Last Thursday I got to listen to Ursula Burns, the current CEO and Chairman of Xerox. I won’t repeat her story which you can read about on Wikipedia here, but I did jot down a few quotes that resonated. I’m not the type to keep a moleskin around, but I figure this blog is an alternative…

“Where you are does not define who you are.”

“In life, you control 98 notches. The other 2, you can squash.”

“Let them see you sweat. Chill out… leaders don’t have to be perfect and infallible.”

Note: they may not be exact quotes but you get the idea.

This is pretty much a dummy post so that I can test and play with the new FaceBook social comment plugin that was released today. I really should be doing something more productive…

Also, if you have commented on CharlesSpot in the past, I preserved the old comments, but to prevent confusion, you just can’t enter anymore…

WDYT about FBs social plugins?

Samir and I purchased new Fitbits to track our activity throughout the day. It was a little pricey but I was interested in checking out my “analytics.” Before you make fun of me, here are a few things that I have discovered since October.

1. I seem to be a lot more active when I’m not in school, but I am still ranking in the 76% for “activity.”
2. I’m more active on Wednesday and Thursday… I suspect BHP and C-Functions are to blame.
3. I’m a lazy slob on Sunday.
4. I tracked my sleeping for a week back in January and I wake up typically 8 times at night. I stopped because it was just too tedious to enter my sleep hours everyday. I disregarded one night where I woke up 66 times… btw, it isn’t what you think.

The Fitbit is a bit difficult to keep up with though… entering food, sleep, exercise, etc. all manually is a bit painful. I have yet to try the iPhone app which might make this slightly easier. Also, wish I could bring this bad boy into the pool… Overall though, it is a pretty cool gadget. Geek pride.

(image compliments of sindy)

I’m not sure what is going on, but I think I can admit that I am an Amazon Prime addict. Amazon and their clever scheme to give the service away to students has made me… dependent. I am starting to filter results by things that are eligible for Prime and ONLY considering those options. I don’t know when this happened, but here are some quick stats that I pulled:

2009 purchases – 9
2010 purchases – 31
2011 purchases – 7… already

On a related online shopping theme, my friend Jessica has started a new blog to help folks that are bad at buying presents or just buy bad presents. Regardless, check out the goods at her blog:

The Present Perfect

According to CharlesSpot archives, I have been blogging since 2005, BUT what you might not know is that I have been writing my “clever” thoughts and documenting my “exciting” life for even longer.

Yes. I have been blogging for over 8 years. I just didn’t realize it until I was reminded of my Xanga!! For those that were uber-geeks back in the day, you might remember what the hell that is. To bring it back old school, here is my post from June 5, 2002.

well, i am here at work right now with not much to do so i decided to create one of these XANGA things cause i got addicted to reading other people’s. so i was thinkin how people hate on engineers so much but its not even that bad. you go to meetings, talk about random things half the time you are at work, and when you are sick of talking to the guy in the next cubicle, you do some work. if your fellow engineers are cool people or there are some cute receptionists around (sadly there aren’t) then you are set for life with a good salary. just a thought. ok let’s see if this thing works…

My things have changed…

Fat Mike sent this animated gif of Brian Wilson. Awesome.