Even Oprah uses Twitter

Oh, those silly pirates

The Financial Times reported tonight that a US ship was in a stand-off with Somali pirates. Pirates! I thought they only existed in movies and had parrots. Apparently this is a common occurrence off of the east coast of Somalia, however the first time in years that they dare attack Team America. I thought we had guns and shit?

“A stand-off was developing in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday night after the crew of a US-flagged container ship regained control of their ship from pirates but saw their captain left adrift with the attackers in a lifeboat.” – The Financial Times

What’s even better was when I was searching of a cool picture of a pirate, I ran across this article which claims that pirates are the cause of the credit crisis. The best part is that it isn’t a ridiculous claim by a blogger, but rather a professor of politics at the University of Sunderland.

Jack Sparrow would be proud.

New Music – March 2009

One of my favorite things to do is keep up-to-date with music and bands. If you know me, then you’re already aware of my vast music taste – everything from jazz, country, to rap/hip-hop, and indie. On a regular basis I hope to promote some of the artists that I am currently listening to. I won’t be writing reviews, rather giving links to sources that will allow you to check the music out for yourself.

Also, please be aware that all of the links that I point to are already hosted on other websites – I do not upload anything personally.

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My favorite artists and albums from March 2009:

Doves – Kingdom of Rust
Category: britpop
You can download the album here.

Cymbals Eat Guitars – Why there are Mountains
Category: indie rock
Check out this Pitchfork Review for an in-depth review.
You can download the album here.

Jamie Foxx – Intuition
Category: hip-hop
Actually an awesome album, the music videos are even better. He dresses up as a big Panda for part of the video.

Welcome to “Escape the Daily Grind”, because “The Daily Grind” was taken

For a first blog post, I would like to highlight my motivation for this blog:

Like your common 5th year undergradate engineering student graduating in May, I find myself struggling to find motivation these days. It’s that time of the year again where the weather is turning (slowly), coursework is piling up, and my intrinsic motivation is diminishing. What better way to procrastinate than to start a blog and publish all of the ridiculous and random knowledge that I have? All I needed was a name.

Struggling to find a name for the blog, I came across the idea of the “daily grind”. Of course, the name was already taken – and most likely belonged to the coffee bean distributor. Kudos to them, however a simple Google search on the definition of the daily grind has nothing to do with coffee:

daily grind
noun

1. (idiom) The difficult, routine, or monotonous tasks of daily work.

   As soon as he has the money to retire, he plans to leave the daily grind and travel more.

Seemed to fit perfectly, I actually laughed upon reading the definition. So there you have it and if you are like me and would like a break from the daily grind, be sure to check back once in a while.