Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom (Thumbs up)

Title: Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

 

Author: Mitch Albom

Mitch Albom is an author, playwright, and screenwriter who has written seven books, including the international bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie, the bestselling memoir of all time. His first novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller, as were For One More Day, his second novel, and Have a Little Faith, his most recent work of nonfiction. All four books were made into acclaimed TV films. Albom also works as a columnist and a broadcaster and has founded seven charities in Detroit and Haiti, where he operates an orphanage/mission. He lives with his wife, Janine, in Michigan. 

Book Description:

Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it.

For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.

Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger?

Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final “class”: lessons in how to live.

Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie's lasting gift with the world.

It’s been ten years since Mitch Albom first shared the wisdom of Morrie Schwartz with the world. Now–twelve million copies later–in a new afterword, Mitch Albom reflects again on the meaning of Morrie’s life lessons and the gentle, irrevocable impact of their Tuesday sessions all those years ago. . .

Gort's Review (Thumbs up):

Another Mitch Albom book that I would highly recommend to others.

Why the increase in the electric bill, and what's a Kill-a-Watt

I've been running my unRaid server (see prior posts) 24 hours a day for a little more that one month now. Just received my electric bill and it was about $30 more than last month. Yes, we've been running the air conditioners but it seems to be more when compared to last year, but I needed to understand what was going on. But how??

Well with a Kill-a-Watt meter and here's what one looks like.

Okay, but what does it do?
The meter once connected to your appliance will assess how efficient they really are. The display will count consumption by the kilowatt/hour, same as your local utility. You can track minute-by-minute changes in electric consumption as major appliances are turned on and off. It lets you track the amount of electricity that your household uses in real time. It helps you reduce your energy consumption and decrease your monthly bills. The unit displays the total cumulative appliance power consumption in kilowatt hours (KWH). The unit will display KWH from 0.01 KWH to 9999 KWH.


So, I plugged this into the wall, and then plugged my server into the meter. I then powered on the server. The meter showed that my server uses 175W. I then spun down the 5 internal hard drives, and the meter showed that it now used only 143W.

Knowing this information,..I could "guesstimate" how much it costs each month to run the server.
In the US, 1 Watt running 24x365 costs about $1/year. Multiply the Watts being pulled by the server, times 8.76 to give you kWh for an entire year.

In the US, 1 kWh costs about $0.12, so a server that pulls 40 Watts, costs $42/year to run 24x365.... less in many places. According to the math where 1 Watt is about $1 per year,....175/12 = $14.58 per month. Of course that assuming constant 175W. With drives spun down 143/12 = 11.92 per month

So, this helps explain why I saw a bump in my electric bill.

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Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji,...Say What?!

Say what is right!

When I first got interested in learning the Japanese language,...I had no clue about Hiragana and Katakana. I thought that the written Japanese language only consisted of Kanji. Not so.

So you might be saying, "Well, what is Hiragana and Katakana,..in fact what is Kanjii?"

Let's start with Hiragana (ひらがな):
Hiragana is a character sets in which each character represents one sound in the Japanese language. Hiragana is used to write native words for which there are no kanji. Hiragana is also used to write words whose kanji form is obscure, not known to the writer or readers, or too formal for the writing purpose.

Now onto Katakana (カタカナ):
In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for those Japanese language words and grammatical inflections which kanji does not cover, the katakana syllabary is primarily used for transcription of foreign language words into Japanese.

and now Kanji (漢字):
Chinese characters (Japanese: kanji) first came to Japan on coins, mirrors, and other decorative items imported from China. In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write parts of the language such as nouns, adjective stems, and verb stems.


I actually found that learning Hiragana and Katakana were not that hard if you studied well. Here is a practice chart showing you how to learn to write hiragana:

So, you know Japanese?

Well,....yes,..no,..maybe...sukoshi (a little).

At my prior company we worked on software that had to be internationalized and localized for the Japanese, Korean, and Chinese languages.

i18n  =  i + "the18 middle letters that make up nternationalizatio" + n
and
L10n  =  L + "the 10 letters that make up ocalizatio" + n

It's easier to walk around and saying "L10n" and "i18n" than "localization" or "internationalization".

Anyway, I had been studying Japanese on my own and I wanted to take some formal classes.
Fortunately, my company paid for me to go to school (Ramapo College) to take classes in Japanese.
I'd like to tell you it was easy,..but it was not.
I did however enjoy learning the language even though the other students were half my age.

Here are some of the books/tools that I brought on Amazon that really helped me learn Japanese.

Next Post: "Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanjii,...Say What?!"

Question: So Gort, why are your reviews so brief?

Answer:

Not to worry my friends. I have read a lot of books over the years.
One day, I decided that I should keep track of the books I've read over time.
And not just keep track, but I should review them too, so I know what books I may want to read again or avoid like the plague.

So, the first few reviews you see are from the first books I started keeping track of recently.
My first reviews were, well,..brief and to the point.
However, as time goes by, you'll see that I start to really get into this whole review business.

Another thing you'll probably see, is that I give a Thumbs Up to the majority of books I've read.
One of the major reasons (at least I think so) is that I read mainly non-fiction books.
These books tend to relate to things that are almost stranger than fiction.


Next Post: "So, you know Japanese?"

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom (Thumbs up)

Title: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

 

Author: Mitch Albom

Mitch Albom is an author, playwright, and screenwriter who has written seven books, including the international bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie, the bestselling memoir of all time. His first novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller, as were For One More Day, his second novel, and Have a Little Faith, his most recent work of nonfiction. All four books were made into acclaimed TV films. Albom also works as a columnist and a broadcaster and has founded seven charities in Detroit and Haiti, where he operates an orphanage/mission. He lives with his wife, Janine, in Michigan. 

 

Book Description:

Part melodrama and part parable, Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven weaves together three stories, all told about the same man: 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement Park. As the novel opens, readers are told that Eddie, unsuspecting, is only minutes away from death as he goes about his typical business at the park. Albom then traces Eddie's world through his tragic final moments, his funeral, and the ensuing days as friends clean out his apartment and adjust to life without him. In alternating sections, Albom flashes back to Eddie's birthdays, telling his life story as a kind of progress report over candles and cake each year. And in the third and last thread of the novel, Albom follows Eddie into heaven where the maintenance man sequentially encounters five pivotal figures from his life (a la A Christmas Carol). Each person has been waiting for him in heaven, and, as Albom reveals, each life (and death) was woven into Eddie's own in ways he never suspected. Each soul has a story to tell, a secret to reveal, and a lesson to share. Through them Eddie understands the meaning of his own life even as his arrival brings closure to theirs.

 

Gort's Review (Thumbs up):

Another Mitch Albom book that I would highly recommend to others.

For One More Day by Mitch Albom (Thumbs up)

Title: For One More Day

Author: Mitch Albom

Mitch Albom is an author, playwright, and screenwriter who has written seven books, including the international bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie, the bestselling memoir of all time. His first novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller, as were For One More Day, his second novel, and Have a Little Faith, his most recent work of nonfiction. All four books were made into acclaimed TV films. Albom also works as a columnist and a broadcaster and has founded seven charities in Detroit and Haiti, where he operates an orphanage/mission. He lives with his wife, Janine, in Michigan. 

 

Book Description:

Mitch Albom mesmerized readers around the world with his number one New York Times bestsellers, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie. Now he returns with a beautiful, haunting novel about the family we love and the chances we miss.
For One More Day is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that covers a lifetime and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one
As a child, Charley "Chick" Benetto was told by his father, "You can be a mama's boy or a daddy's boy, but you can't be both." So he chooses his father, only to see the man disappear when Charley is on the verge of adolescence.
Decades later, Charley is a broken man. His life has been crumbled by alcohol and regret. He loses his job. He leaves his family. He hits bottom after discovering his only daughter has shut him out of her wedding. And he decides to take his own life.
He makes a midnight ride to his small hometown, with plans to do himself in. But upon failing even to do that, he staggers back to his old house, only to make an astonishing discovery. His mother--who died eight years earlier-is still living there, and welcomes him home as if nothing ever happened.
What follows is the one "ordinary" day so many of us yearn for, a chance to make good with a lost parent, to explain the family secrets, and to seek forgiveness. Somewhere between this life and the next, Charley learns the astonishing things he never knew about his mother and her sacrifices. And he tries, with her tender guidance, to put the crumbled pieces of his life back together.
Through Albom's inspiring characters and masterful storytelling, readers will newly appreciate those whom they love--and may have thought they'd lost--in their own lives. For One More Day is a book for anyone in a family, and will be cherished by Albom's millions of fans worldwide.

Gort's Review (Thumbs up):

Just finished this book. The author has a way of writing piercing stories that make you think you own personal relationships through. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.