Sophia Perl of Wisdom

I ran into this website the one day, Celeb4aday. This company will take pictures of you and hound you like a sought after celebrity in public. It sounds like a fun gift for a wanna-be actor/actress.

Last night, I attended a presentation that my sorority’s national office was giving to the Panhellenic council and current sorority members at a local university. Apparently, the greek system at that university is shopping around for another sorority to join the three sororities already on campus. As I was sitting in the back of the room like a good sorority alum, I looked around a bit (more so b/c I got bored hahaha). I was quite impressed by the properly dressed (preppy looking) and groomed young women. All of the girls were very attentive to the speakers and at the end of the presentation asked very good questions. This event reminded me of my sorority days. A sorority gives a young woman an opportunity for leadership, a push to excel in scholastics, a venue to contribute via philanthropy, and multiple environments to build social skills. All of these things I learned about a great deal back in college. I encourage all undergraduate students to rush and experience the greek life for themselves. It was one of the best times of my life. Those were the days…

This is a bonus post since I tend not to post during the weekends, but I thought it might be worth mentioning.  If you are a female reading my post and you were at the WITI 2007 conference in which a female won the raffle for a green Dell laptop, well that was me.  Funny how things just happen when you least expect it.

First, thank you to Terry from Kineda.com for getting my friend and I on the RSVP list. OK, about the party last night. It was a celebration of Glam.com‘s acquisition of StyleMob.com. While we were waiting outside in line, I met a line producer from ThreadBanger.com, an indie fashion website. She was holding a camcorder and I was curious. Apparently, she flew in from New York to capture the event, cool. When we finally got inside, the place was packed which is a good sign of a good party. However about 45 minutes into the party, the food and drinks were not so flowing like the invite said. The open bar turned into a cash bar and the only food that I got to eat were tater tots. I do like tater tots though. The party had a really short street fashion show with the runway on a set of stairs and gave out a goodie bag with the picapp.com logo. I also ran into Pete Cashmore, CEO of Mashable.com, again (before I ran into him at SF Beta). He’s always a nice person to speak with. For the rest of the night, my friend and I ended up sitting at a booth with some random (in the sense that we didn’t know them) girls. They were fun and we danced until it was time for some late night Thai food, yummy!

On a side note, I’m starting to notice a trend of startups throwing parties. I love it! If you’re a startup and need people to attend, send me an email and I’ll post it under my events section and if time allows I’ll attend also. It’s fun to live in Silicon Valley.

Did you know that Japan produces 2/3s of the world’s robots?  I’m reading up on robots and agricultural and some of these robots look very scary. It reminds me of that evil character in one of the recent Spiderman movies with the long arms. If I was a farmer and saw this on my farm, I would have a heart attack.

Some open questions about robots to consider. Does it make sense for a robot to be the next best alternative over humans or a set of other technologies? For instance, can a robot do it better, the same, or worse? How much does a robot cost in comparison to human labor? Does the task require a few robots or many robots? How long should the robot operate when it’s on? So my question out to the folks, in what way ways can robots help today’s fruit farmers?

Think Fear Factor, but at your house. This is a great idea. Over your next family holiday gathering, bring food items from Edible.com and host your very own Fear Factor with your family members as the contestants. See who throws up first. Try it and let me know how it went.

Yesterday morning, I had a semi-heart attack. I started to notice a bunch of weird postings on my blog. Some were responses from other blogs and some were responses from other people. I freaked out and called my web hosting company to inquire. The support person started asking for my WordPress set-up and I walked him through it. During the call, I realized that the weird postings looked like email responses to my new email address. Has someone hacked into my system and posted my emails as blogs as joke? I just started using this new email address, no way! Then the support person was asking about blogging by email. That’s when the embarrassment kicked in. I frantically did a google search for WordPress and “blog by email“. I checked my WP settings and guess what? Blog by email was enabled. Holy guacamole, I just about died. I now have blog by email disabled. The lesson here is to check your blog settings every once in awhile and check up on your blog frequently. You never know when something will go wrong and you want to be the first person to know.

Some of the best years of my life were at USC, so I thought that it would be nice to pass along my life lessons from school.

• don’t believe everything that you hear, people like to gossip
• when singing and walking down stairs, keep your head up and use your shoes to guide you, plus practice practice practice!
• no matter how funny it is, running down a street w/o clothes on can get you arrested and affect you getting a job after graduation
• Robert rule’s of Order is great for meetings
• dress properly for events, as soon as you get it wrong a good friend will let you know
• you represent what you’re part of, be on your best behavior
• don’t do drugs, you will be drug tested for jobs
• do not stay up 3 nights in a row studying b/c you’ll faint
• after you graduate, it’s 10 times harder to find a significant other
• it’s okay to form your own opinion and stick with it
• do not sign up for the meal plan that includes a buffet, the freshmen 15 is guaranteed
• college is smaller than you think, you will run into “that” person again

A few weekends ago, I went to Napa Valley with some family members.  We went to Robert Mondavi, Niebaum-Coppola, and Domaine Chandon.   I’ve been to Robert Mondavi several times now and the tour is always different dependent on the tour giver.  I always learn something new.  At N-C, it’s more of a “oooh we’re visiting the director of Godfather movies” winery.  And Domaine Chandon, I picked randomly and really liked it.  The tasting area looks like a hip club.  While at Robert Mondavi I learned of a good lesson, most American wines are not meant to be stored for a longtime.  They are to be consumed relatively quickly whereas in Europe it is not the same.  So I’m thinking to myself why do I have a wine fridge that’s stocked with wine from months ago.  But, then the tour giver said you have to know the history of the winery and the type of wine that it makes.  If that winery has a reputation of making wines that get better in taste over time, then that is how you know that you can store it over time to increase its taste.  Interesting.  The other day, I was at San Pedro Square Wine & Bistro in San Jose.  At the end of our dinner, we ordered some muscat to finish it off.  We took a taste and a whiff of it and thought something was wrong.  A part of me didn’t want to say anything because we never had this particular muscat before and maybe this is what it is like.  But, we decided to say something anyways.  The waitress was very nice.  She took it back and opened up a new bottle.  Omigosh, the smell was gone and the taste was 100 times better.  Even if you don’t know a lot about wines, trust your instincts.  The worse that could happen is, well, nothing.