1min's Blog

I saw the movie Margin Call yesterday night. It was a pretty suspenseful movie that dramatized the recent financial crisis of 2008. At the very least, the cast was very well selected and every actor was incredibly professional. While I don't fully understand the financial crisis, nor am I claiming to be an expert on economics or finance, but the movie made me feel a little weird--especially at this point in my life where a lot of my peers in school do in fact go off in search of finance jobs. One particular scene struck me--the scene where the character Seth Bregman (portrayed by Penn Badgley ) is crying in the bathroom stall because he's afraid of getting fired. A little background info on Seth before I tell you how I felt. He's a 23 year old working in the Risk department at a large unnamed corporation who made $250,000 last year in bonuses and salary. I was a bit annoyed as to why he was crying. Here's a young fresh graduate making six figures with an abs...

Left - Shuffle, Right - Smart-shuffle Wouldn't it be nice if all media players, iPods, Android phones, or whatever you use to listen to music could all sync? I would love to look at the statistics on my music listening habits. Which songs get skipped one second in? Which songs have I listened to the most in my lifetime? Which songs are never played? Which songs are over-played? This got me to thinking about a smarter way to shuffle songs. Let's just assume that somehow, music we listen to was kept track regardless of whatever device we use. Some magical tool that we shove in our ears, I don't know. Think of the possibilities! Music that was recently added to the library have heavier weight. Songs with high play-counts can slowly decrease in weight à la diminishing returns. Lower play-count songs will be favored over higher play-count songs. The same song will never play back-to-back. An option to have smoother transitions from song to song so we aren't listening...

At school, I currently work part time (9 hours / week) at the school eatery as a cashier. It's not the most glamorous job in the world, but I find it incredibly relaxing and fun. Which is contrary to general consensus--that a minimum wage job cannot be anything but hell on earth. I brought this up to my dad, proud in my unique ability to see the silver lining on what is considered to be a dark cloud. He then suggested that my part-time job didn't sound like a job, but rather an escape. An escape from the ordinary and mundane life of a student. Is that true? Was working a cashier job an escape to me? It's true that the money doesn't really matter to me. If I think about it, what's truly special about working is the interaction I have with the countless students who pass by. I have more fun in those 3 hours of interaction than I do in any class or study session. I guess it was  an escape after all. This led me to think about what else in my life is an escape? ...