YTP’s LB (little brother) works for the Container Store. Yes, I know. That’s very cool. Anyway, he pointed out to me that the Container Store is running an incredible discount right now both online and in their stores that gives you 20% your entire purchase. That’s right - your entire purchase.
If you have not experienced the Container Store before, I am not certain whether to feel sorry for you or envious of you. The Store is an addiction: high quality merchandise of a modern design that really does transform the way your home and office work. It lifts my spirits just to walk through the place.
YTP LB has generously blessed the sharing of this discount with YTP readers. Here is the link to the coupon. The deal ends November 30th, so get in while the getting is good.
Email It * Fav It * Digg It * Stumble It * Add to del.icio.us
Tags: container store, deals, discounts, organization
Let me begin by clarifying that with this picture, I am not trying to create an online counterpart to America’s Funniest Pets or American’s Funniest Animals or whatever that show is called. These guys, who had taken up residence on some abandoned bikes outside one of Angkor Wat’s temples, were anything but cute or domesticated. They were actually harassing us as we walked by, in a very New York-accented monkey grunt. I would not have been surprised if they had been packing heat.
More eerie than even their similarity to certain aggressive cab drivers was their sheer number. There were hundreds of monkeys swarming the trees, the walkway, and the temples around us. I kept waiting for them to go “The Birds” on us and bring a Hitchcock-quality ending to our trip.
The monkeys alone might not have been so bad, but we encountered them only moments after a Discovery Channel-esque episode with a swarm of giant ants. By the time I got to these two, I felt Nature was sending me a clear message: “great photo opportunities come with a proportionate amount of risk.” I took heed an exited that particular temple with equally proportionate amounts of speed.
Perhaps one day, when the nightmares stop, I’ll have the courage to show you pictures of the ants.
For more about my dubious adventures in Angkor, check out this post and this one too.
Email It * Fav It * Digg It * Stumble It * Add to del.icio.us
Tags: angkor wat cambodia, photography top 50, pics remix, short stories, short stories of asia countries, siem reap
What I love about this photo is how well it conveys some powerful perspectives: Space is cold. Space is dark. Earth is tiny. People are tinier. The universe is awe-inspiring.
Can you imagine approaching a spectacle like this from a spacecraft? I don’t know if our brains could even really process it.
This picture, taken by the spacecraft Cassini, shows not only a beautiful glimpse of Saturn and her rings but also the moon Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles across). The photo is one of the thousands posted at NASA’s photojournal, my favorite time-waster du jour. Details and full citation are here. Enjoy!
Email It * Fav It * Digg It * Stumble It * Add to del.icio.us
Tags: astronomy current events, Cassini, Cassini–Huygens, mimas, Saturn, Space, Space exploration
Image via Wikipedia
The LA Farmers Market on 3rd and Fairfax is an institution. With its low roofs, winding alleys, and low-key advertising, however, it is also hard to know what food and shops are worth the money and effort, and what you can pass on. To fill that void - for tourists and locals alike - I give you: The Top Ten Places to Visit at the Los Angeles Farmers Market!
(with maps and more information here)
1. The French Crepe Company: These crepes are amazing, and it is worth a visit to the Farmers Market just to eat them and only them. I love both the dessert and entree crepes. One word for you: nutella.
2. Loteria Grill: The Mexican food here is fantastic, which explains why the lines are always very long. This is a great place to eat at off hours. My suggestion: try the soups.
3. Moishe’s Restaurant: Stall 336 has some of the best Mediterranean food in Los Angeles. Period. The entire menu is absolutely delicious. If you have crepes for lunch, stick around and make this your dinner.
4. Farm Fresh Produce: While other stalls sell great fruit and veggies, no one sells it for the combination of high quality and low price that you will find here at stall 816.
5. Puritan Poultry: Stall 216 has both high quality produce and highly entertaining butchers who know their products. This is what you go to a farmers market for: the authentic experience of getting good advice from real specialists.
6. Huntington Meats: The meat counterpart to Puritan Poultry, Huntington Meats is home to Dan and Jim, butchers with a capital “B”. They know meat. And they sell lots of it, all of which is tastier than any meat at any grocery store or specialty shop that we have tried in the LA area (and we have tried a lot, as YTP Spouse is a serious carnivore).
7. Sticker Planet: No, this shop is not some weird kind of food. It’s a sticker bonanza. The crafty part of my personality loves Sticker Planet. It is a sight to behold, even if you don’t want to buy any because neither you nor your kids nor your niece nor nephew nor cousin nor friends like stickers (and let’s face it, the odds of that are slim).
8. Mr. Marcel Pain Vin et Fromage: Stall 236 has an amazing menu, but really, it is all about the fondue. Oh, fondue. Where have you been all my life? The wine list is perfectly matched to the cheese extravangaza that awaits you.
9. T&Y Bakery: Stall 222 is a Turkish bakery shop whose desserts and breads taste as good as they look. Indulge in one if you haven’t already hit the crepe stand (or even if you have!).
10. Kip’s Toyland: Stall 720 is a blast from the past. The games and toys here are what childhood is all about. There is a special emphasis on toys that require imagination and of love of construciton (or deconstruction).
p.s. I was not paid or given any incentive to write these reviews. In fact, I only gathered this information the hard way: by spending my own dollars here over and over and over again. But it was some tasty spending, that’s for sure.
Email It * Fav It * Digg It * Stumble It * Add to del.icio.us
Tags: Business and Economy, Fairfax District Los Angeles California, Farmers Market, Food, Los Angeles California
Image via Wikipedia
(For an introduction to Careers in Profile, read more here. To learn about other jobs that have been profiled, check out the list.)
1. My name is: Richard M.
2. I am a/an: Engineering & Construction Cost Estimator
3. Most people in this job have:
-an undergad degree in Engineering or Construction Sciences
-worked in the Engineering or Construction business for 5 years
4. I think the three most useful personal skills I bring to this job that help me do it are:
1) Positive attitude: people skills, attention to detail, high tolerance for rigid corporate structure, flexibility
2) Unique expertise of my business specialty
3) Ability to sort out solutions in a short time span that defines the most efficient path to follow
5. Please rate your income level in this job when you first started in this profession (pick one):
a) still living with mom and dad and can’t pay rent
b) living with mom and dad but paying rent
c) sharing a one-bedroom apartment with four other people
d) sharing a two-bedroom apartment with only one other person
e) renting my own apartment
f) scraped together a down payment and bought a starter starter house
g) renting a bigger house than I could buy
h) own a home with lots of closet space (or I could, if I didn’t live in this ridiculously overpriced city)
i) own my ideal home (even my pets have their own bedrooms)
6. Please rate your income on the same sophisticated scale after:
-five years in your profession: own a home with lots of closet space (or I could, if I didn’t live in this ridiculously overpriced city)
-ten years in your profession: own a home with lots of closet space (or I could, if I didn’t live in this ridiculously overpriced city)
7. Please indicate how much of your job involves grunt work and how much involves substantive work. Grunt work here is defined as things you are being seriously overpaid to do. Substantive work is defined as work you were really hired to do that involves thinking and (usually) writing of some kind.
my average day = 80% grunt work / 20% substantive work
8. Does the grunt work/substantive work ratio increase over time in the career? decrease? stay the same? Stays the same
9. Do you know of instances of people starting this career as a second career? How did it go? Most everyone in my line of work had another career prior to this one. This is largely due to the fact that some major portion of their knowledge of the industry had to be developed either learning how to engineer the plants that we build or through an actual apprenticeship in the construction industry. Some individuals have succeeded and adapted to the conceptual thinking involved in the Estimating discipline. Some have not succeeded.
10. If you had it to do all over again, what would you do differently? Would you start in a different sub-field? Get a different undergraduate degree? If I had it to do again I would have completed an undergraduate degree in engineering and a graduate degree in business or law.
11. What demand will their be for your profession in ten years? As long as the industry is needed, there should be a strong demand for this profession in 10 years.
12. Is there a clear hierarchy in your job or can people strike out on their own and expand/rise quickly? There is a hierarchy. However, there is always an opportunity to advance in competitive companies as the more experienced employees age and retire. There is a large generation gap that will become critical in the next 5 years.
13. How quickly do you assume large managerial duties in your job, if at all? Do you like this/not like it? I assumed some managerial duties four years after I took this job. Sometimes the job is a pain in the neck, but on most occasions it is fun because I make most of the calls on how work is done in my discipline.
14. Do you have to work for a large company is your profession? Can you work for smaller or medium-sized firms? Can you start your own? I work in a large company, but the skills I possess could be applied in a small to mid-sized company. It is difficult to do this work on your own as it is normally in support of a large contract to build a process plant.
15. What are the work hours - really? If they are seasonal or if they change over the course of the career, please explain that too. It is somewhat recession proof as when times are bad, companies bid more jobs. And, when times are good, companies bid more jobs.
16. What else do you want to tell people about this profession? It helps if you like building things.
——————
Many, many thanks to Richard for volunteering to be in the Careers in Profile series. If you would like to be interviewed for Careers in Profile, let me know! Or, you can go ahead and fill out your answers to the questions and email them to me at taichinh at mac dot com or drop them in the comments.
Email It * Fav It * Digg It * Stumble It * Add to del.icio.us
Tags: career advice, Careers in profile, Construction, cost estimator, engineering, job advising, job search, second careers
Image via Wikipedia
Seriously! You can get married in the facility that was home to World War Two’s most preeminent code crackers. That is so cool. I am not a big “renew-your-vows” type person, mainly because YTP Spouse and I only get sentimental about things like old records, our books, and Atari video games (c’mon, no one has ever topped Frogger, ever). But I am thinking that I might have to discover some new reserves of the emotion to justify a ceremony here.
I also just found out that my favorite mapmaker, Sir Martin Gilbert, is speaking at Bletchley Park on November 30. So if any of you readers have a LA-London ticket you want to donate to the YTP cause, let me know.
———————————————————————-
We have a winner for the Frommer’s Italy Guide! Kristan offered up the following joke, which YTP Spouse and I determined to be the funniest. There were some great jokes sent it; thanks to everyone for participating. Keep your eyes open for another contest coming up soon!
Kristan writes:
“In St. Louis you have to say a joke before you get candy trick or treating, and my husband and I were just talking about the funniest one we’ve ever heard:”
- What do you call a cross between an elephant and a rhino?
- ‘ell if i know…
Email It * Fav It * Digg It * Stumble It * Add to del.icio.us
Tags: Alan Turing, Bletchley Park, codebreaking, cryptopgraphy, enigma, History, intelligence, World War Two
- This beautiful photo of Jupiter’s red spot and thick atmosphere was actually taken ten years ago by Voyager 1. Jupiter is an amazing planet, and so hard to conceptualize that I think, at times, we almost avoid explaining it in our science classes because it is so foreign. Here’s part of the NASA description, which does the marbled planet some justice (the highlights are my own):
“The most massive planet in our solar system, with four planet-sized moons and many smaller moons, Jupiter forms a kind of miniature solar system. Jupiter resembles a star in composition. In fact, if it had been about eighty times more massive, it would have become a star rather than a planet.
On January 7, 1610, using his primitive telescope, astronomer Galileo Galilei saw four small ’stars’ near Jupiter. He had discovered Jupiter’s four largest moons, now called Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Collectively, these four moons are known today as the Galilean satellites.
Galileo would be astonished at what we have learned about Jupiter and its moons in the past 30 years. Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system. Ganymede is the largest planetary moon and is the only moon in the solar system known to have its own magnetic field. A liquid ocean may lie beneath the frozen crust of Europa. Icy oceans may also lie deep beneath the crusts of Callisto and Ganymede. In 2003 alone, astronomers discovered 23 new moons orbiting the giant planet, giving Jupiter a total moon count of 49 officially named — the most in the solar system. The numerous small outer moons may be asteroids captured by the giant planet’s gravity.
Jupiter’s appearance is a tapestry of beautiful colors and atmospheric features. Most visible clouds are composed of ammonia. Water exists deep below and can sometimes be seen through clear spots in the clouds. The planet’s ’stripes’ are dark belts and light zones created by strong east-west winds in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. Within these belts and zones are storm systems that have raged for years. The Great Red Spot, a giant spinning storm, has been observed for more than 300 years.
The composition of Jupiter’s atmosphere is similar to that of the Sun - mostly hydrogen and helium. Deep in the atmosphere, the pressure and temperature increase, compressing the hydrogen gas into a liquid. At depths about a third of the way down, the hydrogen becomes metallic and electrically conducting. In this metallic layer, Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field is generated by electrical currents driven by Jupiter’s fast rotation. At the center, the immense pressure may support a solid core of ice-rock about the size of Earth.”
More details and a full photo credit are here.
Email It * Fav It * Digg It * Stumble It * Add to del.icio.us
Tags: Astronomy, astronomy current events, giant red spot, jupiter, Space, Space exploration, voyager 1
I have blogged before about the unique relationship between the ancient city of Petra and the movie “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” The building pictured here is called The Treasury, which in the movie was home to the Holy Grail itself.
In real life, the building is merely a facade, as it extends about only four meters deep into the canyon wall. It is extremely disconcerting to walk up the steps and have there be no there, there. Movies do powerful things to our expectations.
Petra is, of course, still worth a visit and one of my favorite trips. However, it is not a trip that started off particularly well. In fact, this trip, more than any other, brought to my attention a phenomenon known as “Travel Personality Polarity Syndrome,” a serious condition (also known as TPPS) wherein the traveler’s normal personality is reversed a complete 180 degrees.
When suffering from this syndrome, a laid-back, go-with-the-flow, Type B personality will completely reverse itself at the prospect of impending travel, especially international travel. The person will become a twitching, pacing, frantic mess who worries about every detail and possible contingency. However, an uptight, disciplined Type A personality afflicted by TPPS will respond to the flight or car ride ahead of them with an almost eerie calm, as if nothing of any importance is about to take place.
YTP Spouse and I did not know it before this trip, which was intended to be our honeymoon since our first attempt at that occasion was cut short by his deployment to Iraq, but we both suffer from Travel Personality Polarity Syndrome. Yes, I arrived in Jordan via a terrible Air France flight with no luggage (and no luggage on your honeymoon is kind of a bad thing) but no worries either. My usually structured world had been put on hold by the magic of TPPS, and I was even mellow enough to hang out in the same clothes for the three days it took to recover my luggage (not recommended).
YTP Spouse, on the other hand, was a wreck, a situation not helped by the circumstances of his arrival. He had to take a taxi from Iraq to Jordan, and the road his driver chose to travel was under fire - as in, under gunfire - for much of the journey. The taxi later broke down, was seriously harassed by border guards, and eventually got caught in the first snowstorm to hit Amman in decades. On his first night in the city, the hotel charged him almost a thousand dollars to clean his rather frighteningly dirty bags of laundry. Everywhere he tried to eat was packed with Saudi men and their mistresses as he had arrived on Valentine’s Day, a holiday that Middle Easterners love to celebrate in a particularly gaudy and cheesy fashion (here’s a mental image for you: stringy underwear with flashing red heart lights all over it).
Lost luggage, taxi rides from the seventh ring of hell, flashing red heart lights: all the makings of a honeymoon for the record books.
We had two things going for us, however. First, we both suffered from TPPS, which meant that only one of us was really upset at any given time during the honeymoon, much like our normal state of affairs. In fact, the sight of YTP Spouse so verklempt was rather entertaining and endearing. Second, we were at Petra. Every day we spent there was a literal walk through history and architecture and archaeology. It was fantastic.
In fact, that Petra is so amazing is why I am able to look at this picture and remember more than just the on-the-verge-of-insanity expression on my new husband’s face after I deplaned at the Amman airport. Because sometimes, when the journey is really that bad, it is all about the destination.
Email It * Fav It * Digg It * Stumble It * Add to del.icio.us
Tags: jordan, petra, photography top 50, pics remix, short stories, short stories of asia, Travel, travel in jordan
Image via Wikipedia
Sometimes, the Internet is so full of awesome that it is hard to know where to start, or how to pare it down.
I try hard to put only original content, or amazing photos, or both, on YTP, so that you get something new for your time here. However, today, I’m succumbing to the urge to do a link roundup of all of the awesome. This stuff is so good I swear you will be the wittiest person at the party if you even just skim a few of them.
On politics, here is independent reporter Michael Yon’s take on Afghanistan and the upcoming Obama administration.
On science, check out the mind-boggling results of the ocean census.
On patriotism, read these wonderful, first-hand stories and perspectives from veterans that are both unique and thought-provoking: this is not your usual Veteran’s Day fare.
On space, the Energizer-Bunny-Rest-in-Peace-award goes to the Phoenix Mars Lander, which finally succumbed to the Martian winter after months of defying expectations about how long it would keep working.
On business, IttyBiz is handing out a free module today from the highly recommended Online Business School which debuts tomorrow (Wednesday, November 12) at the discount price of $200. (I have already bought it. The price goes up in a few weeks to the regular cost of $400, so get it while the getting is good.)
On books, enjoy this round up of what to read and why (to which your own YTP was a contributor).
And, saving the best for last:
On the environment, read closely this piece about the myths and truths regarding recycling. This one is good if you want to be the well informed but controversial person at the party.
Look smart, people, look smart!
Email It * Fav It * Digg It * Stumble It * Add to del.icio.us
Tags: afganistan, independent reporter, martian winter, Michael Yon, NASA, patriotism, phoenix mars lander, today's current events
Image via Wikipedia
Via Blackfive, check out this amazing account of the rescue of an American businessman held captive in Afghanistan. Who needs fiction when real life is so gripping?
Email It * Fav It * Digg It * Stumble It * Add to del.icio.us
Tags: hostage rescue, international news, military
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=0f0c2170-042b-40b8-95db-86b589567982)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=06b5bd11-a999-457b-8709-6475da584b70)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=6a67028d-c9ad-4e24-b8f6-9763745e5d05)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=5a901d14-8347-4760-8503-8a439cadf4ec)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=cf632b89-51c0-4433-ad05-aaba34b2de5a)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=0b736bb5-bfb9-4c12-ad2f-65d9558cc195)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=08d81593-f3f7-4aeb-92fb-92d08107555a)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d8ad6866-1c00-4916-997a-0e005e413766)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e78998f7-3e68-4b1d-8c4f-7241fcae7266)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=61be9ce9-77ae-4109-8b71-a2b0f216fd02)
