Awesome begot Awesome

Apparently Woot! had their 5th birthday yesterday, and to celebrate it a company called ChronoShark (random watch-a-day deal site) sent Woot a marching band and cupcakes:



How awesome is that?

Now the question is would the company that you work for do that, or get that from a rival? Probably not, you know why? Because companies have decided that they are in business to make money and not have fun. Woot on the other hand doesn't take things too seriously and has awesomely funny jokes and great deals. They enjoy making their money. People see that, they like it, and they treat Woot better for it.

Isn't that how we should work and live? I guess another word for it is karma, but I like the term "Awesome begot Awesome". We spend too much time just getting by and not trying to go above and beyond, we need to do that. And not to make quarterly profit totals or whatever cooperate BS companies have, we need to do it to make the world awesome. Woot does it, Chipotle does it, the business model works.

You say Hammer, I say...

Anybody who is anybody at my work uses a yellow legal pad when they take notes. So not to be one to miss out on a trend I too use yellow legal pads (actually, I think it is more of a case that in the office supplies we only have yellow legal pads, but whatever). But I don't like getting a new pad when I use up an old one, instead I like to find and use pads that someone else has started to use and then abandon it. And that is rather easy to do here since there are a couple of kids that come to work with their parents once in a awhile. Usually I can find a pad that has the first couple of pages drawn on and the rest of the pad ready for my more sophisticated notes (i.e. my Master's level doodles during meetings).

In one of the pads that I started to use I flipped through first first couple pages of drawings to find a building list: a Nail, then a picture of a nail, a Board, then a picture of a plank of wood, then:
That's right, a Wamer. I believe that wamer describes to function of the tool way more than hammer. I propose that we use the name wamer from now on.

Normal Plushies and Etsy Stores

My wife, Nicole, has always been the crafty type. When we were dating (if you would call it that... we didn't actually go on that many dates) she would make candles, clothes, and wrapping paper out of candy wrappers. When we got married she continued on her crafty ways with making Christmas cards, knitting, and sewing pirate costumes. Now that we have a house she has found new hobbies to add to the list. Stained glass, very fancy Renaissance dresses, and making soft toys.

Recently though she has been working over time with the crafts, the reason is that she has made an Etsy store and people are actually buying the things that she is making. The name of the store is Nausicaa Distribution and it features things that are statistics (and math) related. So far the most popular item is the Normal Distribution Plushie.

She has been so successful with the store that she has made enough money to buy a new table to make stained glass on, and even buy her own domain NausicaaDistribution.com. Last night I sat down and fixed up her web page so that it looks all pretty, well, at least for Firefox users (my rigorous testing was of me making sure it looked fine on my browser).

If you have a minute go check her store out, the audience is kinda specific (those that like cute and statistical things), but maybe you will fall in love with math all over again.

2 smart 4 knives. (or the padded path to doom)

Just a reminder about banning guns: if we ban guns we will just ban knives next (because criminals will just use them instead). And we aren't just talking about big knives but I also mean steak knives. It sounds stupid but England is showing us our society without guns:

"As knife crime remains a problem in many of our towns and cities, it beggars belief that so many traders are still prepared to sell potentially lethal weapons to children," said Ron Gainsford, chief executive of the Trading Standards Institute (TSI).

...

Knives have become a status symbol among some young people and the increase in searching by police officers means some young people dash into shops to buy knives for "instant arming".

article

Yeah.

How about we just hold our children accountable and make them responsible. It is the child that is babied his whole life that utterly fails when grown up, the same is true for societies.