freaked out that I tried to make an appointment to get it fixed the very next day. I got it done for about $80. The guy was nice enough to not trick me in buying a brand new windshield.

Too bad that I forgot to take a picture of the crack, didnt have time to think about it.

Start of April

I started the month by dream walking my way out of the apartment naked.

Lamest joke ever!

Alright I don’t have any jokes for this April Fool’s, but I’m already tired of hearing them the whole freaking day, and I fell for every single one of them. Somehow I’m always the victim of all these jokes. From some light white lies, to some sensitive ones, to some hardcore stuff. And I freaking fell for every single one of them.

Next year I’m coming up with some awesome jokes so to tell to those idiots who don’t even know it’s the first of April. The joke will be so messed up that they’ll be inspired to make other jokes to trick other idiots.

Concept 1: Post-decisional Justification

Post-decisional Justifications example

See how happy I am while taking this dumb picture? To protect myself and my own image, my mind kinda has to make excuses to make sure I think that this is in fact not a bad picture. **This picture is for fun illustrating purpose only, is not a total application of the concept**

I just learned this interesting concept from my Management class. The concept is pretty much what your mind thinks after you make a decision.

If you have to choose between all the alternatives, after you make a decision, you might tend to:

1. Inflate quality of the selected option; forget or downplay rejected alternatives. To keep finding more evidence to prove that you have made the right choice, while unconsciously ignore evidence supporting the alternatives you rejected.

2. Protect your positive identity. Nobody wants to think that they’re wrong, ever. You would do stuff that will be able to prevent you and other people to think negatively about yourself.

These post-decision justifications are good once you want to feel good about yourself, but it could make the situation worse since you might be digging too far into your mistakes, and you don’t even know it.

Spring Break Coming Up

I’m taking my second Management test in a few hours., then IDS301 test on Thursday, and lastly my BA300 final exam on Saturday. The length of this BA300 course is only half a semester long, so that means that I’m almost half done with the semester! woohoo!

I dont have the money to really fly anywhere, or do any fancy travel because tickets are expensive in the breaks. I’ll just be driving around, probably to Vegas with my best friend.

Alright, I’m off to study a bit for the test now.

Lil Wayne – Rebirth

I just finished listening to his newest album, Rebirth, which is also called known as “Tha Carter IV”. Finish listening to an album to me is to listen to each song at least 5 times. To be honest, I’m slightly disappointed at it. I’m sure many many of his fans would be too.

He’s known for his uniqueness. From his voice, to his appearance, to all the scandals he’s been facing. He has the most addicting rap voice out there and it is totally screwed up in this album. Other than his voice, he put in all the rock-ish beats, like the auto-tuned drums, guitar. It’s quite annoying. Some of his tracks are still catchy, but most of them were big disappointments compared to his last ones from Tha Carter III.

Seems like he’s not even rapping anymore, he pretty much just sang, or “screamed.” Seems like he’s following Kanye’s 808s & Heartbreak, where he annoyingly sings instead of rap.

Furthermore, Lil Wayne is in jail now for having a loaded gun inside his tour bus, according to FOXNews. Not to mention Kanye’s “bright moment” at the VMA.

Geez, these 2 are among my favorite rappers, and they’re falling into a big dark pit.

Catching Up

A day off school last week didn’t seem to be a big deal at first, but now it is.

The thing is that most of my classes are in a sequence, like a big chain, if I miss a link, it’s super hard to get everything together. And I picked my busiest day of the week to miss as well.

I had to catch up with 4 classes I missed that day. First thing first, get the notes. Good thing I have friends in most of my classes, so it’s not a big deal. But it wouldn’t be so strange for me to ask some random classmate for notes. Then, if they’re nice enough and have some free time, my friends would go over the notes with me. Then I had to look up stuff from the book, but most of the time I won’t get everything from the lecture out of the book. Going to ask the professor if you get stuck on stuff would also be a great idea.

I’m finally caught up now though, I hope, after a week of trying. Well, midterms are coming up, no more skipping school.

Auto Shop

I wanted to change my oil so I went to an auto shop the other day. I don’t go to automobile shops that often, or any tire shops. I used to be doing all these stuff at home with a guy I was staying with. He was so nice and knowledgeable about cars that he was willing to give me advice on how to do stuff and helped me out with whatever. But since I moved down here to California, things start to get expensive because I don’t have a space and anyone else who can help me with my car.

Anyways, I chose this tire shop over the others because I received an ad from them in the mail. I often throw away ads, but this time I just accidentally read this one over and decided to check them out. What got my attention was the price, they said they would change my oil for $12. Thats a really really good deal. But when I went inside, I was dumb enough to let them persuade me to buy and replace a new oil filter for “better mileage and old cars need new filters.” I paid $128 for that thing. Well hope that helps in the long run.

But then they kept telling me to replace all the stuff in my car. First the hose, then the belt whatsoever. I dont have all that money. It sounded really expensive at first, but then figuring out I seemed to lose interest, they kept reducing the price. I finally decided to just keep my car as it is and tell them to stop trying.

So a bit of advice, people will try to rip you off. They make a living out of that, it’s their job to do so. And it’s your job to keep your money.

A Day Off School

I had sth to take care of on Tuesday, so I decided to take my first day off school for this semester. I’m a kind of person that always show up to class. I do take days off once in a while, or partially taking a day off, but not yet for this semester, at least til last Monday.

A day without school seems fine, I asked a few of my friends to take notes for me. Like mentioned in some of my previous posts, I only take 1 class on Mon and Wed, while 4 on Tue and Thu. I came back on Thursday and got the notes from my friends, but it was hard to understand as hell.

I consider myself smart haha. And I always think that I can figure things out by myself without much help. I thought this time I can just simply read the book and understand what I missed earlier. But no, haha heck no. I did scan through the book a bit, but when I went to school today and listened to the lecture, it was so freaking confusing. I sat in class for about 1h30min, and could not understand anything at all! I do feel bad now, I “just realize” that classes are getting way way harder.

Next time, no more taking time off school for no reason, I’ll also need to ask for help from friends or use office hours from instructors to get what I missed back.

Cosmetic Surgeries

I’m taking 6 classes this semester, 5 of them are upper division business classes, the other one is a writing class. This one is not among my favorites, but it’s kinda interesting once I pay attention haha.

We just finished a topic on cosmetic surgeries. This class is not designed to set your mind on a topic, or to change it, it’s supposed to enhance your knowledge and your analysis on a topic. I think I’m ready to go out there and argue more about what I think about this issues now.

According to Articlebase.com, the latest ASAPS report states that:

· Breast augmentation is up by 9%, and breast lift is up by 23%

· Women had 91% of cosmetic procedures

· The number of procedures performed on men was nearly 1 million

· Surgical procedures made up almost 19% of the total procedures with nonsurgical procedures comprising 81%

· Since 1997, surgical procedures have increased by 119% and nonsurgical procedures by 726%

· The top five surgical procedures were (in descending order): liposuction, breast augmentation, blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery), rhinoplasty (nose surgery), and abominoplasty (tummy tuck)

· The top five nonsurgical procedures were: BOTOX, laser hair removal, hyaluronic acid

treatments, microdermabrasion, and chemical peels

· The top five procedures for men were: liposuction, rhinoplasty, blepharoplasty, male breast reduction, and facelift

· 83.4% of breast augmentation procedures were completed with saline implants, and the remaining 16.6% chose silicone

· Patients between age 35 and 50 accounted for the majority of cosmetic procedures at 47% of the total

Reading all the article in class, the most surprising was that the beauty issue is not the concern for women anymore, it’s also growing in men for various reasons.

The Start of Business Magazines

I spent a few hours yesterday looking at business magazines online. My inspiration was from the stock game that I mentioned in my earlier entry,  Market Madness, on SmartMoney. So after speding some hours on the game, I spent some more reading the articles on that website. Then I found out that they even have magazines coming out every 2 weeks. I wanted to subscribe for it, but then I didn’t want to spend the money yet, not after trying the magazine out. So I searched for some more Business magazines and looked to see if they have free trials. I went onto Business Week, then Forbes, then Business Time, and Fortune, just all the famous business publishers. All of them, except for Fortune, have free trial for a few issues, I dont have to pay anything and just simple cancel my payment if I dont want it, and keep my free issue. Sweet huh.

Forbes

Time

Business Week

I’m actually hoping to get a bit smarter, business smart, money smart, people smart after reading the magazines. Hopefully I’ll like it enough and find myself enough reading time to subscribe for a whole year.