Fear of Failure

"The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task."

- Vince Lombardi, American football coach

'Fear of failure' is a commonly voiced reason for not attempting things. Then 'success' means to complete something 'well'.

According toe the quote , success as doing what we can do, as well as we can, in the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

I find that I often start projects but am often left with a feeling of failure because I don't complete it, or am not good at it. So failure is simply failing to complete something.

Am I so afraid of not finishing, and doing well that I am afraid too even try? Possible....

The marshes

Talking to a friend this evening who is applying to grad school. Feeling like I am the only one not in grad school. I would like to go...but the problem is I am not sure for what. I feel like I am in the marshes and can seem to get unstuck. I have been stuck now for about a year.

I have one "promising" thing..but I have been in such fear about change that I may have blown it. I will know very very soon. What if... I am stuck in the what ifs. What if I do it and it is wrong, what if I don't do anything different, and I die of passivity.

What is the path to being unstuck? Where, how do I find my passion. I feel as if I have lost in on the way to what I thought I should be. Now, I am not sure. What I am sure of is that I feel stuck, and that where I am is not very fun. It is not fun to feel like you are a rock with moss growing on it. That is not enough for me.

It is not enough to stand still, and wait for life to happen. I choose to be a participant. I choose to figure out what my passion is and follow my bless.

If I could do anything what would it be. If I was to let go of what I "think" I should be doing, what what would I do?

What is holding me back? I have know fuckin CLUE! (or do I?) Am I so out of touch with myself that I can't hear my inner voice, or am I so afraid of my inner voice that I am not willing to hear it.

Fear ... maybe I need to do another fourth step..

"We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves."

The purpose of a searching and fearless moral inventory is to sort through the confusion and the contradiction of our lives so that we can find out who we really are. We are starting a new way of life and need to be rid of the burdens and traps which have controlled us and prevented our growth.

As we approach this step, most of us are afraid that there is a monster inside us that, if released, will destroy us. This fear can cause us to put off our inventory or may even prevent us from taking this crucial step at all. We have found that fear is lack of faith, and we have found a loving, personal God to whom we can turn. We no longer need to be afraid.

We have been experts at self-deception and rationalization; by writing our inventory, we can overcome these obstacles. A written inventory will unlock parts of our subconscious which remain hidden when we simply think about or talk about who we are. Once it is all down on paper, it is much easier to see, and much harder to deny our true nature. Honest self-assessment is one of the keys to our new way of life.

Let's face it; when we were using, we were not honest with ourselves. We are becoming honest with ourselves when we admit that addiction has defeated us and that we need help. It took a long time to admit that we were beaten. We found that we do not recover physically, mentally or spiritually overnight. Step Four will help us toward our recovery more than we imagine. Most of us find that we were neither as terrible, nor as wonderful, as we supposed. We are surprised to find that we have good points in our inventory. Anyone who has some time in the Program and has worked this step will tell you that the Fourth Step was a turning point in their life.

Some of us make the mistake of approaching the Fourth Step as if it were a confession of how horrible we are-what a bad person we have been. In this new way of life, a binge of emotional sorrow can be dangerous. This is not the purpose of the Fourth Step. We are trying to free ourselves of living in old, useless patterns. We take the Fourth Step to gain the necessary strength and insight which enables us to grow. We may approach the Fourth Step in a number of ways.

It is advisable that before we start, we go over the first three steps with a sponsor.

These steps are the preparation necessary to have the faith and courage to write a fearless inventory. We get comfortable with our understanding of these steps. We allow ourselves the privilege of feeling good about what we are doing. We have been thrashing about for a long time and have gotten nowhere. Now we are going to start this step, not letting it frighten us. We simply put it on paper, to the best of our present ability.

We must be done with the past, not cling to it. We want to look our past in the face, see it for what it really was and release it so we can live today. The past, for most of us, has been a ghost in the closet. We have been afraid to open that closet for fear of what that ghost may do to us. We do not have to do this alone. Our will and our life are now in the hands of our Higher Power.

Writing a thorough and honest inventory seemed impossible. It was, as long as we were operating under our own power. We take a few quiet moments before writing and ask for the strength to be fearless and thorough.

In Step Four, we begin to get in touch with ourselves. We write about our liabilities such as guilt, shame, remorse, self-pity, resentment, anger, depression, frustration, confusion, loneliness, anxiety, betrayal, hopelessness, failure, fear and denial.

We write on paper what is bothering us here and now. We have a tendency to think negatively, so putting it on paper gives us a chance to look more positively at what is happening,

Assets must also be considered if we are to get an accurate and complete picture of ourselves. This is very difficult for most of us because it is hard for us to accept that we have good qualities. However, we all have assets, many of them newly found in the Program, such as being clean, open-mindedness, God-awareness, honesty with others, acceptance, positive action, sharing, willingness, courage, faith, caring, gratitude, kindness and generosity. Also, our inventories usually include a lot of material on relationships.

We review our past performance and our present behavior to see what we want to keep and what we want to be rid of. No one is forcing us to give up our misery. This step has the reputation of being difficult; in reality, it is quite simple.

We write our inventory for ourselves without considering with whom we might share it. We work Step Four as if there were no Step Five. We can write alone or near other people; whatever is more comfortable to the writer is fine. We can write as long or as short as needed. Someone with experience can help with this. The important thing is to write a moral inventory. If the word "moral" bothers us, we may call it a positive/negative inventory.

The way to write an inventory is to write it! Thinking about an inventory, talking about it, theorizing about the inventory will not get it written. We sit down with a notebook, ask for guidance, pick up our pen and start writing. Anything we think about is inventory material. When we realize how little we have to lose, and how much we have to gain, we begin this step.

A basic rule of thumb is that we can write too little, yet we can never write too much. The inventory will fit the individual. Perhaps this seems difficult or painful. It may appear impossible. We may fear that being in touch with our feelings will trigger an overwhelming chain reaction of pain and panic. We may feel like avoiding an inventory because of a fear of failure. When we ignore our feelings the tension becomes too much for us. The fear of impending doom is so great it overrides our fear of failure.

An inventory becomes a relief to do because the pain of doing it is less than the pain of not doing it. We learn that pain can be a motivating factor in recovery. Thus, facing it becomes unavoidable. Every topic of step meetings we attend seems to be on the Fourth Step or doing a daily inventory. Through the inventory process, we are able to deal with all the things that can build up. The more we live our Program, the more God seems to position us to have things surface, so we can write about them. We begin enjoying our recovery because we have a way to resolve the shame, guilt, or resentment.

We are also able to be rid of the stress trapped inside. Writing will lift the lid from our pressure cooker to see whether we want to serve it up, put the lid back on it, or throw it out, we no longer have to stew in it.

We sit down with paper and pen and ask for our God's help in revealing the defects that are causing pain and suffering. We pray for the courage to be fearless and thorough so that this inventory may help us to put our lives in order. When we pray and take action, it always goes better for us.

We are not going to be perfect. If we were perfect, we would not be human. The important thing is that we do our best. We use the tools available to us, and we develop the ability to survive our emotions. We do not want to lose any of what we have gained; we want to continue in the Program. It is our experience that no matter how searching and thorough, no inventory is of any lasting effect unless it is promptly followed by an equally thorough Fifth Step.

Top Christmas ideas for the clueless

Jewlery to dream about...(love it)

Eric Courtney
Cameron Cohen





Natura Bisse:Botox replacement for flawless
Welcome to Erica Courtney

Java IO

BINARY Character


INPUT

InputStream Reader
FileInputStream FileReader
FilterInputStream FilterReader
DataInputStream
BufferedInputStream


OUTPUT

OutputStream Writer
FileOutputStream FileWriter
FilterOutputStream FilterWriter
DataOutputStream
BufferedOutputStream


// Create instance of node stream to attatch to what you are reading or writing
FileInput Stream fis=
new FileInputStream("test.dat");
// By default does not buffer need to add this to buffer
Buffered.InputStream bis=new Buffered.InputStream(fis);
# int x = fis.read();
// FileInputStream ad filter sctram how to do read
dataInputStream dis=new DataInputSTream (bis);
doubled=dis.read Double();
floatf= dis.read Float();

fis.close();

Food for thought..

Feeling Replaceable

Found this great t-shirt on on "thinkgeek.com".
Just like the movement of the steel and sneaker industries offshore in the 70s and 80s, the movement of the IT software and services offshore are events that can't be prevented. Offshore costs are too far below U.S. costs to be ignored. There is no question that offshore outsourcing will benefit companies that leverage this option to reduce their costs. But it will also seriously hurt U.S. employment and create new competitive challenges for some U.S. companies. Just like the steel and sneaker industries had to adopt to survive, so will the IT software and services industries.

Java Exams - SUN

http://www.levteck.com
Multiple exams information and sample tests.

http://www.jchq.net
Marcus Green's test (high quality)


Good books to study for Exam:

"The complete java 2 Certification Guide"
by Robers, Heller, Ernest

Many more out there..

Java Programming Acroynms- SUN

J2SDK - Java 2 Software Development Kit
J2SE - Java 2 Standard Edition
J2EE - Java 2 Enterprise Edition (support ejbs, and servlets)
J2ME - Java 2 Micro Edition
JRE - Java Run Time Environment (need to run java)
JVM - Java Virtual Machine

J2SDK
--------------------
- compilers
- utilities
- JRE
-JVM
- Library Code

Java Platform 2 - marketing term refers to anything beyond version 1.2

jedit - SUN

Java Programming - SUN

Two important specs:

http://java/sun/com/docs/books/jls/
http://java.sun.com/docs/vmspec/
http://www.javasoft.com/sfaq/verifier.html


What people know:
- reusable code -OO
- platform independence
- slow

MoveOn.org | Movie Screening

A friend send me this information looks like a great event!

MoveOn.org will be screening this new documentary at house parties around the country with a simultaneous conference call with the film makers (and possibly people from government, the military, and the intelligence community). Here's the link to the events
http://action.moveon.org/meet/parties.html


about the film:
http://www.truthuncovered.com/

GET ON IT FITNESS

I need to get fit! Some great sites to help out.
Pre-Quantico Kit

weekly
Fitness

STEW'S WORKOUT'S

fo' shizzle my nizzle

fo' shizzle my nizzle

"fo shizzle ma nizzle" is a bastardization of "fo' sheezy mah neezy" which is a bastardization of "for sure mah nigga" which is a bastdardization of "I concur with you whole heartedly my African american brother"

fo' shizzle my nizzle was origianally pattented by Martha Stewart, a white woman, and not a black man. While basking in the wonderfully spagetti she had just had, which contained home-grown mushrooms, she happened to decide to work in the garden. She needed her "shizzle" or aka "shovel" to work with her "nizzle" aka "nutmeg".

otaku

"oh-tah-koo"

Otaku is the honorific word of Taku (home).

Otaku is extremely negative in meaning as it is used to refer to someone who stays at home all the time and doesn't have a life (no social life, no love life, etc)

Usually an otaku person has nothing better to do with their life so they pass the time by watching anime, playing videogames, surfing the internet (otaku is also used to refer to a nerd/hacker/programmer).

Are you an otaku?

In the Western culture, people confuse otaku to be something positive like "Guru". If you think about it, it's not really good to be called a guru if it means you are a total loser who can't socialize with other people except through the Internet.

Other Japanese words which have been confused by Westerners also include but not limited to: Anime, Manga, etc

otaku no jinsei ha yabai na! (it sucks to live the life of an otaku!)

Even "GOD" like Dance Revolution

Economist.com | Internet security | FIGHTING THE WORK OF MASS DESTRUCTION

WHEN Microsoft released its latest monthly batch of software patches on November 11th, it included one designed to repair a previously unknown flaw in Windows 2000. Such an event often acts as a tip-off to the writers of computer worms and viruses, who know that new patches are never applied very widely or very quickly. It is possible that this new flaw could herald a series of computer failures at least as damaging as those seen earlier in the year.

Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, once made a habit of using his keynote speech at Comdex, the computer industry's top annual trade show, to launch his company's “next big thing”. Not all of these innovations succeeded, though at the time of their unveiling they all contained something to excite the industry. But times have changed. Mr Gates began his speech at the Las Vegas show this month by unveiling a dull bit of software that manages the distribution of security patches on a network. He followed this with an almost equally dreary firewall and a new spam-filtering initiative. These, rather than glitzy product announcements, are the industry's new priorities. Closing loopholes exploited by viruses, worms and hackers, said Mr Gates, is “the largest thing we are doing”.

All roads lead to Microsoft (better code)

Paris Hilton

TEL: 310-990-7444
Thought I would join the masses and let you dial for yourself...

TouchGraph LiveJournal Browser V1.0

TouchGraph LiveJournal Browser V1.0

Photo Gallery of Economists

Photo Gallery of Economists

Hereo's of the economy...

World Population

World Population
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/popclockw
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/popclock


Another reason for population control!!

U.S. National Debt Clock

U.S. National Debt Clock

Another one interesting clock:)

Digital Doomsday Clock

Digital Doomsday Clock

Interesting idea a "doom's day" clock

Adam Mesh

{ Chimera Capital - About | Competative Advantages }

Ok. my hats off to the "man", maybe he doesn't get the pretty girl but he thinks from the heart and lives life passionately. Something I admire and love.
On his website he describes the "most common charteristics of successful traders include:"

Common Characteristics of Successful Traders include:

• Self-Motivated
  
• Entrepreneurial spirit
  
• Desire for financial independence
  
• Exceptional analytical and quantitative skills
  
• Competitive
  
• Ability to thrive under stressful conditions
  
• A strong mind-set
  

Hmmm... these sound like many of the same skills he would need to win "the girl" of his dreams.

Since he didn't, does that mean his company is doomed in the sameway"?

DAY TRADING
Can't Keep a Good Day Trader Down
{ Fortune Magazine | Adam Mesh }
Online brokers like Charles Schwab, E*Trade, and Ameritrade may be suffering, but day traders are still partying like it's 1999.
FORTUNE
Friday, February 9, 2001
By Nelson D. Schwartz


Exactly a year ago, FORTUNE looked at the bizarre world of day traders like Adam Mesh, an unshaven, T-shirt-clad 24-year-old who, in just one day, bought and sold nearly 10,000 shares of a company he'd never heard of before. (See "Meet the New Market Makers" in the fortune.com archive.) Today, not only is Mesh still at Tradescape, but he and three partners have formed their own firm, Chimera Capital, hiring 45 associates as proprietary traders. Mesh and his partners provide the initial capital stake and then split any eventual profits with the firm's even younger newcomers, many of whom are recent grads of the University of Michigan, Mesh's alma mater. This unlikely fraternity (so far they're all male, although Mesh insists they'd be thrilled to find a female trader) now possess roughly $2 million in capital and recently traded more than 5 million shares on a single day.

Evan Seidenstein was still in Ann Arbor last spring when he decided to join Mesh's group, even though he had interviewed for positions with traditional firms like Salomon Smith Barney. "I knew that if I didn't give it a shot I would regret it for the rest of my life," says Seidenstein, who has eked out a gain for the past 62 straight trading days. The profits aren't huge--$2,000 to $4,000 a day--but they should enable Seidenstein to earn more than he would if he had taken a job as a junior number cruncher on Wall Street.

Of course, making money as a day trader is a lot harder than it seems when you're hanging around kids like Seidenstein (see box). The learning curve for a day trader is steep, Mesh says. Five of his traders are still down $30,000 each after their first few months, but he remains confident that they will eventually catch on and recoup their losses.

Like Seidenstein, Nancy Xiong missed out on the euphoria of late 1999 and early 2000, when day traders confused luck with trading savvy. A senior at NYU, Xiong had just completed her exams for dental school last August when her friend David Kuang invited her to join him and ten friends at Tradescape. Kuang, who graduated from MIT in 1995 with a degree in finance and economics, has been day trading full-time since 1997; he claims to have earned over $10 million last year. In any case, he has put up about $400,000 to help his friends get started as day traders, training them to look for what he calls "unsustainable price movements" and other small signals that suggest when the time is right to jump in for a quick gain. A rally in Nasdaq futures after a sharp selloff, for example, bodes well for a rapid rise in stocks like Juniper Networks and Broadcom, which closely track the Nasdaq index. On the other hand, a big inflow of sell orders aimed at a particular stock presents an opportunity to short--that is, to sell borrowed shares in a bet that the stock will head south. Unlike Mesh, Kuang says he lets his friends pocket 100% of the profits, and he adds that Nancy Xiong is on track to earn more in 2001 than a first-year MBA.

While people like Kuang and Xiong keep the day-trading faith, it's clear that the rest of us are no longer as engaged in what industry experts call "recreational trading." Occasional traders took a major step back after the Nasdaq peaked in March, and they have yet to return in force. Bear Stearns' Butte estimates that this group went from doing 25 trades a month at the beginning of 2000 to just under 16 in the final quarter. Occasional traders form the bedrock of Ameritrade's and E*Trade's customer base, which is why they've been hammered. Schwab has been clobbered as well, but it's much more than just an online broker, garnering over half its revenues from businesses that aren't related to trading, like fee-based asset management. That should help the company in the next few months, says Richard Strauss of Goldman Sachs, especially as its radical cost-cutting measures take hold.

The outlook for pure plays like Ameritrade and CSFBdirect (formerly DLJdirect) is a lot bleaker. "They could muddle through, but I think the majority of these companies are toast," says Strauss. To make matters worse, Ameritrade and E*Trade are expected to spend a combined $630 million on marketing this year, flooding the airwaves with ads in a desperate search for new customers. "Some of it isn't even marketing--it's just buying accounts," Strauss says. Indeed, both E*Trade and Ameritrade hand out $75 to people who open an account with $1,000 or more.

E*Trade, it should be noted, is trying to branch out and become what it calls an "online diversified financial-services company," offering mortgages and CDs through its E*Trade Bank unit, along with insurance and mutual funds. It's still too early to know whether E*Trade's efforts will succeed, but they have helped its stock rally a bit recently. In the end, however, just about everyone expects the e-brokers to either merge or be absorbed by larger financial services.

Firms that specialize in the day-trading niche, though, aren't worrying about down markets. Omar Amanat, the 28-year-old CEO of Tradescape, says his firm booked revenues of more than $140 million in 2000, up from just $25 million in 1999. And during the fourth quarter of 2000, when the Nasdaq was plunging, Tradescape's average daily trading volume was up nearly 50%. "It doesn't matter whether the market is up or down," says Amanat. "All the day traders want is volatility."

If the trend continues, day-trading firms, once considered as ephemeral as the stock bubble they helped create, may outlive E*Trade, Ameritrade, and the rest of the once hyped-to-the-hilt online brokerages. That would pretty much guarantee that Nancy Xiong will never go to dental school.