Life Journal

Long distance relationship aren’t always ideal. In fact, they’re really tough. You spend countless of hours just talking through a phone or through a screen. You can’t see the person when you want to or when you most need them.. You can’t hug, you can’t hold hands, you can’t kiss. You lose the intimacy in a physical sense. But then, Your relationship becomes based on each other and nothing else.

You learn to communicate, because a long-distance relationship without communication is nothing.

You learn to trust, because you can’t always see or know everything the person is doing.

You learn to sacrifice, because someone’s always going to lose a bit of sleep from the time difference.

And lastly, you learn to appreciate. So often, we take for granted the people and relationships in our lives because we think they’ll always be there.

But when you only have a limited amount of time with a person, you learn to appreciate and cherish every single moment you have with them. When you finally see that person after weeks or months of seeing them only through a computer screen, it is one of the greatest feelings in the world. When you’ve waited for something so long and you finally have it, you cherish it. The key to a long-distance relationship is faith.

If both of you are not willing to give up, if both of you are willing to stand up and still try after every time one of you or both of you fall.

“Distance isn’t for the fearful, it’s for the bold “.

It’s for those who are willing to spend a lot of time alone in exchange for the little time with the one they love.

It’s for knowing a good thing when they see it, even if they don’t see it nearly enough”

This is one Lannister who cannot pay her debts.

Lena Headey, who plays the opulent and evil Queen Cersei in “Game of Thrones,” claims to be royally broke in real life.

Despite starring in the hit HBO series, the 39-year-old actress claims to TMZ she has “less than $5 in my bank account” and in desperate need of her $46,000 tax refund from 2011.

Headey split with her husband, Peter Loughran, last year and is reportedly in a nasty divorce and fighting over custody of their 2-year-old son.

The gossip site reports that Headey filed legal documents in response to Loughran’s demand for half of their tax refund.

The report further says the actress claims to need an emergency $6,000 up front to pay for her daily expenses and to take care of her son because she is currently living off credit.

Headey wants the remaining $34,000 kept in a blocked bank account so they can’t touch the money until they reach an agreement on how they want it split.

Also in the documents, a judge has reportedly denied both Loughran and Headey’s requests.

It’s unclear why Headey, who’s also starred in “300” and as Sarah Connor in the “Terminator” TV series, is in such financial straits.

Ellen DeGeneres’ is looking for a male model to represent her new underwear products. After narrowing it down, she went with a sexy guy named Mike who I think makes a great choice.

Wasting no time at all, Ellen has put him to work in his first underwear commercial. This is no ordinary underwear commercial – it’s a live one. That’s right, Ellen had him standing on a rotating platform while she narrated for the commercial. Her narration prompted him to make certain movements like picking up a lucky penny, playing football, and even just flexing his arms and abs.

Watch the funny and very sexy video below and as Ellen says, “Gluteus Mikesimus, everybody!”

Researchers have linked sitting for long periods of time with a number of health concerns, including obesity and metabolic syndrome — a cluster of conditions that includes increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels.

Too much sitting also seems to increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer.

One recent study compared adults who spent less than two hours a day in front of the TV or other screen-based entertainment with those who logged more than four hours a day of recreational screen time. Those with greater screen time had:

• A nearly 50 percent increased risk of death from any cause
• About a 125 percent increased risk of events associated with cardiovascular disease, such as chest pain (angina) or heart attack

The increased risk was separate from other traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as smoking or high blood pressure.

Sitting in front of the TV isn’t the only concern. Any extended sitting — such as behind a desk at work or behind the wheel — can be harmful. What’s more, spending a few hours a week at the gym or otherwise engaged in moderate or vigorous activity doesn’t seem to significantly offset the risk.

Rather, the solution seems to be less sitting and more moving overall. You might start by simply standing rather than sitting whenever you have the chance.

For example:

• Stand while talking on the phone or eating lunch.
• If you work at a desk for long periods of time, try a standing desk — or improvise with a high table or counter.

Better yet, think about ways to walk while you work:

• Walk laps with your colleagues rather than gathering in a conference room for meetings.
• Position your work surface above a treadmill — with a computer screen and keyboard on a stand or a specialized treadmill-ready vertical desk — so that you can be in motion throughout the day.

The impact of movement — even leisurely movement — can be profound. For starters, you’ll burn more calories. This might lead to weight loss and increased energy.

Even better, the muscle activity needed for standing and other movement seems to trigger important processes related to the breakdown of fats and sugars within the body. When you sit, these processes stall — and your health risks increase. When you’re standing or actively moving, you kick the processes back into action.

An interesting article I read regarding the importance of grammar in workplace, specifically for social media accounts on Facebook or Twitter. Here’s it;

If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building.

Some might call my approach to grammar extreme, but I prefer Lynne Truss’s more cuddly phraseology: I am a grammar “stickler.” And, like Truss — author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves — I have a “zero tolerance approach” to grammar mistakes that make people look stupid.

Now, Truss and I disagree on what it means to have “zero tolerance.” She thinks that people who mix up their itses “deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave,” while I just think they deserve to be passed over for a job — even if they are otherwise qualified for the position.

Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies, iFixit or Dozuki, takes a mandatory grammar test. Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, English language learners, etc.), if job hopefuls can’t distinguish between “to” and “too,” their applications go into the bin.

Of course, we write for a living. iFixit.com is the world’s largest online repair manual, and Dozuki helps companies write their own technical documentation, like paperless work instructions and step-by-step user manuals. So, it makes sense that we’ve made a preemptive strike against groan-worthy grammar errors.

But grammar is relevant for all companies. Yes, language is constantly changing, but that doesn’t make grammar unimportant. Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can’t tell the difference between their, there, and they’re.

Good grammar makes good business sense — and not just when it comes to hiring writers. Writing isn’t in the official job description of most people in our office. Still, we give our grammar test to everybody, including our salespeople, our operations staff, and our programmers.

On the face of it, my zero tolerance approach to grammar errors might seem a little unfair. After all, grammar has nothing to do with job performance, or creativity, or intelligence, right?

Wrong. If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use “it’s,” then that’s not a learning curve I’m comfortable with. So, even in this hyper-competitive market, I will pass on a great programmer who cannot write.

Grammar signifies more than just a person’s ability to remember high school English. I’ve found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing — like stocking shelves or labeling parts.

In the same vein, programmers who pay attention to how they construct written language also tend to pay a lot more attention to how they code. You see, at its core, code is prose. Great programmers are more than just code monkeys; according to Stanford programming legend Donald Knuth they are “essayists who work with traditional aesthetic and literary forms.” The point: programming should be easily understood by real human beings — not just computers.

And just like good writing and good grammar, when it comes to programming, the devil’s in the details. In fact, when it comes to my whole business, details are everything.

I hire people who care about those details. Applicants who don’t think writing is important are likely to think lots of other (important) things also aren’t important. And I guarantee that even if other companies aren’t issuing grammar tests, they pay attention to sloppy mistakes on résumés. After all, sloppy is as sloppy does.

That’s why I grammar test people who walk in the door looking for a job. Grammar is my litmus test. All applicants say they’re detail-oriented; I just make my employees prove it.

Manti Te’o, one of the stars of the Notre Dame Football team recently fell victim to an elaborate hoax that is simply awful. The 21-year old met someone online a while back that went by the name of Lennay Kekua. He fell for her and they talked online and on the phone regularly. Kekua was believed to have passed away of leukemia on September 12, the eve of Notre Dame’s game against Michigan State, and only hours after Te’o’s grandmother had also passed. Still Te’o was able to channel his loss into a win for the team and ended up getting honored with the Heisman Trophy.

Now, because the story had received so much media attention, the hoax got exposed. Kekua never existed and it was a prank done by a group friends. The woman used in the pictures is still alive and well and had no idea this was going on and has never met Te’o.

This whole story is similar to the plot of Catfish, a movie where a man is being filmed by his brother and friend as he builds a romantic relationship with a young woman he met on Facebook… only to later find out she never existed. Watch ABC’s Diane Sawyer‘s report on the Manti Te’o story here.

Full article by Dead Spin.

For the most part, I’ve tried to stay clear of the whole Chris Brown topic here. Between you and me, Rihanna can do whatever she wants. It’s her life and you only learn by making mistakes. Speaking of which, we’ve all done stupid things we’re not proud of when we were young. I know I’m guilty. Everyone deserves a shot at redemption. That said, I would hope people make a concerted effort to change their ways and learn from the past.

Based on a recent Twitter feud, I can honestly say wholeheartedly, it looks like Chris Brown will NEVER change. How stupid do you have to be to engage in a heated argument with a female comedienne and spew out degrading comments on a public forum for the whole world to see. And it’s not just calling her a ‘bitch’ or ‘ho’ but something so graphic as defecating on her eyeball as she performs fellatio. Truly disgusting. He clearly has no respect for women.

Given his history with violence against women, this is inexcusable. It’s one thing to verbally blurt it out in the heat of an argument. But one would hope that during the time it takes to type out responses on his smartphone, he would’ve had a moment of clarity and realized the idiotic thing he was doing. Clearly his rage supersedes rational thought. If you have the stomach for it, check out the heated exchange with comedienne Jenny Johnson below which began with Brown complaining how old he looks.

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I found this super cool article over at the internet about how to get over a break up, it is really witty and surprisingly good. Read below.

This month, no fewer than three of my friends have pressed me into service as a breakup counselor. And if three of them are actually telling me about it, that means there are another 300 out there who are not.

So in the interest of helping out all of those suffering in silence now or in the future, I’m compiling a list of interventions that many have found useful in handling such matters of the heart. Let’s start with the non-negotiable one first:

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May the celebrity scandals continue. It seems like the common public is absolutely obsessed with celebrity infidelity right now. Whether the rumors or true or not, I feel like I can’t pass a magazine stand or browse a website (not unlike ours) without discovering that someone has been unfaithful. Enter the latest from the rumor mill. Few days earlier, everyone was abuzz about a rumor started on Twitter that super-hottie David Beckham had cheated on Victoria Beckham. But with whom?

According to all the rumors, David had a little promiscuous rendezvous with one, Katherine Jenkins. She doesn’t have the highest of celebrity status on our side of the water unless you watched the last season of Dancing With The Stars. This operatic singer made it pretty far during the competition but was ultimately beat out by Donald Driver in the finals. Immediately, both camps came immediately to the rescue to dispel and squash the rumors. Read their statements below.

A rep for David Beckham released the following to E! News:

“Unfortunately, we have to deal with this type of nonsense on Twitter. One minute David is dead, then the more scurrilous rumors, there is no truth to any of it.”

Katherine Jenkins released some ammo on her own via Twitter:

“Dear Twitter friends, I’ve read some horrible rumours on here & want u 2 know I absolutely deny I’ve had an affair with David Beckham. The rumours are very hurtful, untrue & my lawyers tell me actionable.”

She continued:

“I’ve only met David twice: once at the Military Awards in 2010 & on a night out in the West End in Feb 2012. We were out in a group of friends & it was just a normal fun evening out. Just so we are clear I have never been on my own with him and never arranged to meet up.”

Fact or Fiction?

After reading the unprofessional letter the VP of PETA wrote to Lady Gaga, I have to say her response was perfection. Like Gaga, I don’t agree with wearing fur, etc. but when they recently accused her of doing just that because of pictures and videos they had seen, they went too far in the what they said to her. I don’t believe for a second that she wore real fur.

I’ve included both open letters below. In PETA’s, the Senior VP Dan Mathews asks Gaga if she has amnesia because she had in the past said she doesn’t like fur and hates it and they request to know her official stance on the matter. He also says that Gaga is making herself a target like the “mindless Kim Kardashian“. With respect to that, he’s referring to when Kardashian was once flour bombed at a red carpet event for having previously worn fur. When you read his letter, you’ll see how immature it sounds and I feel they should have just contacted Gaga directly if they had questions about what she was wearing, rather than making accusations they can’t backup. Read the back & forth below.

PETA TO GAGA

Dear Gaga,

Many of your gay fans, I among them, have long admired what you told Ellen: “I hate fur, and I don’t wear fur.” I included a link because these recent photos of you in fox and rabbit and with a wolf carcass make it appear that you have amnesia. I’m also including this brief video hosted by Tim Gunn showing the violent cruelty that you promote when you wear fur. What happened? Are your stylists telling you that it’s fake, or are you a turncoat? Many gays are animal advocates because we recognize that the same arrogance and indifference that some have toward animal suffering has at times been directed toward us personally because of our orientation. PETA has long participated in Pride events around the country, and just last week, we helped lead protests against Chick-fil-A. But by wearing those dumb furs in a heat wave, you’re making yourself a target just like the mindless Kim Kardashian. As we plan our fall campaigns, please tell us whether what you gracefully told Ellen was heartfelt or just a pose.

We await your reply.

Sincerely,

Dan Mathews
Senior Vice President
PETA

GAGA TO PETA

“I want you to know that I care deeply about your feelings and views, and I will always support your philosophies about life. I do not however support violent, abusive, and childish campaigns for ANY CAUSE. Particularly one that I respect. ‘Animal Rights.’ I am choosing not to comment on whether or not the furs I purchase are faux fur-pile or real because I would think it hypercritical not to acknowledge the python, ostrich, cow hide, leather, lamb, alligator, ‘kermit’ and not to mention meat, that I have already worn.

I respect your views, please respect mine. And to campaigners, Save your flour to make bread for the children who are hungry. And Kim Kardashian is fabulous.”