2010 - Page 3 of 19 - Tendenci - The Open Source AMS Blog

2010-11-26

BCS Controversy Catchup in College Football

Bowl Championship Series

Our typical fun Friday posts take on subjects not often mentioned here on the Schipul Blog, and I am proud to introduce College Football into the mix.

December has always been Bowl season in college football. More recently, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has brought both excitement and controversy into the college football landscape. Here’s some brief information to catch you up to speed on college football bowl games:

The 1902 Rose Bowl between Michigan and Stanford was the 1st Bowl game
The 2009-2010 season saw 34 different Bowl games, matching 68 of the 120 Division 1 teams
The Bowl Championship series began in 1998 with the Rose, Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta bowls
The BCS bowls match the #1 and #2 teams together, along with other conference champions
Recently (2006), the BCS has added a 5th game, the Championship game, to allow more teams into BCS games
The BCS process has been under much scrutiny every year

That final point is where I’d like to focus in on. You might assume that if the BCS contains 5 games, that the Top 10 teams at the end of the season would participate in the BCS games. This has in fact never been the case. The BCS teams are made up of the #1 and #2 teams in the country, along with the conference champions from the:

Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)
Big XII Conference
Big East Conference
Big Ten Conference
Pac 10 Conference
Southeastern Conference (SEC)

The additional spots are made up of other top teams in the country, chosen at the selection process. Top teams in the country that are not in one of these big six conferences typically have a much harder time making it into the BCS games (except Notre Dame, who has a special guarantee agreement if they finish in the Top 8 of the BCS rankings).

The BCS rankings are made up of 2 polls and an average 6 computer rankings. Currently the 2 polls are the USA Today/ESPN Coaches Poll and Harris Poll (no link, because it’s a mystery why this poll is even used). The AP Poll requested to be removed from the BCS in 2004 amidst controversy of rankings in the 2003 season. This was just the beginning of controversy in the BCS. Below, I recap some of the controversy in the short history of the BCS.

1998 – #3 Kansas State was left out in the cold because of a loss to Texas A&M in the Big XII Conference championship (a great overtime win). Not all conferences play championship games, and if Kansas State did not have to play in this game, they would have been undefeated and would have very likely would have played Tennessee for the National Championship.

1999 – With only two undefeated teams, the BCS correctly chose Florida State to play Virginia Tech. Not too tricky.

2000 – Oklahoma was the only undefeated team, and Florida State was chosen as the best team with one loss, despite it’s loss coming to Miami, another one-beaten team who’s loss came to Washington, the third one-beaten. Florida State’s Strength of Schedule (combined record of opponents + some math) boosted them in the BCS rankings. Strength of Schedule (SOS) continues to be a key element in the computer portion of the BCS rankings.

2001 – While there wasn’t any controversy in the #1 and #2 selections, a 3-loss LSU team (from the SEC) defeated a 1-loss Illinois team from the Big Ten. This begins what will become the dominance of SEC teams in BCS games.

2002 – Again, a clear Championship game between undefeated Miami and Ohio State (a controversial double-overtime game). This year, Florida State was the ACC champion, despite having 4 losses. This begins the ACC’s separation from the other conferences as true college football powers.

2003 – Despite being #1 in both of the human polls (Coaches poll and AP poll), USC (of the Pac 10) was #3 in the BCS rankings and was left out of the National Championship game. The Coaches poll was contractually obligated to award LSU as the national champ after their victory over OU. The AP poll gave their championship to USC, who had a great victory over Michigan in the Rose bowl. This was part of the seed that prompted the AP poll to opt out of being used by the BCS.

2004 – Four teams finished the regular season undefeated. USC and OU played for the championship, while Auburn (from the SEC) was left out. The fourth team, Utah, is in the Mountain West conference, which is not one of the big six used by the BCS. This fact, combined with their SOS, prevented them from being selected in the top 2. This denial to non-major conference teams continues today. Utah won their game easily against the 3-loss Big East champ Pitt. The Big East also began to slide just like the ACC in 2002.

2005 – Texas defeated USC in a fantastic game of the only two undefeated teams. While no controversy, the selection of two of two undefeated teams doesn’t take a fancy formula. Florida State, with 4 losses, becomes the lowest ranked team (#22) to play in a BCS game, while 1-loss Oregon (#5) did not get a BCS bowl bid.

2006 – While there were two undefeated teams, only one of them (Ohio State) played in the championship game. Boise State of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), who went on to win their bowl game and finish undefeated, was ranked 8th behind two teams each with two losses (LSU and USC). This continued the trend since 2004 of not showing much respect to non-major conference teams that go undefeated.

2007 – The next to last week of BCS rankings had Missouri and West Virginia in the #1 and #2 spots, two surprises for the season, though both teams lost their final games to then drop out of the top spots. A 2-loss LSU team defeated 1-loss Ohio State, while undefeated Hawaii was only ever ranked as high as #10. It should be noted that Hawaii was crushed by Georgia in their bowl game.

2008 – An undefeated Boise State team and an undefeated Utah team both finished undefeated and in the Top 10 of the BCS, though neither team played for a national championship. Boise did not even play in a BCS game, while again a 4-loss ACC team was given an automatic bid.

2009 – Again, an undefeated Boise State and an undefeated TCU (#6 and #4), where not allowed in the championship game. This was probably a good decision, since there were other undefeated teams. Sadly, Boise and TCU were forced to play each other, which prevented them from showing the nation how we truly stack up against one another.

2010 – Will Boise State and TCU still be left on the outside looking in? Only time will tell.

Why is this such a big deal? At the heart of the BCS is money, and lots of it. Nicholas Bakalar of the NY Times took on this issue in 2009, highlighting the drastic difference in BCS game payouts compared to other bowl games. ESPN recently signed a $500 million 4-year deal to own the rights to the 5 BCS games. Michael Smith of the Sports Business Journal covers in detail the split of the money to the football conferences from the BCS pool of fund.

Now, some of you may argue that the BCS does work, since it has helped to make some tough decisions over the past 12 years. I’ll leave you to make your case in the comments below.

2010-11-26

And All You Touch and All You See Is All Your Life Will Ever Be

When I was around 12 years old I was given a Rockets jersey from my parents. And cried when I got it. I cried because we lived in Minnesota and my parents told me I could wear my new jersey at my new school, in our new house in Houston.

My entire 12 years had been spent in Minnesota and I hadn’t moved since I really started going to school and making friends. The thought of changing schools seemed like the end of the world and I had no idea what existed outside of our neighborhood in Woodburry. Moving to Houston was weird, new, and uncomfortable… as many good things tend to start. And like those same different, uncomfortable things tend to resolve, I wouldn’t change a thing.

I didn’t realize it then, but that was the start of an important life lesson for me. I’ve come to see more and more how important it is to experience new things in new places. While I’m not ready to up and move again just to go somewhere new, I do try to make the most of the places I get to go and not pass up opportunities that arise. Brooke and I have taken our fair share of trips lately and have done our best to make the most of our time in new cities and find ways to get off the beaten path.

Flying in to Washington, D.C. late the night before a wedding we were going to in Williamsburg, VA gave us a chance to spend a little time in our nation’s capital. Squeezing in a trip to Arlington National Cemetery was hard (and different for me since I’m a bit uncomfortable around cemeteries) but it gave Brooke the chance to see her grandmother’s picture in a memorial to the women nurses of WWII and gave me a chance to wait around for my favorite picture from the trip. Totally worth it.

Getting up to take photos at the Houston Zoo at 7:00am on a Saturday was definitely difficult (and a bit uncomfortable), but ended up being a great experience. Watching a lion walk out to start his day and hearing and feeling his roar as a wake up call to the zoo was something to remember.

When taking a trip to New Orleans, it’s easy to stay around the center of town, eating and drinking with the tourists. With a little desire to do something different though, and a good list of recommendations from someone who knows better, you can experience New Orleans in a whole new way. Hand grenades on Bourbon Street and lunch at the Hard Rock are fine but a local beer at Cooter Brown’s and a night around a candle light piano at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar are the experiences I will remember.

The title of this post is from the Pink Floyd song “Breathe“. It can come off sort of negative at first, especially if you don’t share my same school of thought. To me though, it means that life is what you make it. It can be whatever you want it to be and is totally up to you and those experiences. It’s because I was forced to move from Minnesota and forced out of my comfort zone that I started to see how important new experiences are and probably why I interperate “Breathe” like I do. And for that, I am thankful.

homepage post photo courtesy of Dummications

2010-11-25

Thankful for my Dad’s Leica M3

This post was very hard for me to write, as delegated to me by Katie, for her 30 days of thanks blog theme. Sometimes it takes someone like Katie to push us to put in writing what we know in our heart. And that was why this post was so hard.

I am thankful for many many things. First would have to be Rachel, my wife, in our 20th year of marriage. My 3 kids are a true blessing. I am thankful for the city Houston which I moved to after college with my then young family in hopes of finding a job. I am even thankful for people that hosed me over because I learned from those experiences, and got back up. I am thankful for my extended family and friends who have supported me in my crazy journey starting a company 13 years ago. I am thankful for the US Army, spending a lot of time in my formative years on bases in the US and Germany. And I can’t even begin to say how thankful I am for the people I get to work with. But all of those blessings are more than I can handle writing about right now. Instead I want to write about a camera.

I am thankful for my Dad’s Leica M3. You see, it wasn’t always this way. For years, the six of us kids were annoyed by my Father’s camera. I come from a family of hard workers and the story I was told was that my father got a fake ID at the age of 14 to take a job as a photographer for the Bridgeport Post. Growing up my Father always had a camera. So like all children, the six of us rebelled and went the other direction. We groaned when called for a family picture at Christmas, and gave him a hard time about it.

In college I didn’t even own a camera (I can hear the Facebook generation groaning) and there were no cell phones to snap pics either (yes, I am old as dirt apparently). We did buy disposable cameras occasionally to get pictures once we had children. But the device was to record an event, and the subject matter was the little people (who I thought then, and still think are AWESOME). I wanted to remember the moment. Running around the tree in the back yard in the middle of a terrible thunder storm just for fun. Laughing uncontrollably soaked to the bone and the dog staring at us like we had finally COMPLETELY lost it. That was what cameras were for, to record the event.

Then a funny thing happened. I was at the Emerging Technologies conference in 2006 in San Diego and went to visit family just north of the city. We stopped by a winery and I took a photo of a kid kicking a football using a little Nikon Coolpix S1. This photo.

It’s not the most amazing photo. But it was the first time my brain said “hey, this is a cool image so try to capture it.” It was the first time I took an image for the sake of CREATING SOMETHING. And I liked it. It also helped that Flickr was talked about a lot that year at eTech and I found a community of photographers who loved to help.

Flickr, and that photo, made me finally realize why my Father enjoyed photography. Sure his snap shots were just like all the rest of our snap shots. Just that: snap shots. But occasionally he shot to create something beautiful. Then memories came back to me of helping him matt and crop (you did this with a paper cutter) images for a photography contest he had entered when I was a young man.

Because our company had a sizable American Express bill, in 2006 I got a Canon Digital Rebel XT using Amex points at no cost. Then the real photography journey began, and I found I really enjoyed it. I learned that a photographer’s job is to make people look good. Digital photography in particular is very forgiving and lets you take a few shots to be sure your subject is shown in the best possible way.

My Father didn’t talk a lot. I understand that now. When I was a young child he was enlisted and served proudly in Vietnam. We would always stop by the POW/MIA booth in DC. And his photos of the memorial were the source of several award winning photos he took. I don’t have those photos, but I remember them. He went on to get a degree, go to Medical School, reenlist in the Army and eventually retire as an LTC. Then teach at OU and save lives as a Perinatologist. I can’t even begin to say how proud I am of my Father.

Later that year, in 2006, I took our family down to Dickens on the Strand in Galveston. After that we stopped by the beach and I took this photo of my three kids, which now has over 30,000 views on flickr.

Unfortunately I never got a chance to talk to my Father about photography. I started photography in 2006, at a time when he was teaching at a medical school in Dominica. The Islands are a long way away. He passed away suddenly a few days after the above photo was taken. He never saw it.

While in Dominica I found these photos on his last camera.

From Dominica

From Ireland

Those are his photos and I think the man had a great eye. He loved his Leica M3. And I had no idea what it was. All of those years.

What am I thankful for? I am thankful for many many wonderful people in my life. And I am very thankful for my amazing parents. And I am thankful my Mom entrusted me with my Dad’s Leica M3. Thank you Mom and Dad!

2010-11-24

DrupalCamp ATX Recap from the Schipulites

Appropriately enough for this month of thanks and lessons learned, Schipul generously sent nine employees to DrupalCamp in Austin last week. Speakers and attendees came from nearby and far away to get together and talk about all things Drupal for two days. We all returned to Houston exhausted but educated, and we’re excited to share some of the lessons we learned over the weekend.

From David:

‘Thanks to Ezra Gildesgame, I learned a lot about custom module development, including creating my first custom module right after his presentation. Using Drupal’s hooks system to tie my module into things like form redirection on submission.

Quite a blast, and exponentially better than the previous year. A lot of thanks to Four Kitchens for killing it this year.â€

From JMO:

Jason Smith’s presentation on Integrating Third-party Data was a great look at tools to use when mixing Drupal with other web systems. Kieran Lal really motivated the group with his presentation on Drupal in Enterprise by showing the power and reach of Drupal. And in Reuse with Drupal Features, Chris Chistensen shared the power of using Features and version control to save time and energy in development and in deploying code for Drupal sites.

From Caitlin:

I was inspired by Tom McCracken (@levelten_tom)’s presentation on building online users. It’s important to be a leader in your niche by innovation and creating great content. My favorite quotes:

Being a leader is: 1. being the best you can in your niche, 2. maximizing your returns, 3. maximizing good will

“Great companies are great at innovating.” “The software’s not done until the last user’s dead”

“CMSes transform subject matter experts into publishers.”

The slideshare presentation is available here.

From Al:

‘There’s always a party when Coke is around.â€

Your brand is what people think, how they feel and what they are saying about you and your products.

From Katrina:

I basically learned a little bit about a lot of things. I was given a great starting point on how to begin to understand things like Jquery, PHP, etc.

I also learned about some processes that we can implement in order to streamline our Drupal process for both ourselves and our clients. I learned about some awesome modules that will knock my clients’ socks off. And I learned that figuring out Lone Star riddles while drunk is hard.

From Derek:

DrupalCamp was great and totally worth going for me. I became a lot more familiar with PHP from the 10 Themeing Techniques session (strings, arrays, objects, etc.). I still don’t think I can write them but definitely have a lot better understanding for editing and problem solving.

The other session I enjoyed, and was most helpful for me as a project manager, was How to Get Early Estimates Right. It really broke it down from estimating by feature, how to stay on track and why it is so important.

From Melissa:

Here are a few things I learned about:

Drupal has a Drag ‘n’ Drop Upload module that allows users to drag images and files from the desktop or a folder into the body area of the WYSIWYG while editing a content page. This gives users another easy option for adding these to a page. Here’s the Drupal Module info and download page: https://www.drupal.org/project/dragndrop_uploads. Kinda neat.

Kate Broussard, web developer for the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services at University of Texas and speaker for the session Developing for Usability, pointed out how she uses simplified themes and custom blocks based on roles to make administering sites easier for the foreign language professors. The clean admin theme she uses is Rubik. Kind of neat look at how to keep things simple for admins that are either not tech-savvy or do not have a lot of time to spend clicking around to find things.

As a first-time attendee, I was really impressed by the strength of the Drupal community. This is one of the major selling points for Drupal as compared to other content management systems, and it was exciting and inspiring to see it in action. My favorite session was Tom McCracken‘s Building Web Leaders with Drupal. He discussed how we can leverage Drupal to turn people who are already experts in their niche into publishers, and what else is the internet really for?

I’ve compiled as many relevant links as I could find, including lots of the presentations that were given, on Delicious under the drupalatx tag. You can also relive the weekend via the #drupalatx hashtag on Twitter. Geek out, guys.

2010-11-24

Live Everyday Like It Is PlasmaCar Race Day

My son Z-Man turns 7 today. SEVEN! Time moves so quickly with little ones. One of my goals in life is to stay as present as possible, to absorb each moment of life as it happens’ especially when it comes to familyâ€¦ especially when it comes to my guys.Z-Man is such a great inspiration for living in the moment. He still lives in a world where magic happens’ where Santa is real. He is just now sorting out that Scooby-Doo is imagined and MythBusters is true.

Z-Man lives his life fully present and in the NOW. Things that are sad saturate him’ and then in 10 minutes’ something that’s funny tickles him to his funny bone. He lives with excitement for almost everything (the only thing that deflates his sails is putting away clean clothes.) He races to get the mail, zooms to brush teeth, zips out the door to go ride his bike. Everything is adventure’ everything is worth getting exciting about.

We have a Thanksgiving Day Tradition here at the Schipul Office. We munch, we mingle, we visit with family, and thenâ€¦ we race. We race PlasmaCars in the parking garageâ€¦ younger and olderâ€¦ we race. And Z-Man, bless him, he believes we race every day. He has asked me at dinner, ‘Did you race the cars today?â€ He gets super excited when he comes to visit me at work and asks me every time, ‘Where are the racing cars?â€ As many times as I tell him we only race on Thanksgiving’ he has believed we race all the time.

Todayâ€¦ today is the dayâ€¦ today we race! And Z-Man has finally gotten it down that we don’t race every day. So today, he thinks we are racing just for his birthday! He popped his head into our dark room this morning before 5AM and quietly snuck back to his bed only to happily emerge at 6:23 exclaiming, ‘Today is my BIRTHDAY!â€

And I am inspiredâ€¦ what would it be like to live my life with that much excitement- to cherish each moment and the magic in it.

Z-Man teaches to me to live each day like its PlasmaCar Race Day.

Happy Birthday Sonâ€¦ you are blessing and a treasure and a joy.
My life is richer because you are in it.

2010-11-23

Youth is Wasted on the Young

Some facts about dear old dad

He came from Mexico the legitimate way
Found work
Raised a family
Became an entrepreneur
Has worked for himself for over 20 years
Paid off his home in 5 years
Currently in 0% personal debt

One of my many stories

When I was younger my dad would circle the property around his business every chance he had. If we went to the movies, the grocery store, to visit family or friends; he’d always find away to reroute our way home just to get a glimpse of his business. He did this a lot, to say the least.

When I was 6, I asked him; why are we always coming back here. You do this all the time and it takes forever to go home. He looked at me proud; as though he was glad I asked the question, but not fully prepared to benefit from the answer.

‘This is my business and if I don’t look after it, no one will.â€

This message along with the many others helped shape my perception of this world. At the age of 6, responsibilities were but a mere blip on my radar. My father made sure to remedy this.

Everyone in this world is born into a debt of responsibility. The sooner I learned this lesson the sooner life got a lot easier. I love listening to my father and those that came before me. [Don’t tell him I said that].

Somewhere between elementary and the graduating of college my father lectured me on his experiences with finances, relationships, time , and dreams. My father makes bold statements about what I should do with my life.

Ironically it was not the bold statements that taught me anything. It’s the stories he tells about his experiences. The memories that he illustrates with such detail. It’s easy to take scenarios that he builds so well and deduce my own lesson.

It’s unfortunate that many lessons are learned without the time to apply them.

My father has given me the ability to start from where he currently is in his life. He’s given me time, which until now I thought was impossible to give.

When I was younger my father got me to do things by teaching me. 22 years later he’s still getting me to do things by inspiring me.

“Youth is wasted on the young” — George Bernard Shaw

2010-11-22

I let go of my bananas!

I have definitely had my share of troubling experiences in life. But don’t worry, I won’t whine about the bumpy roads my life has traveled. My stories are a lot like everyone else’s; relationship problems, troubling times at work (yes, even at Schipul), financial struggles, etc.

I realized that I was extremely unhappy and it was showing, big time. I had a horribly negative attitude towards everyone in my life, including my family. I didn’t want to be around people and they surely didn’t want to be around me.

One day I was in the book store just browsing when I came across a book called Letting Go of Your Bananas by Dr. Daniel T. Drubin. The title grabbed my attention and actually made me laugh. It’s a short paperback, only 119 pages. I like reading those kinds of books so I bought it.

Of course the book is full of motivational, “You can do it!“, type of references. But it’s also insightful and it just spoke to me. By “letting go of your bananas”, the author means letting go of everything negative in your life, anything that limits you from personal growth. On the second page of the book, he writes,

“If we refuse to let go of the things or people that hold us back, life starts to rot and then stink. The only way to go beyond where you are in your life is by being willing to let go of the things, people, habits, and beliefs that keep you where you are instead of where you want to be.”

That spoke volumes to me. As I continued to read the book, I made a list of all of my rotten bananas. They ranged from personal habits to people that I considered to be very good friends. I started working on myself, my attitude, and my life in general. I broke off relationships that brought negativity in my life and focused on ones that were positive. I got a better attitude at work. I even went to counseling and got my personal life under control. Of course my life is far from perfect but I’m definitely on a better path after reading the book.

I’ll leave you with this, from the last chapter of the book, 9 guidelines for taking charge of the rest of your life:

Think one step ahead and always have a back up plan for whatever you are doing: don’t put all of your plans in one basket. Challenges in life can strengthen your resolve and build your character, so be flexible when the situation calls for resilience and steadfast when an obstacle is in your path.
Understand and effectively utilize the power of your personal affirmations and self-talk. The two most important words of personal power are “I am”.
Be childlike in your willingness to accept no as an answer. Be deliberate about what you want and when confronted with a no, dig in and totally invest yourself in the attainment of your goals.
Live the principles of TELL – Teaching, Earning, Laughing and Learning. When you work toward earning a living as well as earning the admiration and respect of others, you improve your life.
Always deliver more than you promise. When you live up to your word and then give more of yourself than even expected, you elevate yourself and how others view you.
When given the choice regarding how to think and behave, always choose limitless over limited. When you think in limitless terms, you expand your potential.
With a dramatic need for speed, decide to break the speed barrier for changing your life. Comfort is not necessarily your friend.
Become more purposeful in your thoughts, actions and attitudes. To live a more meaningful life, there is no substitute for purity of purpose.
Eliminate the eighth day of the week: “Someday”. By procrastinating and putting off until Someday the things that need to be done, you restrict your growth and diminish your personal potential. Do it now.

2010-11-20

Living Debt Free!

Living debt free!? What is that!? Yeah, that’s what I said 2 years ago. That is until I found the man with the plan, Dave Ramsey. Dave teaches you three basic principles:

Give
Save your Money
Pay off your debt

You can sum it up in one of his famous quotes, “Live like no one else so you can live like no one else!”.

What does that mean? If you want to keep up with the Johnson’s you’ll need to stop impulsively buying stuff you can’t afford, stop charging your life to a credit card, and start acting your own wage. Don’t go out and buy an iPad because your overly in-debt friend is waving his illustrious gadget in front of your face. Save the money up and buy it cash. A year later you’ll be the person going to all the happy hours and getting the good cocktails while your friend sips a Rob Roy.

I am thankful for life without debt (almost without debt i’m almost debt free!). I have less stress, security, and I know that I will retire comfortably. Every time I look at my savings account I feel AWESOME! Statistics show that over 90% of all successful people have no debt. Look at companies like Google and Apple, they are debt Free! Why can Apple spend a ton on R&D and release quality products the way THEY want to? Easy, they don’t have investors telling them what to do. They have FINANCIAL FREEDOM! Remember that you are a slave to your debt.

It’s an easy concept. Spend less and save more. So why is it so hard to do? It takes blood, sweat, and tears. It takes discipline to live like no one else but the rewards are life changing. Imagine your financials looking like this:

Checking account: $10,000+
Savings account: $50,000+
Investments: $150,000+

Next time your house air conditioner takes a dive off the Grand Canyon the $5,000 dollar bill won’t haunt you like the poltergeist. You will stand up on your high chair and yell GOT IT while wiping the chip right off your shoulders. Impromptu vacation anyone? Why not!

I highly recommend taking Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. It will change your life. If you need any convincing I dare you to save up a $1000 emergency fund. This is Dave’s Baby Step 1. Trust me, it will feel awesome to know that you have a $1000 security buffer. Your mate will love it too (See step 7). I just wish that High School and College would have taught me how to handle my finances correctly. It would have been much easier to start at 18 😉

Have a blessed thanksgiving!

2010-11-19

Never Stop Learning

When I was little, my dad used to drive me to school on his way to the office. I would sit there, listening to Engines of Our Ingenuity or one of his books/lectures on tape. At the time I probably would have rather been listening to Weird Al (because I was cool like thatâ€¦), but I still tried to pay attention. When we would pull up in the carpool line and I was ready to get out of the car, he didn’t give the standard ‘have a nice day at school!â€ He said ‘learn as much as you can!â€ He said that every day. I was a pretty hyperactive and distractible child, and didn’t always heed his advice, but that message has become a huge part of who I am now. If I’m passionate about anything, I’m passionate about learning.

There are a lot of things I’m grateful for, but since we’re picking favorites, I must say I am most thankful to be part of a family that prizes continuous education. It would be nice to say that my drive to read and learn is self-generated, but my family instilled the importance of education in me from birth. They are the ones who deserve the credit.

My father is like a walking encyclopedia, and has the widest knowledge base of anyone I know. I am continually humbled and inspired by his insatiable drive to fill his brain. My mother reads everything about yoga, anatomy, medicine, health, mind, body and soul she can get her hands on (and throws some Tolstoy in the mix occasionally for good measure). My grandmother is legitimately the most well-read person I have ever met (my father and my Uncle Richard closely follow), and continues to be a voracious reader at 80. She still takes classes at the Women’s Institute, and audits classes at Rice. So many people become complacent as they get older, and allow themselves to stagnate. Not her.

My family has taught me the value of knowledge, not just through their words, but through their actions. I will always be thankful for that. I don’t know if I can ever catch up to them, but I can certainly try.

2010-11-192014-11-02

Taste of Korean – Korean Festival at Discovery Green

One day from Discovery Green‘s web site, I found there was a Korean Festival event to be held on Oct.23 at Discovery Green in downtown Houston. Since I had never been to a Korean event, we decided to go. It turned out it was a wonderful event. lots of fun – traditional Korean drums, dance, food, kong fu…

Here are some highlights:

Korean drums play an important part in the traditional Korean performing art. Love those drums.

The traditional dance was played beautifully.

Farmers dance – originally performed as part of farm work.

Kong fu

Hand crafts and food

Overall, the performance was great. Food was decent with reasonable price. We also have learned a lot of Korean culture from there. And the event was free!

Interested in the events at Discovery Green? You should visit their web site at www.discoverygreen.com. They serve a wide variety of events year around.