back in the uk for the final stretch

things are progressing very well. it's hard to digest the fact that i am almost done. it feels great. there is still some writing to be done in the next couple of weeks, but i hope to submit my dissertation by the end of the month. it was awesome to see the last four years of my life printed out. then, i spent 3 whole days editing the last four years......not that fun. making corrections to my dissertation was almost as painful as writing the damn thing. it's done now, and i am waiting on comments from colleagues.

my job interviews went well in the us, and i have several more interviews in the us and the uk.

i will keep you updated. my other, personal endeavors are coming along nicely, and my personal website will be up soon. things could not be more exciting right now.

busy---traveling, interviewing, finishing...

ever since i got back home to the us on the 7th, it has been 100 mph from the time i stepped off the plane until, finally, today, i have been able to regroup and continue working on my dissertation and thinking about after graduation. i just got back on my workout regimen this morning and also my reading and writing. i picked up dan brown's 'lost symbol' as well as ordered a couple of titles by edward tufte (envisioning information and the visual display of quantitative information). now, i have a total of 5 books; 3 of which i am currently reading.

as far as post-graduation plans, the heat is really starting to pick up as the realness and urgency of decisions that i must make are more pronounced. it's all exciting but scary as hell at the same time. i am excited about getting my website up and running soon. i am also looking forward to loads of conversations with individuals about my passion and how it will manifest itself.

i've got a lot of things to talk about, but i need time to formulate it all in a coherent form as it is all scattered in my brain at the moment. lots of powerful words and phrases and thoughts that i can share.

to be continued...

first draft of my dissertation COMPLETE

just wanted to share that i have finally completed the 1st draft of my dissertation. i am still making minor modifications, but the bulk is done. i will be ready to send out chapters for comments and feedback in just a few days. this feeling is so awesome, and i am just thankful that i was able to persevere and get to this point. things lined up very nicely, and i am happy to see that my deadlines i set for myself worked extremely well. the last 2 months have been long and arduous, but it is always nice to see that the hard work was not in vain.

one of my new mantras is 'make the struggle mean something,' and what i mean by this is that too often we fail simply because we give up just before our time comes. if we can just hold on a bit longer, most times we will achieve our goal. most times you can defeat your adversary simply by lasting longer than he can.

p.s. - AIRPORT FRUSTRATION...we've all had it standing in the check-in lines....this is an interesting story about an airline CEO that got a taste of his OWN medicine in his OWN airline's check-in line

jackass is NOT a DAMN curse word....it was on cartoons i watched as a kid

just heard a caller into the rickeysmileymorningshow and she said that president obama cursed. jackass ain't a damn curse word. damn is though....lol.

i guess this post was practice for twitter usage. sorry for the brevity. just had to share.

'bow in the presence of GREATNESS' - kanye west

congratulations MJ. regardless of what you say, YOU ARE the greatest player ever. thanks for the moments and the ride. i am just grateful that i was growing up during the time to have you as a role model. you have shaped my life and inspired the competition that drives me EVERY DAY of my life. i cannot thank you enough and owe you so much. you were put on this earth to play this game and you did it the best.





GO HERE TO ESPN to see the top 23 moments of his career. be ready to be astonished

will THIS struggle ever go away

probably not as long as we still have racist parents spreading that cancer to their kids. look at how the president of the damn united states was treated most recently by a member of congress and no one is fuming. i swear, the entitlement of certain individuals.

peep how in the video his daughter is called 'black' simply because she was not white. as comedians have said, if you ain't white, you're black. this was a great example of this. look at what non-white people have to deal with in ALL walks of life.

i like this article

i would argue that in a world where access to the world's information is ubiquitous and open, and there are almost no secrets anymore (or gatekeepers of information restricting access), this type of mentality will infect other professional areas, not just tech and medicine:

the truth about managing geeks