The fist thing I noticed was seeing signs all over saying “Ramadan Kareem.”  What? I was confused. So I asked my buddy, born and raised Muslim, what it meant. He told me that it indicates generosity. During Ramadan, we fast during the day to symbolize that we are giving up something in our life in order to help others. Then at night, when the daily fast is broken, we eat a light meal together with some friends (an Iftar) and discuss how we can help the less fortunate.

What is pretty amazing to someone who grew up on the other side of the planet, in a completely different culture, is that the entire country fasts during the day during Ramadan. In fact, if you are an apparently healthy adult and are seen eating or drinking during the day, someone could complain and call the police. I haven’t heard of the consequences of such a thing, but it is clearly the respectful and courteous thing to do to not eat or drink during the day in front of others, even if you happen to be a Christian or an atheist or follow some other religion.

During Christmas time, a common sermon I’ve heard over and over is how we all need to get the spirit back into Christmas, and it’s got me thinking about the spirit of Ramadan. It isn’t so much about the fast, but that we focus on doing something for the less fortunate (not just thinking about it, doing it). And during the Iftars, it isn’t just about a pleasant social time with friends, it’s a time to pool our ideas and generate an action plan for giving…. a plan that we WILL carry out.

By this self-imposed hunger, we are reminded about how we need to help those with less than us. We get determined not to cave in to the temptations of the physical world and instead strive to live a spiritual life of good deeds. It focuses our thoughts on what’s important.

1. Expertise in 1 field does not guarantee expertise in another field. This is obvious, but lots of smart people who are successful in their chosen field lose sight of this fact due to arrogance and over-confidence.

2. Planning is not the same thing as acting. Action is what counts, hopefully well planned out. Actions without plans sometimes can be successful, because you are actually doing something. Plans without actions? Garbage.

3. Saying you will do something is not the same thing as actually doing it. Lots of people feel better when they say they will do something, like, “I’m going to visit my friend…” or “I’m going to lose weight this year” or similar. They feel good just having the goal, and to them, that’s enough. But simply having a goal doesn’t get the job done.

4. Excuses are no substitute for results.

5. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Where there’s no will, there’s an excuse.

I strive to be results-oriented and not necessarily process-oriented. Sometimes, a good process using a checklist can improve results. But the process isn’t the result. Results are what counts. I try to always remember, there are at least two (good) ways to skin a cat (sorry you cat lovers, I like dogs).

Finally, a quote from John Adams:  “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Shared by Tom

Highly Recommended.

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan

read more

Sunshine and Vitamin D: A Comprehensive Guide to the Benefits of the “Sunshine Vitamin”

This book is 234 pages with 26 chapters.

It primarily covers relationships between vitamin D and various medical conditions, but for me one of the most interesting chapters was at the end, titled “how safe is vitamin D” in which the author presents evidence for higher but safe limits of vitamin D consumption, with the author concluding that many if not most of us get inadequate levels of vitamin D.

For nutrition enthusiasts, this is a great book and worthy of reading. It is inexpensive and an easy read, and highly referenced. But for those interested in how to improve your diet, this likely is too focused on a single topic. Overall I give this book a “B”.

Upon installation, the initial registration screen never showed up. Tried the magic jack tech support (chat) but nothing they suggested worked. Here’s what did work:

1. Unplug your magic jack.

2. Delete the folder mjusbs, this should be located here:

c:documents and settings{username}Application Datamjusbs

3. plug in your magic jack

4. go back to the above folder

5. go the the sub-folder “Upgrade” and click on “setup1.exe”

6. done

this solution thanks to Donna.

Tech support also suggested turning off your pop-up blocker in IE and adding the following to your trusted sites in IE: http://*.talk4free.com and https://my.magicjack.com … I also reformatted my Magic Jack ram drive (apparently you can only reformat one of the drives that shows up when you plug in the device, I reformatted the higher drive letter) and then ran the Magic Jack upgrade. But these didn’t seem to help, only after doing steps 1 to 6 above did the device work.

% ls [options] [directory]

List the contents of the working directory, short version

% ls

List the contents of the working directory, long version (with details)

% ls -l

List files, including files that are normally hidden

% ls -a

List files for the directory “/usr/sbin” in long format

% ls -l /usr/sbin

List files sorted by modification time

% ls -t

List files sorted by modification time, reverse order

% ls -tr

List files, one file per line

% ls -1

List files in long format, using human readable file sizes

% ls -lh

Some useful examples are found at http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/07/linux-ls-command-examples/

= (Bruce equivalent number of
minutes until test termination) – (5 x the amount of ST segment
deviation in mm) – (4 x the angina index)

Angina Index: 0=none, 1=nonlimiting, and 2=exercise-limiting.

Exercise time: minutes on the Bruce Protocol.

In general:

>= +5 is low risk

-10 to +4 is moderate risk

< = -11 is high risk

More risk calculators here (Cleveland Clinic)

— code —

$result=mysql_query(“SELECT AVG(column_name) FROM your_database”);
$my_average=mysql_result($result,0);
echo $my_average;

— end —

where column_name is the variable you want to get the average value and your_database is….. your database!

I typically use a default value for my variables to indicate blank or null, for example, if I code gender as 0=female and 1=male then I will have 999=no data.

Then, my query would be something like:

“SELECT AVG(column_name) FROM your_database WHERE column_name != 999″

mysql only supports a few statistics, which you can find here:

http://bit.ly/7WCrOw

Tired and dirty, I was ready for it to the end. It wasn’t “inspiration” week. No, back then it was, well, just what it was called: hell week at the Beta House.

But on the Sunday morning after the week had ended, things were different. Perhaps because we were all still so tired, we actually sat quietly as the guest speaker, a local pastor, tried to give us some inspiration.

This pastor was sort of funny (or was I so tired I’d laugh at anything?). He told some jokes, and then started passing out tons of business cards. But these business cards just had short, inspirational sayings on them.

What sort of nut makes up this kind of business card? It struck me as just a bit odd, but then one card got me. It went through my fatigue and weariness. It woke me up, finally. The card simply said, “I’m Third” .

He explained what it meant: God first, my fellow man second, and I’m third.

I understood this. Putting God first– well that just meant focusing on doing good things with your life, and it WAS Sunday. Do good. Not be good, but really do something good.

Putting my fellow man second, well isn’t that what a fraternity is all about? Through fellowship, we can do more good in this world. That’s pretty obvious.

Finally, I’m third. Only by paying attention to my basic needs – regular exercise, a good diet, regular laughter – could I meet the challenges of life and, well, do good first and be a good friend. This is what I’ve tried to do in the 25 years since then, and continue to aspire to in my career, my family, and in my community.

Out of hell came a beautiful lesson: I’m third.

Originally posted on my Facebook account: http://bit.ly/5UMa0R