This restaurant is an establishment run by Chinese people making Tex-Mex food.  The food is good quality, fresh, good flavor, and inexpensive.  Tacos, burritos, quesadillas, fajitas and other combinations are available.  Some combo specials include rice, beans, choice of chicken, beef or shrimp fajita, lettuce & tomatoes and a soda, and two freshly made tortillas, for a price that’s hard to beat.  During the winter (and even today when I ate there) they have free tea!  They also offer fajitas by the pound.

As far as looks, this is a step up from one of those hole-in-the-wall chinese food places (can’t even call them restaurants), but not by much. The decor is basic, nothing fancy at all, with panel ceilings, some mirrors, and some eastern decorations here and there, including a statue of Buddha and the traditional "cat clock" by the window and bamboo tree plant.  They do have various magazines, available for browsing while you eat in.

They accept major credit cards for payment, but have a $10 minimum.  For one person, your meal will often not reach even that much.

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.
Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.
Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle.
Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.

- Phillips Brooks

Wikipedia has some biographical information on Phillips Brooks.

On his weekly address on 14 February 2009, President Obama quoted President Kennedy with similar words (watch this weekly Presidential address on YouTube, quote happens at 4:00 to 4:15).  One can assume Kennedy was paraphrasing Brooks, and in turn, Obama was paraphrasing Kennedy.

An easier life would not contribute to your growth, whereas becoming stronger would.

Connections: Brooks was a priest in Massachusetts. The Kennedy family was from the Massachusetts area.  Obama sees in Kennedy a model for being President and a better American.

Also, Obama understands how people in the United States feel about the Kennedys and uses that connection (“This morning I’m reminded of words President Kennedy spoke..”) to elicit a certain kind of response.  He does not quote Brooks; that connection does not have as much value as the Kennedy one.

I have to say that I read another blogger’s blog and was so delighted and inspired by reading it that I wanted some of that to rub off onto my blog, so I took the format of one of the entries in that blog and made my own entry in that style.

If you wonder what I have been up to, you may want to check out the following:

• My Facebook
• My blogs:
  • My Computers & Technology blog at NYU
  • My Political Observations blog at NYU
  • My Information Technology Services blog at NYU
  • My Language blog at NYU
  • My Food blog at NYU
  • My LiveJournal blog
  • My Windows Live blog
  • My EduBlogs blog
  • My Tumblr blog
  • My Blogger blog
  • My Wordpress blog
• My Flickr
• My personal web site, http://eduardodeleon.com

Welcome and thank you for visiting!  Your feedback is always welcome and I would love to hear about you too!

Eduardo

NYTimes.com: Meetings are a matter of precious time

Look at all the comments posted to that blog entry.  Now look at the names of the posters (look at mine too).  This is one of the great and awful things about the Internet: encourages participation with (varying degrees of) anonymity.

Different sites focus on different things.  The New York Times on The Web wants to take itself as seriously as it takes its print business, and it wants its readers/consumers to do the same.  So there are certain things they will publish on it, and certain processes they follow to ensure that goal is achieved.  Certainly the print business and the Internet/web business differs, so they have to change things (think of balancing the speed of news on the web with the accuracy needed for anything with the brand “NYTimes”, advertising/business models, feedback, transparency etc)

Facebook has no “print business” equivalent or anything other than its web business; there is nothing anchoring it to the real world except relationships between emails that belong to people in the real world. Facebook would be worthless without these relationships.  The “web of trust” mentioned by #2 Tobias is inherent in the design of Facebook: one person’s email address “validates” another person’s email address by “accepting a friend request”.  The more friends from your real life whose email address is accepted as a “friend” in Facebook, the more valuable the social network.  The flaw in this is that, this being on the Internet and therefore providing a certain degree of anonymity, there are going to be many ways in which these social networks are exploited for all sorts of bad things; once something is accepted as legitimate or trusted in Facebook, it keeps gaining trust even if it is not deserved.  Remember, Facebook exists only online; there is no office on campus somewhere that verifies that something is true or legitimate.  If many people who individually and voluntarily provide truthful information and who trust each other, decide that something is legitimate and trustworthy, it will become so even if undeservedly.

Providing some truthful information gets you trusted, but then is that a guarantee that all the information you provide is trustworthy?  In real life, trust comes much more slowly than online; a shortening of this “time-to-trust” can be achieved by using “trust authorities” such as banks and DMVs and courts.  In the online world, there exist “certificate authorities”, but these are not available in the Facebook-type of social networks.  Other “web of trusts” do exist, but are used by too few people (thawte, PGP, etc) and in any case these do not provide one of the great advantages of other social networks: voluntary sharing of personal (truthful, legitimate, trust-inviting) information coupled with the freedom of some anonymity (by passively not providing truthful information or actively providing untruthful information).

My thoughts.

“He has dug them out of a hole. Is it fun to watch? Yeah. Am I rooting for Chad a little bit? Yeah.”

Am I annoyed at people who ask and answer their own questions? Yes.

Do I feel like I’m carrying the torch of George Carlin by saying all the language things that annoy me? Probably.

"Capturing Osama bin Laden is something we clearly would love to do," he said. "There are 30 days left."

Dick Cheney, interview on ABC News

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/21/AR2008122100869.html

you can’t have a coordinated European effort if Europe’s biggest economy not only refuses to go along, but heaps scorn on its neighbors’ attempts to contain the crisis.

so the socialism can’t be just one state, it must be all states- The Communism! Latvia is the new Argentina: that certainly provides perspective. So much for the "stronger economies" of the EU deriding the PIGS (Portugal Italy Greece & Spain): gains and profits go to the "stronger economies"; losses must be shared by all. Does this sound familiar?