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Phi for All

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Everything posted by Phi for All

  1. It's Halloween. Forget the pole, grab a raft, and we'll all go Whitewater Apple-Bobbing.
  2. Remember your Doonesbury. The part of baby Jesus should be played by a 7w 6500K LED. That'll also show you if you got the chinking right.
  3. ! Moderator Note Please provide some citations regarding this "seriously detrimental" problem. It's your job to persuade the members to accept your reasoning, and that's only going to happen if you support your arguments. Waving your hands wildly is no substitute for evidence in science.
  4. And this is a big plus, imo. The consequences for the athletes can be horrendous. I wasn't making fun of it, I was giving you my opinion on it. I can appreciate skills, but I'm not a fan of psycho macho contests. OTOH, I can't think of anything else a couple of guys could do legally with talcum powder while holding hands on TV. OK, OK, I made a small amount of fun with that last bit.
  5. The good news is, at over 75,000 mph, you'll only need to recharge 1230 times!
  6. Poker seems completely different. Poker players can have sponsors, but no team is paying them win or lose. They pay themselves by winning. Watching others play games I can play (like pool or snooker) seems weird. With football, baseball, etc, there's some athleticism there I can't hope to achieve that makes watching pros interesting. That was my favorite part about those sports. Armwrestling should just be replaced with Whip Your Dick Out. Probably more crying, but definitely less sweat.
  7. You got a Tesla Roadster a couple of weeks ago for hitting 15 years. Are you saying you broke the keychain already?!
  8. All the professional ones. I think the amount of resources spent on them is ludicrous. I think they promote the entrenched tribalism, intellectual disdain, and ruthless extremism I see at the core of many global problems. The media loves to focus on rivalry and competition, and they thrive on situations where two groups are on opposite sides shouting each other down. Sportsmanship is an admirable quality that's fallen to the be-a-winner-at-all-costs mentality. Our workforce is encouraged to risk their health and play-through-the-pain the way the top athletes do. Us vs Them is ripping the world apart at a time when countries and industry want to venture off-planet, and refugees from various Us vs Them Wars are looking for a place where they aren't considered Them. I simply don't find enough enjoyment in watching sports to offset the negatives they seem to perpetuate.
  9. Saving this one for you.
  10. Usually we give away a car for being here 10 years, but we're trying to reduce our carbon footprint, so you'll probably just get the keychain. It'll be a nice one, though. Mercedes, or Maserati maybe.
  11. Genius is due to post count, Glorious Leader is due to positive reputation. "Blue-eyed Rascal" is how we refer to you unofficially, though.
  12. I asked you about your brand, what you want to do, where you want to go, how you want to be known, in order to more sharply focus your efforts to get there. I don't hear you talking about any of that, so it's difficult to know what might motivate you. IF you thought more about an eventual, specific goal to work towards, you might better be able to see how networking could help (or not). How can we get get you excited about who you'll meet on the trip when you don't know where you want to go? If your goal is to learn as much about nuclear engineering so you can start your own company, then you could try to network with other entrepreneurs to learn that side of the business. Other networks might lead you to your best employees, and still others will show you how to keep your industry knowledge current. Perhaps your current company has a management track you're interested in. Which position do you see yourself in and why? Maybe finding an executive mentor is the best way to go. Someone you could approach and say, "I think I could be the best X this company has ever had, and I'd like your advice on the best way to work towards that position". A mentor could suggest more effective networking opportunities if you had a specific job in mind. Maybe your brand is to be the health and safety specialist everyone looks to when it comes to engineering in the nuclear industry. In that case, you're looking for completely different people to network with, and you want to make sure everything you do and say helps build the perception that you're the trusted expert in professional nuclear engineering protocols. You need a goal for networking, otherwise it's just collecting cards.
  13. I don't think anyone equates the two, and I think it would be wrong to try. I would also caution you about using sound-byte phrases like "anti-social". It's a loaded media term that broadly categorizes very specific behaviors. Fifty people will define "anti-social" in fifty different ways. Personally, I think most people who get tagged as anti-social are merely more sensitive about processing the amount of data coming at them from larger groups. But the spectrum also includes those who actively dislike being around any other people, as well as those who don't mind parties but can't stand rock concerts, and those who do well in small crews at work but freeze up at departmental meetings where thirty people are all trying to make themselves heard. I think one of the keys to good networking is to pretend you don't care if your help is reciprocated or not. Just keep doing the favors you can, knowing that sometimes it takes time for people's skills and connections to become useful to you, or yours to them. One guy who helps me with personal mechanical work at cost is particularly hard to compensate. I can almost never find things I can do for him because he's very skilled and rarely needs what I can do. This summer, however, he was putting his father's house up for sale, and the house is much close to me, so I was able to repay years of favors. We were both extremely happy it worked out that way.
  14. With that system, a single upvote from you could put a reputation on the map, or destroy a crackpot utterly. Hey, didn't Zeus seduce Leda in the form of a swan?
  15. In going over your posts with rep, 21 of them were positive votes for good posts, mostly science-type replies, a few humorous. You got a single negative rep point, which didn't seem to be deserved so another member reversed it with an upvote. Compared to some of the people on the forum, you seem to be doing just fine. Thanks for being here!
  16. Quid pro quo. You do a favor you're capable of for someone else. They'd like you to do that again, so they do you a favor they're capable of, and so on, lather, rinse, repeat. It's encouraged unless you're in a position of great power. Your brand has two parts to it, your perception of who you are, and other people's perception of who you are. The two should match as closely as possible, and that means you have to maintain contact and let folks know what you're trying to do, ask them what they're trying to do. Nobody notices a hard worker who doesn't communicate. Nobody thinks it's noble that you keep your nose to the grindstone and your mouth shut. Do you admire people like that? Or is it the folks who can work hard and also show their human side, the side that's brilliant as a species about cooperation and communication?
  17. This sounds more like a collection of acquaintances. To make a network effective, you need to start with what you need them for, and I think just having them to "fall back on" is where you're missing the point. A good network should support your efforts to reach goals. Where do you want to be in your career/job/endeavor? What are you aspiring to do? Find people in places that can help you, people with the knowledge and connections to put you in the way of more opportunities. The network benefits from your skills and the support you're willing to give and get. Figure out what your personal "brand" is, how you want to be perceived, what you want to do with that perception, and then you can better figure out who can help you get there. Along the way, the folks you meet will have skills that dovetail with yours, and skills that you need to pick up. And the connections will happen because you're out there talking to people about what you all are doing.
  18. ! Moderator Note We don't allow advertising, and we also require any discussions take place here. Members should be able to discuss your topic without going offsite, watching videos, or or clicking links. If you can summarize here, and still wish to discuss your endeavor, we can do so in a non-commercial way. Are you still interested in input if you can't solicit funding?
  19. If I don't have coffee, I suffer from a variation of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, where I don't know exactly where I am but I know I'm not going fast enough.
  20. I remember hearing that Pythagoras had some eccentric eating habits. He was a vegetarian, but he didn't eat beans because he believed you lose part of your soul when you fart.
  21. Let me guess, it's on her Kaboom!
  22. Which, coincidentally, happens to be my Native American name.
  23. ! Moderator Note Then you need to stop grousing when those specific points are brought up by experts. If you can't do this civilly, then take a break from the site. If you want to act as an advocate, then listen to the folks who know this better than you.
  24. Does being bipolish in Warsaw mean anything different than elsewhere? Have you posed for any of the geeky magazines? Really well done, Janus. Ya know, someday these scientists are gonna invent something that will outsmart a rabbit.
  25. Sometimes I wonder if you're really serious about being a nerd, koti. You're never at the rallies, and comments like this make me question your sincerity.
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