I recently fell in love with wordpress, sorry blogspot, and am in the process of starting a new blog there. I have set up the google friend connect so feel free to come follow me over there =) My new blog is AJMcCormick.com.
Its been fun!
-AJ
Thursday, November 12, 2009
40 Tips for an Exceptional Life
My advisor gave me a handout with this list that I thought was pretty neat (I tried to google who to credit it to but from what I saw it looks like its just from an email that has been circulating).
1. Take a 10-30 minute walk every day. And while you walk, smile. It is the ultimate anti-depressant.
2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day. Buy a lock if you must.
3. Buy a DVR, tape your late night shows and get more sleep.
4. When you wake up in the morning complete the following statement,
“My purpose is to _____________________________ today.”
5. Live with the 3 E’s — Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.
6. Watch more movies, play more games and read more books than you did last year.
7. Make time to practice meditation and prayer. They provide us with daily fuel for our busy lives.
8. Spend more time with people over the age of 70 and under the age of 6.
9. Dream more while you are awake.
10. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat fewer foods that are not.
11. Drink plenty of water.
12. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
13. Clear your clutter from your house, your car, your desk and let new and flowing energy into your life.
14. Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip, energy vampires, issues of the past, negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
15. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
16. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a college kid with a maxed-out charge card.
17. Smile and laugh more. It will keep the energy vampires away.
18. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
20. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
21. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
22. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.
23. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
24. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, and wear the fancy underwear cause today IS special.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness except YOU.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: “In five years, will this matter?”
27. Forgive everyone for everything.
28. What other people think of you is none of your business.
29. Time heals almost everything. Give time, time.
30. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
31. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.
32. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.
33. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
34. The best is yet to come.
35. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
36. Do the right thing!
37. Call your family often.
38. Each night before you go to bed complete the following statements:
“I am thankful for ______________________________________.
Today I accomplished ___________________________________.”
39. Remember that you are too blessed to be stressed.
40. Enjoy the ride. Remember that this is NOT Disney World and you certainly don’t want a fast pass. You only have one ride through life so make the most of it and enjoy the ride.
-AJ
Friday, November 6, 2009
RE: AC takes Austin
The multimedia reporters' coverage from our trip to Austin is live! Check it out HERE! (and just ignore that part where I'm posing b/c I think he's taking a pic w/ the video camera hehe)
-AJ
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Amarillo College takes Austin
11 lucky individuals from Amarillo college were selected to head to the 2009 Texas Community College Journalism Association in Austin, TX. I was one of those lucky 11, along with 10 others from the newspaper staff!
It was a bit of a disaster getting there. We had to be at the airport at 6:45am, 2 of our group had never flown before, and we were delayed due to thunderstorms and had to travel around those storms through some crazy turbulence. Was not the ideal first flight for noobs but they did awesome. So we get to Austin and think we lucked out and missed all the nasty weather, HA! Take the city bus downtown, get off the bus to start walking the 15 or so blocks to our hotel, and there comes the rain.
After much suitcase dropping, tripping, and typical tourist cross walk confusion we managed to safely make it to the Hilton, where we were supposed to be staying. Well turned out that even though the reservations had been made for three rooms with 2 queen beds per room MONTHS ahead, the hotel had the right to change out the beds to 1 king size bed per room and we got sent across the street to the Marriott. Finally get checked in there and start to head to our rooms and no joke one of my suitcase wheels started deteriorating. Thankfully those suckers have a wheel within a wheel so I just had a lopsided suitcase.
Our luck started to pick up and three of the girls and I scored an awesome hotel room with a corner view. We hit up a decent mexican restaurant, El Sol Y La Luna, and waited out most of the nasty weather there, or so we thought. Sun peaked out & we started to walk back to the hotel only to get dumped on by the rain. After an hour of re-primping/attempting to fix our hair in the humidity we were finally decent enough to head back out. We learned very quickly that it is not an easy task to figure out where to walk to with a group of 11, which had then turned into about a group of 14 since a few more people joined us. We decided to catch a bus and head to South Congress, aka "SOCO", where we were told there are a lot of shops. I *really* hate shopping so I was pretty bored for most of the evening but it was nice getting to see everything. About 8 we caught a bus back downtown and most of us just settled in for the evening.
Friday was spent at the convention. We had a feature photography contest early in the morning that was pretty fun. Maddisun, one of the video reporters I buddied up with at the beginning of the trip, was in my group as well as Alfredo, the cartoonist, and we just ran all over town together snapping pictures of buildings and some of ourselves. We were asked to shoot "something old & something new; an artsy view of changes in downtown Austin." The photo above is the photo I went with. I wasn't too proud of it but the fact that we ran all over town, didn't get lost, AND made it back in time for all of us to share the laptop to choose photos & turn them in before the dead line was pretty awesome. Of course the next day we were walking around and I saw a brand new Subway (the fast food place) built next to an old building that would've been the perfect picture. We went to a few sessions, only 1 was dreadfully boring (pretty much was just a newspaper staff talking about inside jokes and what not), but the rest were very interesting. I was slightly suspicious that maybe Twitter & Facebook had sponsored some of the convention as every speaker we heard pimped the social networking sites--just goes to show how much of an impact the web has already had on the media.
The majority of the group hit up PF Changs for lunch, I wasn't too impressed but it was an alright meal and we had a really good time. Before the banquet Maddisun, Alfredo, and I all ran down to some water we saw from the hotel room and just goofed off taking pictures. I wish I could ask whoever planned the banquet dinner what the heck they were thinking. The salad was delicious but the entree was questionable. We are college students--gourmet is not our thing! We had a piece of chicken with a spinach artichoke stuffing and a leg bone sticking up in the air. This was sitting in a pool of some green substance. Then on the side we had a circle of quiche. I *believe* it had a mushroom on the top and rice on the bottom, but don't take my word on that. I do not like eggs at all but I did try it. I ate as much chicken as I could but the majority of us just cut up all the food on our plates and spread it around--thankfully we were all still stuffed from PF Changs.
Friday night we had a lot of fun playing cards at the hotel and then ended up going out about 9 or so since we were getting a little too loud to be indoors. I wish I would've had a Halloween costume! It was so exciting walking around the closed off Sixth street and seeing everyone dressed up. Same as we did the majority of the trip with all of us being so indecisive, we spent most of the night just walking around. We did get to hit up a dance club for a little while and overall had a fantastic night!
We had to come back to Amarillo saturday afternoon(our advisor knew better than to let us stay Halloween night in downtown Austin lol) and everyone decided to sleep in on Saturday. 5 of us did get up early enough to go grab some greasy bar & grill food, I think the place was called "Daddy's", and then walk up to the State Capital building. Took my very first cab ride when we had to head to the airport (other than passing some longhorns it was pretty uneventful). The flights back were very pleasant. The planes were fairly empty so we had the very back all to ourselves and had plenty of room to spread out. Weather was nice and Maddisun, this being only her second time flying, was even able to look out the window some. Had a really wonderful trip and wouldn't trade the experience for anything but boy is it good to be home!
-AJ
P.S. You can view the rest of my photos HERE.
It was a bit of a disaster getting there. We had to be at the airport at 6:45am, 2 of our group had never flown before, and we were delayed due to thunderstorms and had to travel around those storms through some crazy turbulence. Was not the ideal first flight for noobs but they did awesome. So we get to Austin and think we lucked out and missed all the nasty weather, HA! Take the city bus downtown, get off the bus to start walking the 15 or so blocks to our hotel, and there comes the rain.
After much suitcase dropping, tripping, and typical tourist cross walk confusion we managed to safely make it to the Hilton, where we were supposed to be staying. Well turned out that even though the reservations had been made for three rooms with 2 queen beds per room MONTHS ahead, the hotel had the right to change out the beds to 1 king size bed per room and we got sent across the street to the Marriott. Finally get checked in there and start to head to our rooms and no joke one of my suitcase wheels started deteriorating. Thankfully those suckers have a wheel within a wheel so I just had a lopsided suitcase.
Our luck started to pick up and three of the girls and I scored an awesome hotel room with a corner view. We hit up a decent mexican restaurant, El Sol Y La Luna, and waited out most of the nasty weather there, or so we thought. Sun peaked out & we started to walk back to the hotel only to get dumped on by the rain. After an hour of re-primping/attempting to fix our hair in the humidity we were finally decent enough to head back out. We learned very quickly that it is not an easy task to figure out where to walk to with a group of 11, which had then turned into about a group of 14 since a few more people joined us. We decided to catch a bus and head to South Congress, aka "SOCO", where we were told there are a lot of shops. I *really* hate shopping so I was pretty bored for most of the evening but it was nice getting to see everything. About 8 we caught a bus back downtown and most of us just settled in for the evening.
Friday was spent at the convention. We had a feature photography contest early in the morning that was pretty fun. Maddisun, one of the video reporters I buddied up with at the beginning of the trip, was in my group as well as Alfredo, the cartoonist, and we just ran all over town together snapping pictures of buildings and some of ourselves. We were asked to shoot "something old & something new; an artsy view of changes in downtown Austin." The photo above is the photo I went with. I wasn't too proud of it but the fact that we ran all over town, didn't get lost, AND made it back in time for all of us to share the laptop to choose photos & turn them in before the dead line was pretty awesome. Of course the next day we were walking around and I saw a brand new Subway (the fast food place) built next to an old building that would've been the perfect picture. We went to a few sessions, only 1 was dreadfully boring (pretty much was just a newspaper staff talking about inside jokes and what not), but the rest were very interesting. I was slightly suspicious that maybe Twitter & Facebook had sponsored some of the convention as every speaker we heard pimped the social networking sites--just goes to show how much of an impact the web has already had on the media.
The majority of the group hit up PF Changs for lunch, I wasn't too impressed but it was an alright meal and we had a really good time. Before the banquet Maddisun, Alfredo, and I all ran down to some water we saw from the hotel room and just goofed off taking pictures. I wish I could ask whoever planned the banquet dinner what the heck they were thinking. The salad was delicious but the entree was questionable. We are college students--gourmet is not our thing! We had a piece of chicken with a spinach artichoke stuffing and a leg bone sticking up in the air. This was sitting in a pool of some green substance. Then on the side we had a circle of quiche. I *believe* it had a mushroom on the top and rice on the bottom, but don't take my word on that. I do not like eggs at all but I did try it. I ate as much chicken as I could but the majority of us just cut up all the food on our plates and spread it around--thankfully we were all still stuffed from PF Changs.
Friday night we had a lot of fun playing cards at the hotel and then ended up going out about 9 or so since we were getting a little too loud to be indoors. I wish I would've had a Halloween costume! It was so exciting walking around the closed off Sixth street and seeing everyone dressed up. Same as we did the majority of the trip with all of us being so indecisive, we spent most of the night just walking around. We did get to hit up a dance club for a little while and overall had a fantastic night!
We had to come back to Amarillo saturday afternoon(our advisor knew better than to let us stay Halloween night in downtown Austin lol) and everyone decided to sleep in on Saturday. 5 of us did get up early enough to go grab some greasy bar & grill food, I think the place was called "Daddy's", and then walk up to the State Capital building. Took my very first cab ride when we had to head to the airport (other than passing some longhorns it was pretty uneventful). The flights back were very pleasant. The planes were fairly empty so we had the very back all to ourselves and had plenty of room to spread out. Weather was nice and Maddisun, this being only her second time flying, was even able to look out the window some. Had a really wonderful trip and wouldn't trade the experience for anything but boy is it good to be home!
-AJ
P.S. You can view the rest of my photos HERE.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Social Networkers Join Together to Beat Cancer
Social Networkers join together to #beatcancer and set the Guiness World Record "for the distribution of the largest mass message through social media" in 1 day! For each tweet, facebook status update, or blog post containing the hashtag #beatcancer Ebay/Paypal and MillerCoors will donate .01 to cancer research.
Read More:
-BeatCancerEverywhere.com
-Social Media Campaign to Beat Cancer Eyes Record in Guinness Book (Mashable.com)
Read More:
-BeatCancerEverywhere.com
-Social Media Campaign to Beat Cancer Eyes Record in Guinness Book (Mashable.com)
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Seasonal Products
Finally got some Holiday switch plates listed. Hoping to get some more up today. (Click on the images for more information)
Christmas
Halloween
These are all available in different styles (e.g., outlet plate, double light plate, gfci, etc.) and room sets can be made. Just contact me for more information shadesdujour@gmail.com
Halloween
Sunday, September 27, 2009
High Five Lilly
My very first time making & publishing a video to youtube (got a little carried away hehe).
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