FAN: Randy Pausch = Good Dude

Back when it was viral, people sent me the link for Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture. I never watched it. For Christmas two years ago Mrs. Fan gave me the book. I never read it. I put it on the shelf and planned to, but never got around to it. I don't read much fiction at all and almost everything I read is about business or autobiographies. This was kind of a gray area for me for books. Hard to classify. Probably should be under self help!

I found myself out of reading material last week so I went to the bookcase and picked it out. I read it in 3 days and I'm glad I did. Very inspiring. Some of the chapters hit a little too close to home. Another cool aspect of reading the book was realizing that he worked on ALICE at CMU. My daughter currently uses ALICE in TEC Club. Cool stuff...you learn about programming without knowing you are learning about programming. It allows you to create a virtual clip about anything you want. It's very impressive but what else would you expect from CMU?

A friend of mine from high school went to CMU and majored in CS so it would be interesting to look her up and see if she knew him or had a relationship with him at all. Looking back and reading about his time in school and teaching there, it makes me kind of wish I went somewhere where it was a bit more creative and hands-on. I get it though, that's why you're paying the big bucks and I don't even know if I would have been accepted. I think grade-wise and SAT wise I may have been slightly below CMU standards, but I learned from the book that the interview process can change all of that and I may have excelled there. Who knows?

Anyway, I don't need to go over who the man is or what happened to him. You probably already know. If not, point your browser over to Wikipedia and key him in.....maybe pick up the book if you get a chance.