Nostalgia....

Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be. 
- Amanda Hatch

How to Win Friends and Influence People

How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Techniques that with a little bit of thought could be derived on one's own, but here laid out clearly with good examples. It is a well written compendium of "techniques" to, as the title says, win friends and influence people. Well worth the read.

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Mission Call

Well, I figure that I better finally post a post about what I'll be doing the next two years of my life.

I have been called to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I've been assigned to labor in the Florida Tampa Spanish speaking mission.

I say it that way because 1) that's how it comes in the letter and 2) that's how it is.  I've been called to serve as a missionary and assigned to a mission in the same way that I'll be assigned to an area in my mission once I get there.

I am very excited.  I have no regrets about where I've been called to serve; it feels right to me.  I'm grateful that I'll be learning a different language, especially one that I've already studied and that will benefit me immensely once I return.

Don't Stop Believin'

Anything can happen! Don't stop believin'!

This was by our apartments. Soon after it was cleaned, and we all wondered . . . why?

iPhone not sweet on 'neat'

Wow, I had never noticed this before.

iPhone not sweet on 'neat'

Weird.

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Fellowship of the Unashamed

This is by President Eyring.

I am part of the fellowship of the unashamed. The dye has been cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I won't look back, let up, slow down, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, and my future is secure. I'm finished and done with low living, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals. I no longer need pre-eminence, positions, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don't have to be right, first, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean on His presence, walk with patience, am uplifted by prayer, and labor with power. My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is Heaven. My road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions are few, my guide is reliable, my mission is clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, divided, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of the adversary, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity. I won't give up shut or let up until I have stayed up, stored up and paid up for the cause of Christ. I must go till He comes, give till I drop, preach till all know, and work till He stops me. And when He returns for His own, He will have no problem recognizing me. My banner will be clear.

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Yearning

In Fall Semester of 2008 my Honors Writing 150 class and I would post, every week, some sort of creative writing response to a prompt.  I did not think that I would like it, yet, by the end of the year I realized that it had improved my writing ability, helped me to look at the world differently, and was buckets of fun.  I have posted some of the snippets up here, but they are archived.

Why do I tell you this?

No reason, except for letting you know that I want to create something.  I want to write, or make a website, or take pictures, and add to the body of creative works.  Hopefully you can expect more creative things to come on this blog.

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Another Warning

Here's another warning.  Very soon, my blog will no longer be found at http://blog.sdfisher.com

Please update your bookmarks to the new address:

http://sdfisher.blogspot.com

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Online Portfolios

Well, after a long time, I'm still trying to find a job.  To aid in this endeavor, I have created some online profiles.  They are still a work in progress and I'm trying to narrow it down to one good site.

Sean's Showcase - All finished
Behance Network :: Sean Fisher - Still a work in progress

Let me know what you think.  By the way, I'm using Flock, an awesome browser that connects Facebook, blogging, Twitter, a web clipboard, and other cool features.

General Conference Sat. Afternoon 2009

I'll start at Elder Scott

Elder Richard G. Scott - Attend the Temple

• Remove your watch when you enter the house of the Lord
• Be mindful of the individual the ordinance is performed for
• We have no reason to worry or to feel despondent, because of the ordinances that are performed in the temple
• More, but I took some notes on paper

Elder Russell M. Nelson - Prayer

• The Lord's Prayer
• Clarification in the JST: "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive..." "Suffer us not to be led into temptation, but deliver us from evil"
• "Hallowed be thy name" - respect and worshipful attitude as we pray
• The Lord's Prayer serves as a pattern to follow, not something to memorize and repeat
• Pray for unity with Lord's anointed and loved ones
• Continue in prayer and fasting
• Don't do too much and unnecessary things like fasting for a month and a prayer of a thousand words
• Public prayers = short supplications for the Spirit of the Lord to be with us or to express gratitude of what has transpired
• Don't cease to pray in your hearts
• When praying for temporal and spiritual blessings, plead that "Thy will be done"

Dallin's Departure

Dallin left us Wednesday. We are all very sad. He was an awesome roommate and somebody that knows how to have fun and yet get his homework done. We will always remember his surfer-hair, "better licked than bitten," squirtgunning, and "L" fixation.

Great Minds Discuss Ideas; Average Minds Discuss Events; Small Minds Discuss People.

By Eleanor Roosevelt.

Important! Change Your Bookmarks!

Sometime soon my domain name will expire.  I've chosen not to renew it because I'm going on a mission for the next two years.  So, what does that mean?

My blog will no longer be found at http://blog.sdfisher.com, but at http://sdfisher.blogspot.com.  Please take a moment now and update your bookmarks or blogrolls.

How Watered Down is Your DNA by Corporate America?

Warning! Long article ahead!

Today in social entrepreneurship we had a rousing lecture by our professor, Ron Lindorf, who is a highly successful entrepreneur. What follows is what he said to us, usually in his words.

Ron, at age 12, experienced his older brother's death, forcing him to confront the reality of mortality at a young age. This, he says, provided the ability to "not care what other people think. There's no bets on death." While in Jr. High, he started a successful window-washing business, employing two brothers from his school at $2 an hour while making $55 from each job. While pursuing his graduate degree in communications at BYU he bought Volkswagen cars for cheap, drove or trucked them down to California, and sold them there for more than a 700% markup. Needless to say his class attendance was not the best. In fact, in 6th grade his report card gave him full marks (a 1) for achievement but the lowest marks (a 3) for effort. He says, "I did exactly the amount of effort needed to get those 1s." Speaking of his entrepreneurial spirit, he said, "I'm not like those other guys. There are those entrepreneurs who are just smart. Captain of the track team, head boy in a group . . . they're the annoying ones. I'm a reluctant entrepreneur. Nobody would hire me and so I just thought, how can I generate some revenue?"

We don't make our own decisions often enough, Ron says. Growing up in the church, our decision making skill is sometimes crippled. We are a product of the thousands of small decisions we make during our lifetime, and there are plenty of bad decisions to make even in the framework of how our lives are planned out. "Is it better to marry the right person at the right time outside of the temple or to marry the wrong person at the wrong time inside of it?" Ethical decisions are some of the decisions that we don't see as often. Those that have made some bad decisions have learned early on how to make good decisions. We need to make more of our own decisions.

An important factor is an internal locus of control. This is what Ron developed in his high school years after his brother died. This is a critical component of a successful entrepreneur. Changing the world, not letting the world change you. Figuring out that "you don't have to let other people muck around with what you decide."

Ron gave the example of the L.A. Riots. During the riots, not a single 1st generation Korean immigrant with the entrepreneurial spirit had their business burned down. Why? Because the same spirit that pushed them to come to America and start their own business (usually a liquor store), to find a location, and to push for a better life for them and their children pushed them to climb on top of their roofs with AK-47s and illegal semi-automatics and pistols and shoot at the feet of anyone who looked like they were coming to cause trouble. They had that spirit that enables them to risk it all, and then to stand on the roof and defend it when their whole life's work, 10-15 years, is threatened. Not one of their businesses were touched.

"Some time long ago," Ron said, "we all had to decide. We were pitched two different ideas. One said, 'Look, it won't be hard. I mean, you can have security, you can go home at 5 and get a pay check every two weeks, there won't be any risk.' The other one said, 'Hey, it'll be hard. There'll be times when you fail, when you make mistakes, when you risk it all. There will be rough patches. You will have to work from nine to midnight every night after your wife goes to bed. But in the end it will be fair." Every measly human on this planet chose plan B. This is how Ron sees the world. So why can we go work at the post office and show up every morning and salute and go to work and then get off at five and do that for 40 years with nothing changing? We can get up and go to work among the devil's followers for 40 years and do nothing. But can we not come up with ideas about how to make it better? Can we stay an extra hour once in a while to get some things done? A person who does this, he says, will make it to leadership positions. Moving up within the system. Even that is following Christ. Sometimes it seems like forever that things don't happen and all the extra work does nothing. But somehow it will pay off.

Instant gratification. America doesn't know how to put it off. This part kind of led into a discussion about inflation and about how it's a silent tax on the people of the lowest income level and the middle class. So what do policy makers do? They can't tax the people who elect them or they're booted out. The upper level doesn't have enough wealth to keep up with a $10 trillion national debt. So what do we do? We let people overseas buy our bonds. Of course, as Ron says, "it's somewhat patriotic to hose the Chinese when they buy up our debt and then our dollar inflates." He also brought up the fact that as American car makers fire people over here and then outsource to other countries it actually creates a middle class in China and India. Bucketloads of people who would normally earn $1 a day are now earning $3-9 a day. Our world is going on sort of it's own wealth redistribution system.

All the people who originally came from England to this country were the ones who took the risk. They said goodbye to people who they'd never see again for some fantastic story they had heard, sold what they had and acquired a little capital, and risked everything. Every single person in the country has that in their DNA. Maybe it was from a couple generations ago.

So how watered down is your DNA by Corporate America? The fire of creating an income generating activity as a business has gone out of 90% of the people, statistically speaking. Of course, Ron recognizes that not everybody can be an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, this is how he sees the world to explain what he does to himself. The whole purpose of Corporate America, he says, is to preserve the status quo. "'I don't think we can do that.' ' Even if it increases your revenue by $4 million in a $10 million company?' 'Well....'
"It's because they like security! Go home at five and have security."

Entrepreneurs are weird. Talking to many people, Ron has found that entrepreneurs all have some sort of story. Or that all entrepreneurs have some sort of story. They all had to discover, or decide, rather, what he and Gibson (the other instructor of the class) discovered. They don't let what people think affect them. At all.

So are we going to work among the devil's followers our whole lives and lay down and die when the riots start? Or are we they type of person that crawls up on the roof with our AK-47 after risking everything to come to America and start a business? Internal locus of control! Don't let what other people think affect you! Trust more in the Atonement! We're supposed to make mistakes. Honest mistakes. Learn wisdom in thy youth. How? We have to learn through experience. Ron advises to work for somebody else for five years to make mistakes on somebody else's time and money. But don't just sit around!

Anyway, needless to say, an hour and a half of listening to this brilliant, accomplished, spiritual, driving, caring man was something.

Entropy and the Gospel

In chemistry we've been learning about a concept called entropy, designated by the letter S.  The statistical definition of entropy is dependent on how many microstates a substance can have.  Microstates are determined by how spread out particles in the substance are, how much energy they have (velocity), the number of rotational and vibrational movements they can have, etc.  Entropy, in other words, measures disorganization.  Entropy also helps to measure spontaneity. 

Here's the important part:  every reaction increases the entropy of the universe.

There's a tradeoff in every reaction necessary to accomplish work.  We like the fridge to be cold, but we can't except it to get that way on it's own.  Why?  Because systems seek to maximize entropy.  In this case, the maximum entropy level of the fridge and the surroundings exist when the fridge is the same temperature as the surroundings and thus all particles are as disorganized as they can be.  If we want to cool the fridge down, we have to put work/energy into it using the compressor and the chemical properties of the Freon-like material.  By putting work in, we can cause the entropy level of the fridge to decrease and, therefore, it can sustain a colder temperature than the surroundings.

Take note of the important fact that even in this process, the entropy of the universe is still increasing.  The fridge decreased, but where did the energy come from to do it?  The power company, which produces energy by one of several means.  Each way will increase entropy in the universe more than the fridge will decrease it. The overall S of the universe will increase.

Life is not spontaneous.  Life works against entropy.  Our bodies are builders, not "sparsifiers."  Thus life has a problem.  If everything has to increase the universe's entropy, what do we do?  The truth is, we work the same way as the fridge.  We offload our entropy problem.  It's like an entropy chain.  We use the energy from the food we eat to build proteins and to do work.  That food is built from plants, which take a ton of energy from the sun to build sugars.  If we follow the chain back, we realize that we can only survive if the sun increases in entropy more than we decrease in entropy.  Essentially, we offload our entropy problem to the sun.  The only way life can exist on earth is if we take our problems and let something else deal with all of them.  Of course, we do deal with some of it; we will die eventually and our particles will be dispersed.  We are all subject to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, but at the same time, we can use another Law (a less defined law) and transfer our problem to the sun.  It's a law because it works, and it always works.  It's what allows us to live.  Yet the first law, the law defining entropy, is not violated.  In fact, if we define life in terms of a system that auto-perpetuates a lower entropy state even with complete material turnover, the sun becomes the enabler of that.  The sun becomes not only the light, but the life of the world.

Now, as I'm sure you predicted, comes the ol' vowel switcheroo.  'u' becomes 'o' in the sun.  The only enabler of life on this planet is the Son.  The only way we can survive is if we offload our problems to Him.  Sometimes it goes through the chain - hometeachers, the bishop, etc - until it finally reaches Him, but it will eventually.  Through the Son the Law of Justice can still be fulfilled while letting us use the Law of Mercy (less defined - more abstract) to transfer the full effect of the Law of Justice to Him.  As our bodies have to do work to let the entropy changes slow and transfer the change away, so do our spirits have to do work to let our problems transfer to Christ.  It's called repentance, prayer, fasting, commandment-keeping, etc.

Now, scientifically, the sun of this world will ultimately fail.  Entropy will wear it down until it stops giving off the light and the energy the world needs.  That is where the comparison stops.  Unlike this temporal sun, the Son of Man (exalted Man) will not fail.  He has already completed the mission that allows us to apply the Law of Mercy.  It is an infinite and eternal sacrifice.  Jesus Christ, the true Son, will never wear down and we can partake of his infinite light, power, and goodness forever.  Life is not spontaneous.  We were created by God through his Son, Jesus Christ, and by Him and through Him we live.  He is the ultimate light and life of the world.

I Just Deviated to My Detriment

Well, Alfredo sauce is not supposed to have the consistency of Jello and is supposed to be soluble in water. Unfortunately I made a few "adjustments" to the recipe and that's how the "ready already alfredo" turned out. Today I did it again - I figured that broccoli soup didn't really need brocolli, and I added in some meat. Bad idea. Furthermore, it said to put in cream, and I put in heavy whipping cream. I don't think that's the right kind of cream - after I blended it my soup was super foamy and smelled, not awfully delicious, as I had hoped, but awfully awful.

I had super good eggs this morning though, with parmesan cheese mixed in with some chipped turkey. That is one deviation that delivered.

Draper Temple Open House

Yesterday (Thursday the 29th of January) my FHE (family home evening) group and I went to the Draper Temple open house.  After a few wrong turns and a near "please go to a different lot" speech by an usher, we were entitled to wait with 300 others in a Stake Center close to the temple.

When a temple is just built, the public is allowed to walk through it on a guided tour.  It has not been dedicated and set apart from the world to fulfill it's purpose yet.  Once it is, only those that have demonstrated their worthiness to enter are allowed in.  One's worthiness to enter is determined by all of those good, positive virtues in this life: honesty, chastity, service to fellow men, and a perfect uprightness before God and man.

Temples are very sacred.  As I entered the temple through the baptistry doors I felt an immediate sense of holiness.  Holiness to the Lord.  As I walked through it I just thought to myself, over and over again, that this will truly be the House of the Lord, and He will dwell in it.  We walked through the baptistry first, and we were all impressed with the openness and the light and the goodness that infused every room.  Taking a couple of left turns we climbed stairs, ascending farther into the "mountain of the Lord."  The rooms in the upper portion of the temple were glorious and conducive to reverence and joy.  I couldn't stop smiling.  We all whispered to each other how we couldn't wait to someday go through the temple for ourselves.

After we exited the temple, we were given cookies and water and left back home on the bus.  Jerry's car wouldn't start, and we had to attempt to procure jumper cables and a working car to jump from.  Upon completion of that getting-to-be-common task, we drove home and arrived in the hour before midnight.  Long time, but completely worth every minute of it.

Populous

OK, now, usually comics are pretty good, but this one really got me.

Cats TREMBLE before me!

Oftentimes when I start thinking about writing in this blog I start thinking about blogs in general.  Then I say, "I wonder what so-and-so is up to," or, "Boy, did what's-his-or-her-name finally get that duck problem resolved?"  Eventually I'm so tired of reading blogs and not getting anything real done I abandon my task and go eat some food.  And then my sister calls.

So, eventually, I get to this point, where I haven't written anything for weeks.

First, a quick update:

• School is going well (I just finished the "testing out" equivalent of my computer science class, so I never have to go again or take the final)
• I've had a few dates in the past couple of days that were fun, including seeing Thoroughly Modern Millie and going ice skating
• We've had a few great talks in the last couple of weeks, from Pres. Monson to Elder Holland to Merrill J. Bateman
• We have cleaning checks today, so for the rest of today the clamorous sounds of scrubbing and the low rumble of the vacuum will fill our apartment.  Unless the synthesized music of Mario Kart Wii  does, as it does right now

Other then that, I can't think of much else to say.  It's rainy and 

cold, and the snow is that muddy black color that comes after weeks without a new snowfall.  I'm still barely getting over my sickness and cough that have plagued me since before Christmas.

So now, here's the picture that sparked the title (anybody who's ever had a cat in their house, or worse, arms while cleaning will understand):

Ender in Exile

Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Got this book for Christmas and I really liked it because it answered so many questions and tied so many loose ends together from all of the other books in the series. It was great to see Ender again. Of course, this was the first time through. The second time it might not be as good because the answers are already....answered. That was the main draw to the book for me.


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