Success

• Why does my school's online catalog for the library provide less information on books than Amazon?
  
• I put the Fedora 9 Linux distribution on a machine the other day and it didn't have tcsh on it! I was able to find Stellarium on there though.
  
• While listening to the radio in the car today, a good song came on and I found myself reaching towards the dash to tell the radio I liked that song...too much listening to Pandora I guess.
  
• The other day, while walking across campus, I went a bit out of my way to chat up a Dean. Normally, I'd just avoid such an encounter and certainly not make an effort to engage. So perhaps I'm making progress in my sociability.
  
• I recently saw the movie Into the Wild. I had heard it was good but expected it to be that kind of good where it deserves a good review, but is otherwise not that enjoyable to watch. In any case, I found it captivating. I completely sympathized with the protagonist's desire to be free and experience life. But I also sympathized with the guy's parents and what they were going through. And of course, I was envious of being in those locales.
  In any case, the movie fits with the motif of success running through my head lately. I've been envisioning a "success test" along the lines of a personality test. You'd plug in your job description, number of kids, committed relationships...heck even the kind of car you drive if that's your thing. Out pops a measure of your success. I just Googled to see if anyone had constructed such a test, but all I find are tests supposedly predicting successfulness. Au contrare, I want to know how successful I am now!
  Continuing with the theme, I was thinking what people might hope for their kids. For example, would you rather one of your kids (or future kids) growup, get some mid-level corporate job with two kids and a house in the suburbs or for that kid not to growup, but instead head off to save the polar bears in the Arctic? Would you rather have a boring A- kid who dutifully does their homework or a wild B- child who never does homework but is passionate about...well anything, but let's just say...music?