jennifer aniston

Jennifer Aniston was featured in today's NYT Magazine. I like her and I feel that she's a really stand up kind of gal with an amazing talent for acting. She's also gorgeous and has been a model of beauty for me and my girls for some time. The quote that stood out to me was:

Q: Another screen that has gained in prominence since “Friends” is the computer screen. Has Internet stardom become oppressive to you?

A: Here’s where I luck out: I’m really computer illiterate. When I see people on their BlackBerrys, working them like some girls work a hair dryer, I’m just stunned. People have sent me clips from FunnyOrDie.com or YouTube, but I never seek it out. I did love that little girl in the Will Ferrell landlord clip on FunnyOrDie, but I’m content with just checking my e-mail.

Q : What about something like Facebook?

A: It’s not for me. I’d be opening myself up too much. I don’t want to sound like a complete innocent — I’ve looked at things, of course. But it’s such spewing. If I look at it, I’ll be affected. It’s like dancing with the devil. But I have spent hours on 1stDibs.com, looking at furniture. And I like to play Scrabble. And poker. I discovered Wii this weekend. I’m a late bloomer.

Whoah. It's 2008. The fact that people - especially those with so much success and bank - are so far removed from technology and all that blows my mind - especially as I move ever closer to making it my profession. As I've just spent probably 2 hours going through my Google Reader (and I complain that I have no free time...) I wonder what its like to be so free from technology. Sometimes I am doing so much on my phone with checking email, FB, NYT, CNN, Twitter and repeat, that I have to throw it down (on the car seat so that I can focus on driving...so not safe). The information age has me operating on overload 24/7.

While we're on NYT, this quote from a Thomas Friedman article the other day has haunted me for the past couple of days:

So, I have a confession and a suggestion. The confession: I go into restaurants these days, look around at the tables often still crowded with young people, and I have this urge to go from table to table and say: “You don’t know me, but I have to tell you that you shouldn’t be here. You should be saving your money. You should be home eating tuna fish. This financial crisis is so far from over. We are just at the end of the beginning. Please, wrap up that steak in a doggy bag and go home.”

It's made me rethink dropping $500+ on a plane ticket to D.C. for the inauguration in January and a couple of other big ticket items. I would like to think I'm doing relatively great as far as job prospects go but with today's economy you never know when the carpet is going to be pulled out from under your feet and that resiliency factor is more important than ever. We worry about keeping up with our friends who have the big screens, expensive purses, extravagant travels, luxe meals, etc - but how much should we be focusing on paying off our student loans ASAP, building up our savings in case the economy is shot and we lose our jobs and can't recover for 3 mo, 6 mo, 12 mo? I appreciate the nudge we need to keep reality in the forefront. I think sometimes its really easy for us to lose sight of our priorities and then get to a point where we're operating with little or no safety net. Which could prove to be detrimental in the future.

Shawn Jackson - "Feelin' Jack"

As seen in this great post from TSS.

Anybody wanna start a team with me to solve the Netflix Challenge? You win $1 MILLION if you can improve their recommendation system by 10% - which gets increasingly harder as you approach that threshold apparently. I bet it has something to do with moods - like if you answer a quick survey/question about how you're feeling when you log in to Netflix that could affect your decisions. Maybe if you quantified moods like fill out a questionnaire when you sign up for the service and then that translates your "happy" to a 9 and then "annoyed" to a 3 and "depressed" to a 2. Then when you login you rate your feeling on a 1-10 scale that's translated to reflect your mood and that affects whether you're shown "Pursuit of Happyness," "Napoleon Dynamite" or "Scarface." I bet that's the answer. Just hand me 100k when you put that into something workable.



"I Can See" - Jazzanova feat. Ben Westbeech