Indian Epics by Reid

A long long time ago, a great king ruled with an odd sort of ornament in his throne room. Just in front of the throne stood a great sword said to be imbued with magical power embedded deep in stone. It had become great entertainment for the king to watch person after person fail to lift the sword from the stone. The strongest knights would come from far and wide in hopes of pleasing the king. If one were to draw the sword, the rewards were rumored to be the greatest known to any man. One day, the king's personal guardian knight decided he ought to give it a try. For years he had watched people fail, and he did not want to fail his king in any way shape or form. Crowds gathered to watch him try to draw the sword. If anyone were to finally overcome the challenge, it would be him. He took his place, grabbed the hilt and began to pull. The ground trembled under the force of his pull. Gradually he began to tire, but he would not give up. Stepping away for a brief moment, the crowd gas...

For Rama's exile, and Dasharatha's death, Rama's brother Bharata was gone. This will be quite the surprise. After hearing what his mother did, he shamed her and said he would bring Rama back. Dasaratha is given a proper funeral by Bharata. Rama refuses the offer of the throne from Bharata, saying they must both fulfill what has been told to them. Rama is given sandals to wear, then gives them back so they may be waiting at the throne for his return. We learn a brief history of Sita during one of their visits with a sage. She was a special child, not of birth by King Janaka. Sita is abducted by a special demon that can't be killed by your typical sharp weapon. It turns out he was cursed to be killed by Rama in order to reach heaven. Rama attains more weapons from another sage, Agastya who offers him a place to stay. Rama refuses and goes deeper into the woods. Ravana's sister falls in love with Rama and he suggests she seduce his brother. I have no idea...

For starting off in a story of characters I have not heard about, I'll be focusing on characters, writing styles, and major plot points. King Dasharatha is strong and powerful, but is saddened that none of his three queens have been able to produce a son. His palace is surrounded by thousands of guards, and tehre are eight counselors and two family priests. A horse sacrifice leads to promising Dasharatha four sons. Of all the four sons, Rama was the only one with special marks of Vishnu, so he was especially loved. Early in his life, Rama is asked by a sage, Vishvamitra to go to battle against rakshasas that were disrupting sacrifices. Rama and his brother are reluctantly released by their father to go help. Rama and his brother, reluctant to kill the rakshasi start by dismembering it (I figured this would be worse than just killing it). Eventually, it becomes invisible, but Rama is able to use sound to find and kill it with his bow and arrow. Upon completion, he is given...

Article 1:  Make Good Art: Neil Gaiman’s Advice on the Creative Life, Adapted by Design Legend Chip Kidd Going into this article, I had very high hopes. Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors, so naturally hearing how he's handled making mistakes and improving his work peaked my interest. Some of the quotes remind me of his writing style. It's comical, but gets the point across. In the face of all adversity, he says we should "make art." Even if we're making mistakes, that's where we grow. By making mistakes we're trying new things, and by trying new things, we're expanding our horizons. The one thing he wants us to always keep in mind is that we should keep making mistakes. Don't try to live a mistake free life, and you'll learn and adapt better than ever. Article 2: Why rejection hurts so much — and what to do about it I chose this article as it's been pretty pertinent to my life in the past year. As I've been applying for j...

Topic 1: Ravana Ravana as portrayed in the game Smite Ravana has been an interest of mine since the beginning of this class. One of the games I play, Smite, features gods and characters of folk-lore from many different areas of the world. One of the playable characters is Ravana, so I've seen the name many times, but have never done any research about him. I'd like to know more about the traditional stories behind him, and why in the game he is portrayed as a boxer. One interesting source I've found talks about how one group doesn't see Ravana as evil. Topic 2: Weapons of the Gods Ancient weaponry has always been an interest of mine. Whether it was seeing them in history museums or watching medieval shows, the weaponry of older times is simply fascinating. Taking this to another level and seeing weaponry wielded by gods could be even more interesting. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure what this could include other than the bows I saw on some of...

Once upon an update, a programmer released just a few new lines of code before going home for the day. This simple change was something very minor meant to speed up every process around the company. The next day, one application after another began to fail. As the failures spread, so did panic throughout the office. "Our system is down!" shouted an accountant. "So is ours!" shouted someone trying to transfer data. Unbeknownst to the programmer, his small change had accidentally cut all processes short, and since he had left, gone home, and slept since then, it didn't cross his mind. "Everything was working just fine yesterday!" was being echoed throughout the office. IT was scrambling trying to fix the issue, looking at everything that went through the system that morning. Maybe someone put in a bad file. What if there was a virus? Even the IT guys couldn't figure out who could've messed up this bad. It couldn't have been them...

The Foolish, Timid Rabbit  by Ellen C. Babbitt The first story quickly got me grinning and I just had to come back to it after reading through the others. The main reason it had me coming back was how well I can see this plot relating to the world today. All it ever takes is one person for others to follow along. From experience, even in the professional workplace, one person mentions something to another, and that chain quickly goes around the office. In the end, the one they all fear, in this case the lion, but in the real world this could be a manager or director, is the one to solve the problem. Goblin City by W. H. D. Rouse This story drew me in because of some very specific circumstances. I had just finished watching an episode of a show that involved cannibals, so this just mentally tied into that. The plot of this story is just calling to be tied into a twisted version of Wonder Woman's origin island. The secrecy of the island that takes on sailors from cras...

Hanuman Taking Sita's Ring For reading the Ramayana, I will be choosing Option Two, the public domain edition. Not only because there's an audio version, but because I am most interested to see the different author styles for each episode. That alone reminds me of some projects I've seen in the past where different directors or artists come in to put their own style on different episodes of one overarching story. I know I shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but when it comes to comics? Of course I'm going to pick the ones that have the best covers! To me, the covers that caught my attention the quickest were Kumbhakarna: The Sleeping Giant  and Hanuman to the Rescue: Hanuman Brings the Sanjeevani . I did look further than just the covers, but with this many choices it was how I narrowed them down quickly. Kumbhakarna is a name I've heard a lot of times, but never gone into any research behind so I'm excited to learn his story. For the videos, t...

Time never stops, so manage it! Managing time was never my strong suit coming into college, but I have gotten better over the years. Out of the articles I read, my favorite was the one about the myth of "too busy."  Being "too busy" to do things was something I used to always tell myself until I worked my internship. In the work world, you weren't really allowed to be "too busy," so the article really resonated with me when it talked about cutting out the unnecessary time wasters out of your life. While working multiple projects, it quickly became clear that time management was a must. I was able to apply those skills to my classes last semester as I was taking both in-person and online classes. Finding the right balance was hard at first, but I ended up setting dedicated times for online classes as if I was taking them in-person. I'm hoping that can apply this semester as well since I'm once again split 50/50 with in-person and online clas...

Technology is the future! Coming from someone that's never blogged before, but is an avid reader of blogs, this class is an awesome introduction to the behind the scenes of the whole thing. Now where I'd normally stick to reading car and technology blogs, this will help me expand my horizons. With the skills learned from technology in this class, I'm sure I'll be able to transfer them to life outside of class. Who knows, I may even start my own blog! The biggest skill I want to be able to learn is making an attractive portfolio format. I'll learn this through all the formatting tricks we learn throughout the semester. The one tech tip that has helped me so far is that if you open the assignment in one window and your blog in another, pres your Windows key and the right arrow key at the same time. It'll split your screen perfectly in half with each window so you can have them both up!

Writing excites me the most Coming into this class, I had no idea what to expect. I had only heard that there was lots of writing and lots of reading, but that you could be as creative as you want. After seeing how this class is structured, I'm very excited about the storytelling aspect of class. Having read some previous storybooks, I can see that there really is no limit on our creativity as long as we are able to tie it back to the stories we read. I love writing, and reading other people's stories, so being able to comment on what other people put together will be a great experience. For extra credit, I'm looking forward the most to learning how to make a better looking blog along with the biographical writing. This class is nothing like any other classes I've taken in terms of structure, and that excites me.

Growth vs Fixed Mindset After listening to the TED talk, I realized I had never really considered the idea of a growth mindset. I knew the general ideas talked about, but I didn't realize there was a term for it, let a lone a term full of studies behind it. In my elementary school, I remember being given tests that were purposefully too hard for us. Little did I know this was a growth mindset test. Even in a class I've taken at OU, we were never given failing grades (grades below a 50%). To the professor, it was more of a fair assessment that he could see we were trying and grasping some of the concepts even if we didn't quite have a hold on the whole thing. I see this is being extremely beneficial. The most I've ever learned has been from being challenged. Over the summer, I had my first internship doing IT work in a field I had never really experienced before. I was doing data management for a private oil and gas company that had me working projects I had zero e...

Myself and Callie hiking in Arkansas Hey everyone! It's the final stretch (for me at least). This is my last semester before graduating here at OU, and I think it's awesome we get to write and read these blogs to get to know each other. I'm majoring in MIS and will be moving to an IT consulting job after graduation. I'll be staying local while working out of OKC. Easily the biggest thing to know about me is my love for cars. Ever since I was a kid collecting Hot Wheels, I've never stopped being a car guy. Now that I'm getting the opportunities to do so, I've graduated from Hot Wheels to real cars! I've currently got two: my 2015 Mustang is my daily driver, and I'm working on restoring a 1986 Porsche 944 Turbo (both pictured below). The Porsche is a huge undertaking for me as it's my learning platform for mechanical skills. While I've done work on cars here and there, I've never taken on a full project like this. My 2015 Mustang ...

Storybook 1: Ganesha Loves his Food While I am familiar with Ganesha by name, I had never gone into much research about him. I was mostly captured by the intro as it lead me to see each of the stories as light-hearted and joyous. Ganesha is described as helping people think about to take things as they come and go with the flow. On top of all this, I'm reading this while craving sugary sweets, and Ganesha's hunger for them resonates especially well with me. As for reading the stories, the layout was very easy to navigate and read. Most of the stories were dialogue heavy, and the author made it very easy to see who was talking even when there were several characters. The choice of characters helped make it more fun to read. I never would've thought about Ganesha having Thanksgiving dinner with Cardi B. Storybook 2:   Tales of Tails Being an animal lover, this was an easy choice. I had never read any Indian animal stories before now, but after reading the ones provided...

Half Dome in Yosemite National Park In the US, my favorite place by far to visit is Yosemite National Park. While I've only visited it once, I plan to visit again this summer and spend more than just half a day there. Growing up in Arkansas, I've always appreciated nature, but seeing the sights of Yosemite blows all of Arkansas' beauty out of the water. After reading other blog posts, I see I'm not alone in enjoying the beauty of national parks, and even not alone in loving Yosemite! I can't wait to go back and spend a few days discovering as many trails as I can. Not too far of a drive from Yosemite is Lake Tahoe, just outside of Reno. After spending time hiking, it's an amazing place to just come and relax out on the water or on any of the beaches it offers. It's going to be an amazing trip that I've been looking forward to all year. Emerald Bay of Lake Tahoe

Just making sure this works!