codyg1985’s Think Tank

I had a few dreams last night, but most of them I can’t remember. I do remember some of them, though.

Trying to send email on a laptop at work

I dreamed I was across the hall from my office with two of my coworkers that sit in there. I had a laptop, and I was using something that looked like Gmail, but it wasn’t exactly like Gmail. I was trying to figure out how to send something to one of the coworkers in the room. Each time I looked at the screen, different things appeared, even though I hadn’t clicked on anything (this is a big sign that I was in a dream). I remember the keyboard having on the top left this large switch that moved up and down. I didn’t know what it was for. Maybe it launched the space shuttle.  I never figured out how to send that email. It had some links in it for something we were working on.

Wacky Price is Right Set and Showcase

I was transported to what looked like the Price is Right. It was at the beginning of the show, but for some odd reason, they were doing the showcases then. If you haven’t watched the Price is Right before, the showcases are a group of prizes that share a common theme and are usually pretty awesome. The showcase presentation is at the end of the show usually, but in this case it was at the beginning.

The set for the showcase presentation was drastically different.  It looked like the show was set up in a large garage with a lot of cars in it, with a bar/club scene off on the side. I also dreamed that at the beginning of the show there was a suspension bridge that spanned the set. I remember that the podiums looked standard, except at the bottom was a neon light that formed a ring around the podium. It glowed a certain color depending on what “color” showcase you decided to bid on. I don’t know if the showcases were still centered around a theme, but they were given a color for some reason (maybe to make referring to it easier).

One person bid $35,000 on the yellow showcase. The person went over, and I heard the Price is Right loser horn .

At the end of this dream, I saw a green logo on the screen proclaiming that they were about to show us the green showcase.

Singing to a box

The last dream I had involved me singing to something in a create. It was a green blob. It got bigger the more I sung to it. Yeah, I must be crazy in the head.

I am continuing my theme from my previous post when I talked about some dreams I had. I had some pretty vivid dreams last night as well, and I thought I would share them with all of you. Again, this is mainly for logging purposes, but if you are entertained by these stories, then all the better.

The McDonalds’ Mall

For some reason, a recurring theme for all of these dreams was food. This particular dream was located in an area that reminded me of University Drive in Huntsville, AL close to where IHop and Rosie’s is. Note: In my dreams, while I may say that I am in a specific location, something tells me that I am in that location. Nothing that I see really doesn’t really go with that location, most of the time.

There was this McDonald’s that was located where iHop is now. Except, this McDonald’s was different. You could enter it just like a normal one, but there was no drive-thru. Even stranger, there was another exit inside the restaurant that took you to a common area. It sort of looked like the inside of a mall, except there were only other McDonald’s restaurants in there. There were a total of three restaurants there. The funny thing is that each McDonald’s outside exit was physically located miles away from the first McDonald’s that I walked into before. The “mall area” acted like some sort of gateway that connected all the restaurants.

Another feature of these restaurants was that they all had outdoor seating. I don’t know of a McDonald’s that has outdoor seating. Oh, and the McDonald’s that I did end up going in at first looked like it was a tenant in a strip mall. It was located on the corner of it.

I went in the first McDonald’s with my grandmother and her sister-in-law. They ordered their food, and sat down. My grandmother and her sister-in-law were doing something to bother me (I don’t remember what it was), so I got up to walk around. I first went outside to look at the traffic on University Drive, and then I went back inside and then I went looking around in the mall area.

I went to another McDonald’s, and noticed that one of the employees was calling out an order that was ready to pick up. No one was there to pick it up. It was a chicken sandwich of some sort, but the top of the bun was off the sandwich. It had some sort of marinara sauce on top of it, and Parmesan cheese sprinkled on it. It looked really tasty. There was something else served with it, but I don’t remember what it looked like. The employee said I could have it, so I took it. As soon as I did, the lady that ordered the food went up there, and wondered where her food was. They prepared another sandwich and side item for her. For some reason, it was ready about a few seconds after the lady got up there. Those McDonald’s employees are wicked fast!

I went outside to the outdoor seating, which appeared to face the shopping center off of University Drive with the Cici’s Pizza and Bumper’s Sports Bar (as I said, a few miles down from where the iHop is). I started to eat, and then the lady sat next to me and started talking to me. I don’t remember what she was talking to me about. Then I went off to my next dream.

Restaurant on a Hill that’s Impossible to Get To

This dream I thought was located in Huntsville on University Drive (again, this is what something in my brain told me), but this looked nothing like Huntsville. I was driving on a busy street (at least four lanes in each direction). There were lots of eating establishments and stores and whatnot on each side of the road. I did see a sign for Pulaski Pike on a traffic signal installation, but I knew it wasn’t looking like Huntsville, I didn’t know the name of the road I was on. I continued to drive up the hill, which didn’t seem like it was going to end.

Up ahead, there was road construction. I wasn’t sure what they were doing overall, but ahead the lanes were shifted.  The workers were actually out in the road and picking up the white lines that separate the traffic lanes and moving them over a few feet for the lane shift. Of course, you can’t just pick up traffic stripe in real life. Inside the lane shift, I kept driving over the bases that were used for the orange construction barrels.  Once I got out of the lane shift, I went underneath an overhead walkway used to connect two buildings, but I didn’t see the buildings. Oh, and I was still driving uphill.

I was nearing the top of the hill and my destination. Unfortunately for me, there were many other restaurants on the top of this hill, and there was a ton of traffic headed to those restaurants. Even worse for me, I was in the left most lane, but the restaurant was on the right. I missed the restaurant. I passed a few more restaurants, then the road began to get narrower and lose lanes. There were all of a sudden many more trees around me as I entered a forest setting. The road was only four lanes wide with a narrow median. I turned around in a parking lot after what seemed like forever and then drove back the other way.

I saw one of those signs that warns you of an upcoming speed limit drop (the yellow ones with the speed limit sign inside of it with the arrow above it). It said the speed limit ahead was 30 mph. Weird thing was that the sign was posted next to a rock wall, so it couldn’t be in the shape of a diamond. The sign was a rectangular-shaped sign, with the long way going up and down.

I finally arrived at my destination. I walked in, and the staff knew me by my first name. The place was called Rosie’s, but it was no Mexican place. It reminded me of a sports bar of some sort that served chicken fingers. They sat me down next to another table with a waitress sitting there.

What looked like the manager walked up to me and started asking me if I was meeting someone here.

I said “Yes, I was.”

“Do they live close to this area?”

“I think they do.”

I couldn’t remember where the person was driving from. Something in my head made me think Guntersville. Something else in my head made me think it was a guy that I was meeting. That was the end of that dream.

Strip Mall Northport and Funny Nutrition Labels

These last two were only bits and pieces of dreams that I could remember, so I am putting here what I remember.

The first one took place in Northport, AL off of Lurleen Wallace Blvd. In real life, this road connects downtown Tuscaloosa with Northport, but in this dream it was filled with strip malls. Everywhere. It almost looked like an industrial area, too because of the way the buildings looked. All the buildings had white metal siding. I remember seeing a movie theater that looked on the outside like an arcade.

The second one was me looking at a nutrition label. I count carbs, so I look at the labels often. There was a really weird listing under Total Carbohydrate. It said “When Sugar is Active” and then it had another number beside it. It was located below the Sugars listing on the label. The weird thing is that that number was higher than the Total Carbohydrate number. So the numbers didn’t add up.

Disclaimer: The following material is merely a log that talks about the dreams that I had while asleep. For that reason, some of this stuff may seem to result from recreational drug use, but I assure you that is not the case. I hope you all find this information entertaining and informative.

The night of January 16 proved to be a really awesome night for dreaming. From about midnight to 4 am, I experienced some pretty awesome (at least I think) dreams.

The “Quantum Leap” Adventure

The first dream that I had that I remember had to do with some sort of an adventure. I started out in a bar setting at night with plenty of people around talking and having fun. The bar area was in one part of the building, and on the other end there were these areas with lots of boxes.  The whole room was set up so that there was a center area that was partitioned off, and people walked around that area to different parts of the room (bar area, box area, etc.).

Me and some people kept hearing these voices outside of the bar. We investigated what those were. Somehow it ended up transporting us to the opening credits of the show Quantum Leap, complete with music. It started out looking just like the normal opening credits, but it ended up turning into a scene with a very blue ocean with tall waves. At the very end, text appeard that made it look like a DVD menu, as if we put in the Quantum Leap Season 1 DVD and we were cycling through the various root menu options. Oh yeah, and it said “Blu-Ray” at the top, complete with the logo.

Alligators in the Swamp

My next dream takes us to central Florida, close to Kennedy Space Center. Me, my wife Ginny, and my aunt were driving from Cocoa Beach to some location in the middle of the state, perhaps Orlando. Close to the I-95/Bee Line Expressway interchange, though, things got really weird. The road was diverted onto this gravel road that terminated at a swamp. Ginny and I attempted to walk through this swampy area, hoping to find people on the other side. All of a sudden, we see an alligator pop up out of the water a few feet from us. Then another. For some reason unknown to us, we stay there for a few seconds thinking about it. I guess we were drunk, who knows, LOL. We then walked out of the water to our car. We drive back the other way towards the main road, then find an alternate route to I-95. We then seek out a gas station to buy gas. We come upon an exit with a lot of gas stations, but gas prices were around $3.20 at most of the gas station. However, we found a BP station with a price of $2.79 for regular unleaded, so we go there. My aunt went in to buy a paper, and that was the end of that dream.

Colorful tubes in the air

This next part is one of my favorite dreams. I found myself up above the clouds on a platform. Surrounding me were lots of pipes of different colors. Some were one color while some would change colors every few feet. Some were striped. I willed myself to go higher to see more of them. I saw that each pipe connected to the other to form a maze-like superstructure. It was like a plumbers’ paradise. Most of the pipes were either horizontal or vertical; they didn’t make an angle. All except for one which dove at a sharp angle downward to some point below the clouds. I somehow maneuvered myself onto the apex of this pipe. I sat on the pipe with my legs hanging off the sides, and I slid down the pipe for the most thrilling ride that I have ever had in a dream. Down I went through the clouds through what must have been thousands of feet as the pipe sank lower and became steeper. Towards the ground, the pipe curved. The pipe turned from a closed pipe to an open pipe, so I fell off the top of it into the curvature of the open pipe, which happened to be filled with water. Just like at a water park, there was a big splash at the bottom.

At the terminus of the pipe, I ended up in what looked like an airport terminal. There were shops, benches, and restrooms all along the side. It was daytime while I was sliding down the pipe, but all of a sudden it was nighttime in this terminal. I reach the end of the terminal next to the exit, and I see this table in the center with food on it, Burgers, bags of chips, and cookies filled the table. I saw a sign that said that one particular burger, which looked really tasty, cost $6. I asked someone over at one of the shops next to this table about the burger. That shop must have been the one that made the food. The person said the burger was free to me. So I grabbed it, and I ate it.

Fitting myself in a camera-sized car

The last dream that I had involved me driving around the streets of Los Angeles in a car. Except, this was no ordinary car. The car was the size of a camera. Imagine the camera having a slender body that opened up like a book. Somehow I squeezed my legs into the car, and off I went. I was driving on this four-lane road which ended at another road. I took a right turn, and found myself on what seemed to be a large road. All of a sudden, I see the road gets narrower, and then it descends into a tunnel. Little did I know that this tunnel led directly into an airport terminal. The road disappeared, and I saw myself driving inside an airport terminal, on the upper level of it. There was no pavement, but carpet. All the signs and trim inside the terminal was green. The terminal was circular-shaped, so I drove in a circle around the terminal, searching for an exit. I then flew up through an opening on the side of the wall, which descended down to another tunnel. This tunnel, miraculously, led out of the depths of wherever I was, and back onto a road.  I stopped at this restaurant where I ate something. Somehow, my car (or camera) ended up with crime scene tape on it. Then I woke up.

Hope you enjoyed these stories.

I have lived with diabetes for almost 20 years now. Ever since I was diagnosed with this disease when I was four years old, I have had to deal with painful injections of insulin at least twice per day. Now that number has shot up to at least four times per day, and when my blood sugar is out of hand, it requires even more injections of insulin.

Up until this time last year, I have had a relatively complication-free life with diabetes. However, my A1c score had been running up in the 8% to 10% range for the previous few years. Anyone familiar enough with this disease will tell you that with A1c levels like that, trouble is bound to come soon. Surely enough, last year I found out that the beginning stages of diabetic retinopathy had began in my eyes.  I could see just fine at the time, but a closer look into my retina revealed numerous blood vessels that had grown as a result of higher blood sugars. These blood vessels are more fragile than the normal ones, so they are more prone to leaking blood. If my high A1c levels persisted, it would only be a matter of time before these blood vessels would leak, which would impair my vision.

I had to begin to try and take better control of this disease. I became a pro at carb-counting. I watched what I ate, and if I ate something, I took some insulin to cover the carbohydrates in it. Unfortunately for me, this did not prevent a blood vessel from leaking in my left eye last June.  I had to have laser photocoagulation performed on that eye.  What that means is that the optometrist would use a green laser to seal off those bad blood vessels inside the retina so that they would not leak again.

After the procedure, I was thinking about my insurance and how much they would pay for an insulin pump. For that matter, I was also wondering about how much they would pay for test strips. One of my problems with this disease had been that my previous insurance would pay nothing for test strips. That meant that I had to pay $1 per strip. That may not sound like much, but if you have to check your blood sugar at least four times per day, that adds up to about $124 per month. Often you end up checking your blood sugar more than four times per day if it is higher or lower than usual or if you have an illness or infection. I got some answers about how much my insurance I have now would cover the insulin pump, the supplies, and the test strips. I have decided to get the insulin pump and the meter that comes with that. It wirelessly sends the blood sugar results directly to the insulin pump. This particular insulin pump also comes with an optional sensor that continuously monitors your blood sugar. It doesn’t allow the pump to automatically adjust insulin dosages, but it does allow for a complete picture of how your blood sugar fluctuates through the day and night. I will probably get this later.

My left eye is doing better. It still has some blood left in it from June, but my optometrist said it would heal on its own. My right eye, on the other hand, will now need laser treatment just like my left one. I can see fine out of it now, but it could have blood in it at any moment between now and November 5th when I get treatment done on it.

Let’s face it, a lot of us now go to social news websites for our news. In fact, we go there for more than news. We also go there for funny pictures, videos, and jokes. Some things are opinion while some are fact. Some things are funny while others are serious. With all of these different ways of measuring content there is only a thumbs up or a thumbs down to that content.  Lots of thumbs up votes may not necessarily equate that the content is fact or that it is universally funny. It is all subjective. The problem is that dissenting views from the majority are driven away from social news sites, and as a result, the bias of who is left (no pun intended) shines through.

Let’s take a look at the top stories on Digg for the morning of Tuesday, October 28, 2008:

• Google Chrome [pic]
• Dozens of Call Center Workers Walk Off Job in Protest Rather
• WTF: Amazon search for “terrorist costume” shows Obama mask
• Rick Astley to perform at EMA’s - HELL YEAH!
• McCain - Second-Guessing the Vice-Presidential Pick
• John McCain, Drudge conspire to smear Obama
• The 10 Most Outrageous Opening Lines in Literature
• Adults give Uzi to 8-year-old, who shoots and kills himself
• Chavez calls Sarah Palin “confused beauty queen”
• All Codeweaver Products Free 10/28/08 Due to Price of Gas

Four of of the ten stories above are pro-Obama/anti-McCain stories. Nothing that is either neutral or pro-McCain/anti-Obama on Digg. I have to go elsewhere to get another perspective on the issues. There is no popular social news website for conservative viewpoints. Even if there was, it would face the same problem as Digg and Reddit; it would not offer both sides of the argument.

Several solutions are available for this problem. One solution would be to employ something similar to the political news/blog aggregator Memeorandum, which lists a news story that is largely free of any bias, and then that link is followed up by discussion from liberal and conservative blogs alike.

This would work similarly to my topic-tree idea in that it would eliminate duplicate stories as well as providing different perspectives of the news story, but in this case it would separate the raw story from analysis and discussion, which could be biased either way.

On a social news website, an item could be submitted that would only be accepted from “credible” news sources (using the term loosely) that would present only the story, not any discussion or spin either way. Here is how that would work:

• That item would be voted up or down just like on other social news website.
• However, not only would the up or down votes weigh into if it makes the front page, but also page views.
• Comments would appear all under that news story, not under each blog that is linked to.
• The person that submits the news story could choose to submit a blog discussion of that story. More than one blog could be submitted.
• More people could add more blog discussion links to the story.
• An algorithm would be in place that would color the links based on how biased those blogs are (red for conservative, blue for liberal). The darker the color, the stronger the bias.

To an extent, voting on page views and up-down votes would keep news stories that cast certain candidates or individuals in a negative light from being quelled. Attached to each news story would be discussions from blogs. Each link would get an up or down vote, and it would be sorted from most popular to least popular, but the least popular links would  not disappear.

Tying news discussion blogs to news stories would keep multiple entries from appearing on the front page. More importantly, the facts would be voted up on the front page, not the spin or viewpoint. It would also be easier to identify bias on a social news website.

The obvious problem with the above method is that all news stories would have to be submitted in the first place, and if a social news website is biased, then the stories that cast the other guy in a good light or their guy in a bad light will not be submitted. Even if those news stories were submitted, perhaps only the blogs that the majority agree with or align with would be submitted as discussion for those news stories. This would mean a return to the original problem.

My next blog post will talk about another idea that I have that completely changes the voting system for social news websites that not only takes bias into account, but also the type of item being submitted.

High-speed rail travel is very lucrative. The prospect of hopping on a train in Chicago and arriving in New York City an hour later is all but a pipe dream at this point. For one, the train would have to make a bee line from Chicago to NYC without stopping. Second, the train would have to be a high speed train operating on an entirely new rail line that is designed for high speed travel (no grade crossings, at least two tracks, minimal curvature and elevation change along the route). This is fine for Chicago and NYC, but what if a friend from Cleveland wants to join you on the trip? How would he get on the train if it doesn’t stop?

Well, the high speed train you are on doesn’t have to stop. Instead, your friend would hop on a shuttle train at Cleveland. The shuttle train would depart Cleveland before your train passes through Cleveland. The shuttle train would get up to full-speed just as your train catches up to meet with the shuttle train. The shuttle train, being on another track beside your train, would then connect with your train to allow passengers to switch. People bound for NYC would switch to your train, and those bound for Pittsburgh would switch over to the shuttle train, which would then disengage and slow down for the trip to Pittsburgh. The same process would repeat for those that wish to go to NYC from Pittsburgh.

Obviously, this is a highly synchronized dance at 350 mph, but it would provide the best of both worlds for high speed rail service.

I love to visit social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Reddit. Those sites comprise about 75% of my news gathering on a typical day.  It is a great way of keeping up with not only news events, but funny, informative, and even sometimes blasphemous material. However, these sites are a two-way street: your reputation on these websites is not only related to what you vote up or down, but also by what items and comments you submit, and how those things are judged by other users.

You find something that’s interesting and newsworthy, and you try to submit it. Chances are though that someone has beaten you to the punch. So what do you do? Submit anyway?

On most of these sites, the more votes you get for your story, the higher your reputation becomes, and the more visible that story becomes. If your story has already been submitted, then your story is a duplicate, or dupe for short. Dupe stories rarely make their way to the top, and if they do become more visible then it may receive many down-votes from other users who have noticed that the story is indeed a dupe. However,  this does not always apply to those people with an extremely high rep. The person with the higher rep could submit an item that has already been submitted, but since that person has a higher rep, the site algorithm promotes the story faster, and as a result it gets more votes, even though it is a dupe story.

So this is a chicken and egg problem. In order to make sure your story is promoted to the front page, you have to have a high rep, but in order to have a high rep, you need to have stories that get promoted to the front page.  What does a person that doesn’t have a high rep do here? What if that person just wants to submit a story that may have already been submitted?

My point is that dupes should not be frowned upon. Sure, you may see seventeen thousand stories about Apple releasing a polished turd that wipes your butt for you, but the point is that these people are making a contribution to the site. Dupes should also contribute to rep. Obviously not as much as original stories, but they should still count. The amount of rep that should be awarded should be a function of 1) How many dupes have been posted beforehand 2) The time elapsed between the original article and this dupe, and 3) If a different source was used from the original article.

Suppose there is a topic about Microsoft announcing details concerning Windows 7.  Submitter A may submit an article from source A, which may have a slight bias towards Microsoft. Submitter B may submit an article about the same subject, but it may originate from source B, which has a slight bias against Microsoft. Submitter C may submit an article from source C, which may analyze the details of the subject at hand.  Submitter A may be first, but submitter B may submit 10 minutes later, while submitter C may submit two hours later. Should submitter A get all the rep while B and C gets no rep?

One solution to this would be to form a sort of “topic tree” where a single item is listed, and underneath that tree you have each and every submission that is related to that item. For example, for our example with Windows 7, it may look something like this:

• Microsoft announces Windows 7 Details
  • Windows 7 to deliver faster performance, new interface
  • Windows 7 to deliver new interface, performance tweaks
  • Windows 7 to be incompatible with many hardware, new drivers needed
  • A closer look at Windows 7 Beta 1
  • Screenshots of leaked Windows 7 Build 6023
  • Microsoft won’t be able to deliver in time with changes

All of the items have to do with Windows 7 and the new details surrounding it, but each article takes a different look at the topic. Some of the items may be dupes, but it contributes to the overall topic at hand. Perhaps the amount of dupes an article receives may contribute to the rep of the article or subject matter itself.

What do you think?

The more and more I read about Barack Obama, the more I liked about him. He champions net neutrality. He supports funding education and health care. He wants to bring our troops home, and he says it without being a hypocrite. I attended a Barack Obama rally in Birmingham, AL in January right before the Super Tuesday primaries, and I liked him even more.

Unfortunately, there is a big dealbreaker for Obama that calls my support for him into question. NASA currently is developing the next vehicles and support systems for a return to the Moon and later to Mars.  Those systems will replace the aging Space Shuttle. As it stands now, this system, called the Constellation and Ares programs, will become operational around 2015, five years after the Space Shuttles are retired. That is a five year gap in which we have no way to send a human to low earth orbit, let alone anywhere beyond. Barack Obama wishes to delay the Ares and Contellation programs by five years in order to fund education:

Barack Obama’s early education and K-12 plan package costs about $18 billion per year. He will maintain fiscal responsibility and prevent any increase in the deficit by offsetting cuts and revenue sources in other parts of the government. The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years, using purchase cards and the negotiating power of the government to reduce costs of standardized procurement, auctioning surplus federal property, and reducing the erroneous payments identified by the Government Accountability Office, and closing the CEO pay deductibility loophole.

That does not sit well with me. At all.

Education is on life support in this country. It needs fixing. However, cutting NASA to fund it is simply the wrong thing to do. NASA has always operated on a budget that just barely keeps up with inflation; however, the return on the investment that comes from NASA programs far exceeds that of any other government agency. Let’s be honest, NASA does have a bit of a bad rap since most good programs go ignored by the media while mishaps get all the attention (but that’s another discussion). Going back to the Moon will be the shot in the arm that NASA needs to not only recruit more employees, but inspire many young children to study science and mathematics. Take that inspiration away, and what is there left to inspire them? What will be there to inspire kids to follow their dreams? Maybe that can be taught somehow under Mr. Obama’s education plan.

A lot of people are upset as it is because after the Space Shuttle is retired in 2010, we will be relying on the Russian Soyeuz in order to deliver humans to and from the International Space Station.  Delay Ares and Constellation, then the Russians or even the Chinese will hold the keys to human space flight while we sit back and watch our space program cycle around the drain in the sink.

Mr. Obama has said that NASA is “no longer associated with inspiration.” If the Ares and Constellation programs are delayed, then how exactly will that change?  I agree that right now NASA isn’t exactly associated with inspiration, but my question is what do you, Mr. Obama, plan to do about it? Cutting funding and changing the NASA vision once again will put yet another nail in the coffin of our space program. There will be a lot of inspiration when China makes it to the moon and plants their flag there.

Until Mr. Obama lays out a detailed space plan, I support no candidate for President.

I am a pretty good student. I don’t like to brag (I have a 3.85 GPA). I get a lot of offers to join these honors societies, and I have been getting them ever since last year.  Some are open to engineers. Others don’t discriminate based on major.  Many others are service organizations. Still others are not really so much honors societies at all as much as they are organizations that serve a purpose both inside and outside of academia.

What do all of these have in common? Well, no matter how distinguished your resume is or how high your GPA is, no matter how many clubs or organizations you are involved in, you get to pay dues to join the honors society.  Of course, these organizations have to fund themselves some way. Most of them offer scholarship money to those that are distinguished enough (read above). Some honors societies charge a one-time fee to join and that is it while others charge a membership fee to join and then an annual membership due.

Again, these organizations have to fund themselves, but it makes you wonder: are you paying someone to provide you with an impressive resume entry? After all, some of these honors societies are just that: honors societies whose sole purpose of existence is to recognize those who work hard and earn a high GPA. So the trade-off is that you pay a one-time membership fee (or yearly dues, depending on the organization) and in exchange you get to say you are a part of this honors society. It is not a lot to ask from the person paying the due; maybe it is asking too little?

I may as well keep up with a list of things I would like to do before I die. I have a few of them so far:

• Spend a day at Cajon Pass in southern California: I am a big railroad fan, so anytime I see a train or a locomotive, I enjoy watching it pass by. Cajon Pass is the gateway for many railroad lines into the Los Angeles Basin and therefore the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. As a result, many trains pass through this area (pun intended). Combined with the majestic scenery of the mountains and the trains roaring through, this would surely be a day I would not soon forget.
• Camp out at Lyon’s Ferry State Park in southeast Washington:  Lyon’s Ferry State Park is situated right next to the massive Joso Bridge which carries a railroad line across the Snake River.  The area would be pretty during sunset, and it would not be a bad place to camp out anyway. It is also quite arid in that area, something I am certainly not used to here in the humid southeast.
• Ride the TGV in France: since we’ll never see a true high speed rail network in the United States in my lifetime, I would like the opportunity to ride the high-speed rail network in France. Maybe ride a train from London to England so I can ride through the Chunnel.