Pcman.net

Randy Pausch, a computer science professor whose "last lecture" about facing terminal cancer became an internet sensation and a best-selling book has passed away at 47. Pausch was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer in September 2006. His popular last lecture at Carnegie Mellon University in September 2007 garnered international attention and was viewed by millions on the internet. Here is a link to his last lecture at CMU on Youtube.

Ready? Let’s begin……
 

Lesson 1:

A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower, when the doorbell rings.

The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs.

When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next-door neighbor.

Before she says a word, Bob says, ‘I’ll give you $800 to drop that towel.’

After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob, after a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 and leaves.

The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs.

When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks, ‘Who was that?’

‘It was Bob the next door neighbor,’ she replies.

‘Great,’ the husband says, ‘did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?’

Moral of the story:

If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.

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A buddy and I went for a motorcycle ride to see the flight 93 memorial today. I must say it is something you should go and see as well as pay your respects to those that lost their lives. It will most certainly refocus your support on the war on terror in this world.

Ride Statistics:

Miles=280

Total Time=7:16

Time Moving=5:37

Time Not Moving=1:39

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(I don’t know the origin of this story but I did like it.)

I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy. But I had never had a mentally handicapped employee and wasn’t sure I wanted one. I wasn’t sure how my customers would react to Stevie.

He was short, a little dumpy with the smooth facial features and thick-tongued speech of Downs Syndrome. I wasn’t worried about most of my trucker customers because truckers don’t generally care who buses tables as long as the meatloaf platter is good and the pies are homemade.

The four-wheeler drivers were the ones who concerned me; the mouthy college kids traveling to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded “truck stop germ” the pairs of white-shirted business men on expense accounts who think every truck stop waitress wants to be flirted with. I knew those people would be uncomfortable around Stevie so I closely watched him for the first few weeks.

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Bill Hill is one of my favorite designers and developers and a true joy to hear speak. Check out this video of his explanation of the most important operating system. You can also download the video from here.

I read an interesting article about a former Apple and Microsoft executive named Linda Stone. She has coined the phrase for an epidemic she identified as continuous partial attention. I have thought about this situation before now but she seems to think it is a great concern for our society and on an epidemic scale. I must say I tend to agree. I mean if you really think about all of the Blackberrries, email, instant messaging, cell phones, and the hundreds of other distractions we have every day you must wonder how much attention you have to give to each item you are working on. Are we really ever giving any task or project full attention? I don’t think so and I think that is why everyone feels that they are always falling behind and unable to acheive what seems like simple goals. They are simple tasks, we are just working on them all at the same time. I once thought having all of this connectivity and availability made us perform better but looking back on it all I believe we have negated a very powerful tool. The ability to focus! What do you think?

If not then you need to spend a few minutes reading this very inspiring story and watching the video.
From ESPN.com:

It took four minutes. Four measly minutes for high school senior Jason McElwain to morph from a relatively unknown student manager of the Greece Athena basketball team into a nationwide inspiration.

In those 240 seconds, the 5-foot-6 kid with autism, in his first-ever appearance in a high school game, scored 20 points and tied a school record with six 3-pointers. The grainy video clip of his jaw-dropping accomplishment — and the pandemonium that ensued in the gym — has made its way from Greece Athena in Rochester, N.Y., to “Good Morning America,” “SportsCenter” and CNN. And as much as it tugs at the emotions of sports fans all across the country, its most significant impact might be felt within the autism community, where doctors, parents and educators are still buzzing about what this all could mean for the treatment of this disease.