The Road Less Traveled

It is important to be passionate about a job; working 30-40 years in a job that drives a person insane will ruin them and wreck the relationships of the people who live and work around them. If that person is always irritable and depressed because of their job, the people around them start to feel the effects of negative atmosphere. It poisons the work place and decreases the productivity of everyone there. On the other hand, people who enjoy their job will work hard at it and be in a better mood which will make the workplace more positive. At my work place, it is noticeable who enjoys their job and who regrets getting up every morning to go to work. Some people there have worked at the store for the last 25 years and they still enjoy what they do. Others, however, can barely last more than a few months. Most employees do not work in their dream job but rather a job that they merely tolerate and anticipate their next vacation time. If I had to spend the next 40 years working at a grocery store stocking shelves, I could not stand it. Eventually I would become numb and depressed with this insignificant work. Next year I plan on studying in the University of Calgary Engineering department to become a computer engineer or software developer. Working with computers is something I enjoy and would enjoy for the rest of my working years. Computers are always developing and there are always new challenges to solve. Working in a career that has new challenges and is constantly changing keeps the workplace interesting and fresh for a long lasting career.

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The Apple notebooks are completely overprice and a waste of money, especially the 13-inch Macbook Pro with the 2.3 GHz Intel i5 Duel Core processor. This is the base notebook of the pro series that is probably the minimum that would be necessary for daily computer use. Furthermore, this notebook starts at a ridiculous price of $1,249 and only goes up exponentially from there. The base components are pathetic and almost require upgrading but with each important upgrade comes with a absurd price while the same upgrade component can be bought independently from a different company for around one forth the price. But not only is it expensive but they make it extremely difficult to open to access the parts so people don't upgrade it themselves and allow themselves to be gorged by Apple. It is almost a must to upgrade the hard drive to at least 500 GB, this feature comes standard on most notebooks above $1,000. Comparing this Macbook Pro to other similar notebooks with around the same performance, the ASUS U41JF-A1 has all the superior internal parts, including the NVIDIA Optimus system which gives it a 3 hour more battery life than the Macbook Pro. All these upgrades and it is $500 less than the Mac! Apple is only rated #4 for reliability and the warranty costs $280 dollars, but compare this to Asus which is ranked #1 for reliability and include the warranty in the price. Though some people prefer the Apple operating system in my opinion it is not worth the extra $500; even if one has a dislike for windows they can switch over to Linux for free to an operating system that will never get a virus. Next time you think about getting a notebook don't get a Macbook without first looking at the better options.

Perception is Everything

The presentation by Beau Otto is about how us as humans perceive the world and about the factors that can influence it. There are other influences that can change how we see something, such as previous experiences which can affect how one can few circumstances. Two different people might view the same thing differently and can react completely differently to the same situation. Different media news sources can completely change ones views on the world, reading Middle Eastern news sources like Al Jazeera or Russian news like Russia Today compared to a USA news source like Fox which has a different slant. Each news source has a different bias on the same news story, such as the Libyan civil war where Al Jazeera reports on the suffering of the people, Russia Today reports against the US and NATO involvement while Fox does not support the money going to the war. Listening to only one news source can change how one can perceive world events, everything has bias but if someone only listens to one corporation's view point then that is how they will view the world events. It is like when Beau Otto took the same colours and put them on a different backgrounds, the same event can look different depending on how one views it. Colours are perceived differently when they are on a white background compared to a black one, bias can have the same effect on things such as the news. Different culture backgrounds will also affect on how people view different things. One race might consider something acceptable while another does not, Otto said "no one is an outside observer of nature" therefore no one group can set the standard of what is right or wrong. When Western cultures looks at some Middle Eastern cultures we sometimes see somethings as almost "barbaric", like when they force the women to wear a Burqa. But could it not be considered racist to judge another culture by our own? Can one apply our own culture to another and assume ours it right while a woman from the Middle East might look at us as forcing women to dress a certain way and wear certain popular styles. Whether or not one is more right or better than the other I don't know but each should be judged on their own accord using their own morels. On each background the same colour might seem different, for Western culture we might see it as bad but with their culture whether or not they view it as good they should be the ones deciding what to do and not us.