in search of a muse

A Different View of The Twilight Saga

2011-12-08T10:02:00.006-06:00

Found this on the internet a few days ago. I think it's worth reading because it poses a very unique view of the Twilight Saga.

I'm posting this not to insult or attack the series, but simply because this is a very novel way of looking at the story that I had never considered. And it's very well done (references are even cited at some points!).

Let's just look at the story and, in particular, the character arc of Bella Swan.

At the beginning of the story, she is moving from Arizona to Washington on her own volition - she has decided to give her mother and her step-father some time and space and to spend some time with her father. At this point in the story, she is, admittedly, a bit of a Mary Sue, but an endearing one. She is sensitive to the needs of others (moves to Alaska for her Mom's sake, helps her Dad around the house, is understanding and tries to give the benefit of the doubt even when the other students are somewhat cruel to her when she first arrives), clumsy, out-of-sorts, and a little insecure. She's not a girly-girl or a cheerleader type, doesn't get caught up in the typical sorts of high school behavior, and in general functions as an independent person.

It's worth noting that if Tyler's van had smashed her, she would have (at that point) died as a fairly well-rounded, empathetic individual. We certainly wouldn't say she died in need of redemption, at any rate.

Instead, Edward 'saves' her - and this supernatural 'salvation' marks the beginning of a journey that ultimately destroys her.

As she gets more entangled with Edward, she becomes less and less independent, more and more selfish. She is accepting of his abusive behavior (stalking her on trips with her friends, removing parts from her car so that she can't go see Jacob, creeping into her window at night, emotional manipulation) to the point that when he completely abandons her (walking out on the trust and commitment they've built together, in spite of having vowed to remain with her no matter what), she is willing to take him back. Edward is clearly entirely morally bankrupt.

Her father, Charlie Swan, is sort of the Jimminy Cricket of the story. His intuition is a proxy for the reader's intuition, and he's generally right. He doesn't like Edward, because he can sense the truth - not that Edward is a vampire, that doesn't matter in particular - but that Edward is devoid of anything approximating a 'soul' (for those strict secularists, you could just say Charlie can see that Edward is a terrible person).

Bella is warned by numerous people and events throughout the course of the story that she is actively pursuing her own destruction - but she's so dependent on Edward and caught up in the idea of the romance that she refuses to see the situation for what it is. Charlie tells her Edward is bad news. Edward tells her that he believes he is damned, and devoid of a soul. He further tells her that making her like him is the most selfish thing he will ever do. Jacob warns her numerous times that Edward is a threat to her life and well-being. She even has examples of other women who have become involved with monsters - Emily Young bears severe and permanent facial disfigurement due to her entanglement with Sam Uley.

Her downward spiral continues when, in New Moon, she turns around and treats her father precisely as Edward has treated her - abandoning him after suffering an obvious and extended severe bout of depression, leaving him to worry that she is dead for several days. She had been emotionally absent for a period of months before that anyhow. Charlie Swan is traumatized by this event, and never quite recovers thereafter. (He is continuously suspicous of nearly everyone Bella interacts with from that point on, worries about her frequently, and seems generally less happy.)

Her refusal to break her codependence with Edward eventually leads them to selfishly endanger Carlisle's entire clan when the Volturi threaten (and then attempt) to wipe them out for their interaction with her - so she is at this point in the story willing to put lives on both sides of the line (her family and the Cullens) at risk in favor of this abusive relationship. Just like in a real abusive relationship, she is isolated or isolates herself from nearly everyone in her life - for their safety, she believes.

Ultimately, she marries Edward, submitting to mundane domesticity and an abusive relationship - voluntarily giving up her independence in favor of fulfilling Edward's idea of her appropriate role. Her pregnancy - which in the real world would bind her to the father of her children irrevocably (if only through the legal system or through having to answer the kid's questions about their paternity) - completely destroys her body. The baby drains her of every resource in her body (she becomes sickly, skeletal, and unhealthy) and ultimately snaps her spine during labor.

Her physical destruction tracks with and mirrors her moral and psychological destruction - both are the product of seeds that she allowed Edward to plant inside her through her failure to be independent.

Ultimately, to 'save' her (there's that salvation again), Edward shoots venom directly into her heart. Let me repeat that for emphasis: The climax of the entire series is when Edward injects venom directly into Bella Swan's heart.
Whatever wakes up in that room, it ain't Bella.

I'll refer to the vampire as Bella Cullen, the human as Bella Swan.
Bella Swan was clumsy.

Bella Cullen is the most graceful of all the vampires.

Bella Swan was physically weak and frequently needed protection.

Bella Cullen is among the strongest and most warlike of the vampires, standing essentially on her own against a clan that has ruled the world for centuries.

Bella Swan was empathetic to the needs of others before she met Edward.

Bella Cullen pursues two innocent human hikers through a forest, intent on ripping them to pieces to satisfy her bloodlust - and stops only because Edward calls out to her. Not because she perceives murder as wrong. (Breaking Dawn, p.417). She also attempts to kill Jacob and breaks Seth's shoulder because she didn't approve of what Jacob nicknamed her daughter (Breaking dawn, p.452). She no longer has morals .

Bella Swan was fairly modest and earnest.

Bella Cullen uses her sex appeal to manipulate innocent people and extract information from them (pp.638 - 461) - she does so in order to get in touch with J. Jenks.
In short, her entire identity - everything that made her who she was - has been erased.

This is powerfully underscored on p. 506, when Charlie Swan (remember, the conscience of the story) sees his own daughter for the first time after her transformation:
"Charlie's blank expression told me how off my voice was. His eyes zeroed in on me and widened. Shock. Disbelief. Pain. Loss. Fear. Anger. Suspicion. More pain."
He goes through the entire grieving process right there - because at that moment, he recognizes what so many readers don't - Bella Swan is dead.

The most tragic part of the whole story is that this empty shell of a person - which at this point is nothing more than a frozen echo of Bella, twisted and destroyed as she is by her codependence with Edward, fails to see what has happened to her. She ends the story in denial - empty, annihilated, and having learned nothing.
I would say that read in the proper light, it's a powerful cautionary tale about accepting traditional gender roles and conforming to expected societal norms. Particularly with regard to male dominance (rather than partnership) in relationships.

Ranting (ignore if you want)

2011-04-08T00:54:00.003-05:00

There's a good chance the government will shut down tomorrow (almost today) due to issues of the GOP/Tea Party wanting $40 billion in budget cuts to reduce deficit spending, almost all of which they're taking from places like the EPA, the NIH, and largely Planned Parenthood.

Now, I figure it's only a matter of time before the Tea Party is seen as nothing more than a fringe group like the Green Party or Socialist Party--they'll exist, but won't have any real impact on anything.

Sadly, until then, we get to deal with people who have absolutely no idea how to fix a deficit. $40 billion cut in funding? Sounds like a lot; sounds like a good amount that could reduce that 40% deficit that's going to ruin the lives of us and our children? No, it actually isn't. It's not much of a drop in the bucket thanks to the military defense budget.

Military spending: $895 billion
Non-military spending: $520 billion
Total: $1.415 trillion OR $1415 billion

How much does the $40 billion in spending cuts reduce the deficit by? Well if the deficit is, according to the most reports, 40% of each dollar spent, then that deficit is $566 billion. That $40 billion cut reduces the deficit spending by 7%.

That is, the Tea Party/Republicans are being demanding a 7% reduction in deficit spending, claiming that will stop the problems they're prophesying.

Oh, but no one has dared to touch the military spending, especially not the Tea Party or GOP members, because that's what America is all about! It's those damned immigrants and godless slut single-mothers who are getting abortions that are sucking our money. And public school teachers! Moochers...

[/rant]

Why 24 hour news channels are destroying journalism

2010-07-21T17:02:00.008-05:00

Let me start off with a clip from Rachel Maddow. And before you watch, I would like to state that I have not once seen an entire episode of her show because she seems as bad as any news personality on FOX News. This was brought to my attention by a friend, and it highlights what is the biggest flaw in the 24 hour news channel system:

FOX News gave some of the facts, but not all of them. And only providing some of the facts, particularly the facts that are chosen specifically to support a certain point of view, is perhaps the worst thing a news organization can ever do. It allows people to reference real events but with a skewed mind; it makes people believe they know the facts when in reality they don't.

It's the equivalent of telling someone about Newton's Laws of Motion, F = M*A, and then saying, "So obviously you can go faster than light, you just need the right amount of force to keep the acceleration going" -- using that information it seems completely obvious that you can do that. You can't. The information you were given is correct, but you weren't given all of the information and therefore the conclusion, "can go faster than light", seems correct. This is what 24 news media shows and "commentators" do. FOX News personalities like Beck, Hannity, and O'Reilly, and MSNBC's Maddow, Olbermann, and Matthews do it the most.

MSNBC has a strong liberal bias and is known to do the same thing as FOX (though on the other end of the scale). I don't support watching MSNBC anymore than FOX. CNN shows a liberal bias though it's not nearly as extreme as FOX's conservative one; if you watch CNN, take it with a grain of salt. (Although if you're watching Anderson Cooper or Fareed Zakaria, they both do a good job of avoiding bias.) NPR and PBS both do good jobs of keeping the news fairly unbiased because both are publicly supported and thus don't have a parent company to provide profits and advertising revenue for.

Please, everyone, check your sources and then check their sources before believing what you see and hear and read.

And never trust a political commentator. Finds the facts and make up your own mind.

While looking for a profile pic

2010-07-16T00:54:00.003-05:00

As any logical person does when they're up later than they should be, I decided to redo my blog a bit. I brought back the Twitter feed on the right and updated the "about me" section. One of these days I'll get around to redoing the whole thing. Maybe even posting regular updates.

Hey, a guy can dream.

Anyways, I came across this picture while looking for a profile pic and thought I'd share it.

What, if anything, is Big Bird?

2010-06-29T09:50:00.002-05:00

A scientific analysis of Big Bird and an attempt to determine exactly what species of bird he is.

Picture fail

2010-06-28T22:21:00.002-05:00

I just noticed that the picture on the last post failed to load properly. I can only imagine this has been there for awhile.

I have to admit, I'm rather sad no one mentioned it. It basically means no one noticed, which in turn probably means no one really reads this. Oh well.

I wonder if the new Futurama season is any good.

Dear TechCrunch,

2010-06-25T10:55:00.007-05:00

You can't review phones worth crap.

From you're review:

And the battery life isn’t just bad, it’s 90′s laptop bad. You need to be near a power source at all times.

The battery life is abysmal – MobileCrunch calls it a “dealbreaker” and I agree. Yes you can do a few things to get a little extra time out of it, but this device routinely runs out of power while sitting on standby overnight next to my bed. You aren’t just charging this once a day. Or twice a day. You need to be thinking about your next power fix just about any time you are using it. I keep chargers at home, in my office, in my car, and an extra one to suck power from my laptop. That keeps it going, but it isn’t fun.

That is an exact screenshot off my Evo. Notice the awake time since last charged? 38 hours.

Next in the series

2010-06-23T20:48:00.002-05:00

Kitten on a Tortoise:

Caring for Your Introvert

2010-06-17T12:48:00.003-05:00

I cannot express how much I love this article entitled "Caring for Your Introvert". It might be one of the best things ever written about social interaction (particularly with me).

I thought had posted this awhile ago, but a quick search (new widget on the right side) showed nothing.

It's worth reading. At least, I'd appreciate it if you did. (Chances are good that other people you know would like it, too.)

Perhaps my favorite line from this article:

Remember, someone you know, respect, and interact with every day is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts.

Because it's true.

[There's a follow-up to the post with an interview here, and a nice blog from Psychology Today regarding introversion as well, The Introverts Corner.]

A Perspective of Time

2010-06-12T00:32:00.005-05:00

Link to video (larger size)

Moving from the HTC Touch Pro to the Evo 4G

2010-06-08T23:55:00.012-05:00

Five days ago I read up on the Evo. I read as many reviews by tech blogs (Engadget, Gizmodo, Wired et al) as I could. They mentioned a lot of things, like the screen size, the speed, the Android OS, camera, and all the fancy stuff. One other thing they always mentioned is the battery, particularly how bad it is. Many blogs reported as low as 8 hours of battery life; sometimes as low as 6 hours. (The linked article, from Fortune at CNNMoney.com, reports 4 hours; I have no idea what he's doing to the poor phone to kill it that quickly.)

Those reviews made me seriously reconsider purchasing an Evo.

I got over it. I took a risk. On Friday, I bought an Evo. I've played with it a lot the last four days.

Here's my thoughts.

I'd go into detail about the camera, the screen, and any number of other features, but they've been reviewed ad nauseam by every other tech blog. (If you want to read very good reviews about them, check CNET, Engadget, Wired, and Gizmodo.)

I'll cut to the major thing I wondered about: the battery. When I first bought my HTC Touch Pro a year and a half ago, the battery only lasted about 8 hours, just like the reviewers of the HTC Evo reported. However, what I found was that in order to get a full charge out of the battery, you need to run it down completely, turn off the phone, do a hard reset, and then charge it--still powered off--for at least 8 hours. From then on, the battery on my HTC Touch Pro lasted 36-48 hours on standard use.

I figured the Evo would have the same issue. I also guessed this was the cause of the poor reviews. So when I got my Evo, I played with it till the battery died--it lasted about 4 hours--and then powered it off and let it charge overnight. The first day I had it after the full, overnight charge, I customized the screen, downloaded at least 20 apps, configured all websites/bookmarks, and sent over 100 texts across 18 hours before the phone finally said "15% battery life remaining, please charge battery".

The second day, without all the configuration taking up battery life, I got 36 hours out of the battery before charging, and even then, it wasn't even to 20% yet.

Whoever reviewed this phone and said it gets "about 8 hours of battery life on standard use" clearly did not know how to utilize the battery life. The main trick to getting good battery life is to use WiFi whenever possible over 3G, only enable GPS when you're actively using it, and adjust the screen to the minimal necessary brightness.

So, the battery on the HTC Evo 4G, if you know what you're doing, will last for about 36 hours. More if you actually run it down all the way. Less if you use all the features gratuitously and unnecessarily, but that's true for anything. You won't get 12 hours of movie watching off of it, but if you're in a situation where you need several hours of entertainment and are not within any possible outlets for charging, might I recommend an alternative form?

Be smart about the battery and it'll last.

If you're interested in an Evo, or thinking about getting one, I highly recommend it. To date I have not found a thing on the phone I don't love.

A few recommended apps if you do pick one up:

Brightness Setting: an app that lets you adjust the screen size easily when set as a widget; fantastic for managing the battery life.
ChompSMS: great SMS messaging program, gives nice speech bubble format.
doubleTwist: syncs your iTunes playlists to Android, which is crucial if you're used to using an ipod. It's slow--it takes over 24 hours for mine to be ready to sync due to the volume of music on my system--but it works, and that's well worth waiting.
LED Desire: turns the LED "flash" from the camera into a usable LED flashlight. Also can be used in conjunction with other apps--very useful when lighting is bad and you want to use the barcode scanner.
ColorNote: colored post-it and checklists. Just handy.
gWakeUp: so far the best app for alarm clocks I've found. I wanted to find something equivalent to gAlarm for WinMo, and this does a decent job.

I hope this has been helpful and informative. If you have questions, just ask in the comments and I'll respond as best I can.

EDIT: Now that I have all of my apps configured, on my current battery charge--which was charged from the provided USB cable that I connected to my PC while syncing music yesterday--it's lasted for 28 hours and is at 40-50%.

EDIT 2: Another thing I thought of; if you do purchase one, don't pay the $30 for the "screen protector" Sprint sells. It's rather pathetic. Buy one of the $10 ones from Skinomi or ZAGG InvisibleShield. Much more effective.

What makes a person racist?

2010-05-10T12:02:00.002-05:00

This was brought to my attention today. It's a report of a law student's e-mail that says some things some people find racist and it's apparently hurting this person's career, perhaps permanently.

From reading that article (and not seeing the actual e-mail or knowing the conversation that took place leading up to this particular statement), I don't see what's wrong with it.

She didn't actually say anything. It depends on what data she was looking at and using. There's a book called The Bell Curve that incited death threats against the authors because it used scientific methods and psychological theories and came to the conclusion (with data; how conclusive or well done is up for debate, as all science is) that different races are generally predisposed to certain levels of intelligence. It stated a lot of inflammatory things that pissed off a lot of people. Were the authors of the book/studies racist? I don't think so; they were scientists who were studying intelligence, saw a correlation and reported it.

It's akin to killing Galileo for proving that the Earth isn't the center of the universe; it's not his fault, it wasn't done with malice, it's just what the data shows.

I don't think this law student said anything that should destroy her career and I frankly don't think she did anything careless. Everyone in their lives has done or said something that could be damaging to them; the only issue here is that she's someone who seems to have a very powerful future and someone else wants to stop that. This is law school politics; no different from senators screaming at one another for cheating on their wives while they themselves are buying prostitutes. It's pointing out another's faults because it's on record while hoping no one has any of yours documented.

Is it a LITTLE BIT racist? Perhaps. But everyone is. If a crocodile attacks you, our minds learn to avoid anything that looks like a crocodile. If a dog bites you when you're 3, it's likely you'll develop an aversion to dogs throughout your life. If you don't live in a predominantly black neighborhood and have a bad experience with a black person (violent or otherwise threatening, either first hand or hearing stories) it's just biology and psychology that we'll associate black people with such actions. The same has been true throughout history for various races from Irish to Asian to Middle Eastern.

Does that make it correct? Of course not. One dog biting you doesn't mean all dogs will--the vast majority just want to lick your face and cuddle with you. Hearing stories of black/Irish/Asian/Middle Eastern people causing problems doesn't mean all black/Irish/Asian/Middle Eastern people will--again, the vast majority I've ever met are fantastic human beings.

People categorize things in their minds from an early age by what makes sense to us. Survival is largely based on learning to avoid dangers; people who look different are easier to categorize, and thus a bad experience with a member of that group can cause us to categorize the entire group poorly.

Don't get me wrong, I am not justifying racist actions. I'm saying that what many people claim as racist isn't intentional and many people today try to do whatever they can to get past it. But it's not easy. I'm sure in my life I've done some things that people might consider racist, be it maybe walking on the other side of the street to avoid the congregation of Mexicans by the apartment complex from my childhood or by being friends with people who are mostly white. (In my defense, growing up in the Northern Midwest doesn't provide for much racially diverse friendships.)

What am I getting at with all of this? What this girl said was not damning. It was not bigotry. It was not racism. There does exist data that justifies what she says--the LA school districts have struggled with it in the past. (In the 90's there were studies done on test scores and found that white/Asian students scored on average much higher than Latino/black students; in that case, if I recall correctly, Asians scored highest, then whites, blacks, and Latinos at the bottom. Incidentally, the issues this raised and the riots that were in the school systems are what some of the songs from Rage Against the Machine's 'Battle for Los Angeles' album are about.) I do think cultural and environmental factors are the strongest play in all of this, but does it mean that there aren't some genetic factors? It would be scientifically irresponsible to dismiss the possibility.

All this girl, Grace, did was state that there is a possibility that genetics play a role, and that if given the same environmental and cultural variables the test scores/intelligences could show the same outcomes. I don't see how this is inflammatory save for people taking it out of context.

Science isn't always fair and pretty and nice. If the next 100 years of research in studying psychology, biology, neurology, genetics, environmental and cultural factors, it is found that certain races have different average intelligence levels, would you call science racist?

I'm not saying that will happen; right now it looks like it probably won't, but it would be scientifically irresponsible to say that it can't.

Hamster Olympics

2010-04-30T11:49:00.002-05:00

Enjoy.

Been awhile, lots to say, might say it someday

2009-12-22T23:30:00.002-06:00

It's been awhile since I posted. Lots happened. Classes ended. Passed some, unsure of others. In Minnesota now. Very happy to see my friend Lee. Highlight of trip so far. Bored today. Trying to avoid giving in to the idiom "can't go home again" but it's proving very true. Finding out this isn't where my life is anymore. Finding out I miss my friends and life in Provo. Hoping things get better as the week progresses. Hoping Minneapolis proves more enjoyable.

I've got a lot of things to write. A lot of things I want to write. I'm not sure I ever will write them. Some I've wanted to write for a long time and just last week figured out how to say it. Should write it down before I lose it.

Using break and boredom to get reading done. Also learning programming in Cocoa. Hoping to eventually learn to write iPhone App I've imagined. Need to start somewhere.

Sleep soon. Reading first. Finally hoping to finish Heinlein book over break. Took detour and read Stardust by Gaiman; not like the movie, still great.

Mind is wandering. Water sounds good now.

The most disgusting thing

2009-10-30T15:47:00.003-05:00

All Hallows Eve

There are different perceptions of what horror is. One is the traditional blood/gore approach that most haunted houses use: dismembered body parts, heads on spikes that look at you, open wound makeup and lots of blood. Then there's the fear/shock approach that is also employed by haunted houses and Hollywood: things that jump out at you, men in hockey masks with chainsaws, loud screams. A lesser used, but I think more effective means of horror, is that of disgust. The game Half-Life 2 uses this approach with rotting, festering enemies such as the headcrab zombie. Sure there's something horrifying about gruesome acts of dismemberment and torture like in Saw, but that's too Hollywood and traditional horror for me to be repulsed by. Personally I think there's something far more horrifying about the last because it's more real. (Ok, the headcrabs aren't real, but the infected, pulsing sores thing is.)

That being said, I've decided to share this story in honor of Halloween. And yes, it's 100% true.

One night in college, about 2 a.m., I realized we (my roommates and I) had forgotten to take the trash out. We had forgotten the previous two weeks before, too, so we had quite a bit backed up. There was a big trash can in the back of the house we would put the smaller bags in and we'd just take it out to the curb once a week. Since we had forgotten the last two weeks the can was filled up and there were about five white plastic bags stacked next to it. I decide to be responsible and so I go outside in the dark and take the trash to the curb.

I flip on the outside light: big trash can overflowing with garbage bags, five white plastic garbage bags next to it. I roll the big trash can to the curb then grab a plastic bag in each hand and take them to the curb. It takes a few trips, but eventually all the trash is ready to be picked up. Due to recent rainfall a puddle of water had collected on the top of one of the plastic bags and my hand and arm got wet. As I carried the bags more spilled out on my arm (open bag, rain for few days, it collects). No big deal, just rain water.

After all the garbage is on the curb, on the way back to the house I run my hands through my hair and then wipe them off on my pants. And that's when I realize they're not drying very well. My hands were actually getting sticky.

Rain water doesn't get sticky when you wipe it off.

(One thing I should point out: in college I lived in a house with 3 other guys. One of the guys was from Ecuador and had different concepts of sanitation than did those of us from the US. He cooked a lot, used a lot of chicken, and didn't dispose of it in plastic bags or sealed up; he would just throw the pieces of raw meat in the garbage.)

I get to the back of the house (the main door we used) and look at my hand in the light. It wasn't water that had collected on the bags. Due to my roommate's frequent disposal of raw meat and the length of time the bags had been sitting out, what I thought was a puddle of water that I had nonchalantly put my hand in was actually a writhing swarm of maggots that had filled the bag and was flowing out the top. What was spilling out all over my arm and pants during the trip to the curb wasn't collected rainwater but thousands of centimeter long maggots. My right hand and arm nearly to my elbow was completely covered and crawling with them. And yes, I had run that hand through my hair only moments before. I have never moved and flailed my arm that fast before in my life.

I immediately turn on the hose in our backyard to full and wash off my entire arm, my pants, and my head with the hose outside. (The water was freezing, btw.) I go inside, throw all my clothes in the washing machine immediately at the hottest temperature setting (remember, I had rubbed my hands through my hair and on my clothes to "dry" them), run naked through the house at 2 a.m. to the bathroom and take a 45 minute shower washing completely from head to toe no less than 5 times.

I didn't sleep well that night.

And that's the most disgusting thing that has ever happened to me. Happy Halloween.

Dating advice

2009-10-20T12:52:00.006-05:00

And remember: don't trust anyone over 30.

I was thinking about all the dating advice I've received over the years and realized this algorithm seems to pretty much sum it up.

I'm not an engineer

2009-09-15T20:38:00.003-05:00

I've come to the conclusion I'm not an engineer.

That doesn't mean I'm not going to do what I can to complete my master's. What it means is that I don't think like an engineer. I don't think in exact numbers or "within the range." I don't accept equations given to me.

I ask why. I want to know how things actually work, not just how to make them work. I don't just want an equation given to me and different parameters applied. I want to understand how everything works.

I'm not an engineer. I'm a physicist.

Busy

2009-09-04T11:19:00.009-05:00

I've been busy this week. Chances are I'll be busy for quite awhile.

Until I figure out what to do with this blog, enjoy this video:

Just a link

2009-08-28T10:00:00.002-05:00

I highly recommend reading this post from the Journal of Joe the Peacock. I'd write something myself, but I think he says everything I'd want to say. No sense in repeating it here.

A Couple, A Few, And Several

2009-08-27T10:00:00.001-05:00

Unable to find a related picture

It seems fairly standard that if you say "I have a couple of (noun)s" then that means you have two of them. If someone is talking about a romantic couple, they mean two people. I'm guilty of not always using this term accurately. Sometimes if I'm referring to 3 things I'll say a couple. It's incorrect but I do it out of habit.

In the past two weeks I've had no less than three conversations with friends about this subject, almost always arising from someone (only once was it me) using the term to refer to more than two objects and thus causing confusion.

Googling it, I didn't find much on the subject. It seems rather accepted that a couple refers to two objects and only two objects, no more and no less. But the what is a "few"? What about "several"? "Many"? Here's my thoughts on this:

A Couple -- Two things. No more, no less. A couple always refer to two.
A Few -- Three to Six things. I once considered a few to be three to eight, but have since reconsidered and now classify it as three to six.
Several -- Seven to Eleven things. The reclassification of a few was to make it a bit more even between it and several.
Dozen -- 12, obviously.
Many -- 13-17
A Lot -- Any amount between 18 and 35
Dozens --36-60
A Ton -- More than 60, less than 100
'Bout a Hundred -- 100, give or take 3 at a rough estimate
A Crapload -- More than 100, less than 200
Hundreds -- 200+

If you have any suggestions or wish to express your thoughts on the matter, I urge you to leave a comment and I will consider adding and amending this list.

RENT

2009-08-26T10:00:00.003-05:00

This is art.

This morning I listened to RENT for the first time since high school.

Wow.

A few months ago I started listening to OK Computer by Radiohead and was reminded how it's a masterpiece of music. Today I'm reminded how RENT is a masterpiece of musical theatre. Maybe it's a bit more understanding of life, but the music, characters, and story are far better than I remember.

I know for awhile I wasn't a big fan of RENT simply because it was what everyone loved. The "dislike anything popular" mentality that I carried pushed me away from it. Now that I can listen to it objectively, I'm in awe.

Do yourself a favor today and listen to an album or CD you haven't heard for a few years--see if your old favorites hold up. Some will, some won't, but either way it'll be a fun experience.

He said, She said

2009-08-25T09:33:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I spent a good portion of the morning calling Bank and School trying to figure out why I don't have my student loans yet. It's not a dire situation--I have money saved up and I'm still surviving--but since tuition is due I'd like to pay it.

I call School first. Since it's the beginning of the semester the financial office is busy and so I'm put on hold. A choppy, automated voice tells me the average wait time is 7 minutes 34 seconds. Watching the clock, five minutes later it says the average wait time is 5 minutes 6 seconds. Five more minutes pass and the average wait time is now 5 minutes 36 seconds. Apparently they hired the guy who wrote the Windows file transfer time estimate for their wait time dialog. Eventually I get through and a girl picks up the phone, I explain my situation, get put on hold, and finally she says that they haven't gotten the ok from Bank to distribute the funds. About a month ago my loan totals were given to me and I accepted the amounts, but apparently Bank hadn't ok'd it yet.

Calling Bank they said School hasn't given them the amount yet and since School is on a "Do Not Contact" list, they can't even call them to ask for the required information to complete my loan. I recall two months ago something similar with a sheet of paper that Bank gave me and said I needed to give i to School, but School claimed they had nothing to do with it and gave it back to me, even though after I called Bank and they assured me School should have it.

So I call School again. Once again I go through the wait: 8 minutes 12 seconds, 4 minutes 48 seconds, 6 minutes 9 seconds. I get the same girl I spoke with the first time and explain I spoke with Bank and they're pointing the finger at School. She put me on hold for a few seconds. When she comes back she explains that they had thought the information had been sent to Bank but it had not--she apologized and explained they'd immediately send it over and I should have my loans by Friday.

The entire process took about an hour and a half. I figure at this point I'm already late for research so I go get a haircut. As fate would have it, the girl who cut my hair was the sister-in-law of a co-worker of mine at Barnes & Noble. Coming home I hop on my bike and head to School only to find my tires desperately need air. A bike pump is now on my list of things to purchase next time I'm out.

Overqualified

2009-08-24T10:27:00.005-05:00

I want this book

If you've never read A Softer World, go read it now. (Ok, maybe not all of it since there's 474 comics in the archives, but reading some of them will give you an idea of what style of humor. It's a style I quite enjoy.) Then read this review for the book OVERQUALIFIED, written by the writer of the comic, Joey Comeau. It's perhaps the best book review ever written. (For my more conservative readers, it doesn't contain strong language but does reference some sexual situations. Just a warning.)

While you're doing that, I'm going to try and work out my financial aid for the semester.

iTunes U

2009-08-21T10:00:00.002-05:00

Free classes on your iPod

Yesterday I discovered iTunes U.

I know it's been around for awhile, but it's not something I ever really looked into. Each day I walk about 20 minutes to the Clyde building on BYU's campus, and with iTunes U I now have MIT lectures on electrical engineering to listen to--one of which is on the very subject I'm doing my research in. It's quite handy.

There are also other lecture topics I've found from Oxford and Yale on theology, ethics, and psychology. Just fun things to listen to.

And it's all free.

Take a look at it--it's in the iTunes Store.

Of Coin Tosses and Shuffles

2009-08-20T10:00:00.000-05:00

Great if your ipod fits in it

I've been using the purple iPod Nano to go running. I ordered it after my previous one was stolen and it's been very effective, but since the 4th generation Nanos are a slightly different shape than the 2nd generation, my armband doesn't work as well; the buttons don't line up and the screen is covered. Two weeks ago I decided I wanted to get a 2nd generation iPod Shuffle to go running with. You know, those little things that look like stamps but play music and would probably illicit a cockeyed look from your postal carrier if you attached it to a letter.

I look around at Best Buy, Simply Mac (the authorized Mac store in the area), and online. All the prices seemed the same across the board, but Apple.com offers the red color exclusively (part of the (RED) campaign) and orders come with free engraving--something Best Buy is sorely lacking. I figure if the cost is the same, I'll wait the few days for delivery and get an engraved (RED) iPod.

The question then is, what do I engrave my new iPod with?

I want something fun and friendly, maybe "Smile!" or "Enjoy life." Perhaps something motivational, like "Go running" or "Go to the gym. Now." That's when I remember the universal greeting from Transformers, "Bah weep granah weep ninny bong." It's a universal way of saying 'hello' and being friendly. That's exactly what I want for my iPod!

At the purchase order, I notice there's a box for discount codes. Recently I've become a fan of discount coupons online--a quick Google search will usually bring them up and can lead to savings from free shipping or 5% off to as much as 15-20% off if the stars align in your favor. So I do a quick search for iPod discounts. I don't find any coupons, but I do find a link to the refurbished iPods which run 20-33% cheaper. The downside is that engraving isn't an option, nor is the (RED) color. On the plus side, they do have the 2GB model, which is currently unavailable new.

Having picked out my new iPod--2nd generation, 2GB version. The question is what color. With the options presented--blue, green, silver, pink--I'm torn between green and silver. Silver matches more things, green has a bit more flare to it. (I'd consider blue, but the color is just a bit too bright.) Unable to decide, I ask my brother for a coin: if it's heads, I get the silver, if it's tails, I get the green.

Let the Fates decide

Right as I'm about to flip the coin, my brother chimes in.

"If it's on it's side, you get the pink one." He suggests.

"Alright." I shrug. And I flip the coin.

It lands on the carpet. Bounces once. Twice. Then rolls and comes to rest comfortably on the carpet. Against my shoe. On it's side.

My brother erupts in laughter.

Something that has always been important to me is being a man of my word--if I say I'll do something, I'll do it. I agreed that if the coin landed on it's side I'd buy the pink iPod Shuffle. The coin landed on it's side. (Plus arguing with the Fates like that just didn't seem like a good idea; they could cut my thread at any time. They're cold and callous towards humankind; I wouldn't be able to persuade them.)

My new iPod

And now I own a pink iPod Shuffle. It's named the Pink Dwarf Bleeding Heart (it's a type of flower).

(I found out after it was delivered that 2nd generation iPod Shuffles have issues with Windows 7 currently. That is, Windows 7 will recognize the iPod and say everything is ok, but songs won't load on to them. After RMAing the first one sent to me Apple sent me a replacement, and since it has the same issue I started thinking it wasn't the iPod's fault. Searching online I've found a solution, here. It's not as long as it looks and it works. If you know anyone with Windows 7 and an iPod Shuffle and they're having this problem, pass the solution on.)

Hakuna Matata

2009-08-19T10:00:00.003-05:00

What a wonderful phrase...

When was the last time you said "Hakuna Matata" and just let things slide?

I think the world would be a much better place if we all just let things go every now and then and enjoyed life instead of worrying about it.

Hakuna Matata.

New Socks

2009-08-18T10:00:00.003-05:00

Life is good

One of the small joys in this world that is far too often overlooked is that of new socks.

If you're like me, socks aren't really something you think too much about. I have about 15-20 pair that I wear regularly. Other than perhaps making sure they don't clash terribly with what I'm wearing, I don't really focus too much on them. They're only there to make my shoes more comfortable. I might buy new socks once every 2-3 years at most.

And no one likes to receive socks as gifts.

Last Christmas I realized I had been wearing the same socks since about high school when my Mom bought me some. I figured it was time to update, so I asked for a bunch of socks. My Mom is well aware of the "no one likes to receive socks as gifts" rule and so she double and triple checked that it wasn't a fake request or an accidental addition to my Amazon.com wishlist. I assured her it wasn't and that I legitimately wanted socks.

And I got socks.

I didn't get as many as I would have liked, but I still got a lot. (I asked for about 24 pair, enough to overhaul my entire collection. I got 12 pair, enough to replace the beaten up and sad socks in my drawer.) I've picked up a few more pairs for myself in the past few months, too. Since my old socks are still in circulation I tend to wear them more often than the new ones, and since I only have about 16 pairs of underwear I end up doing laundry before getting to a majority of my new socks.

Obama knows where it's at

Every now and then I'll pull out a rarely worn new pair and wear them, and every time I do that, I'm reminded that good socks are one of the small, simple, and great pleasures of this life.

Support

2009-08-17T10:00:00.003-05:00

I ♥ pandas (and nature)

Men's Health had an article in it last month about charity work. The author spent a month--I think it was a month; I don't really recall and don't feel like looking through the article to double check right now--and volunteered at different charities. He helped out at homeless shelters, walking animals at the pound, and playing BINGO with the elderly, among other things. It was a good article about altruism.

One thing he pointed out in the end was that after doing it, he's more likely to give money to charities since he saw what even little donations can do to help. After reading that, I remembered an e-mail I got last week and wanted to mention it here.

There's a new service called HotelsCombined.com that works along the lines of Travelocity and Orbitz (except without the flights) that's doing a promotional deal right now to get their name out: if you join their group on Facebook (here) they'll donate $5 in your name, if you tweet about them (just mention HotelsCombined.com and what charity you support) they'll donate $10, and if you mention them in a blog, they'll donate $20.

It might seem minuscule and unimportant, but the fact is a simple mention of them on Twitter or a few clicks on Facebook or a mention on your blog can add up. I can't vouch for the quality of the site or the rates of the hotels through them, but if they're willing to donate $20 to the World Wide Fund for Nature just because I'm writing this blog, then yeah, I'll write it and bring this to the attention of others.

It's a small gesture and it's a small donation, but small donations can make a big difference.

Sabbatical

2009-08-10T10:13:00.002-05:00

I'm taking a sabbatical from my blog. Probably not for much more than a week, maybe two, similar to the hiatus I took a couple months ago.

Since I've been home from work I haven't found myself with 8+ hours a day in front of a computer with nothing to do. When I don't have anything to do on the computer now, I find something else to do, be it studying, reading, playing guitar, going to the gym, or just making lunch. I still get ideas for blog posts, but I've found they usually come in the afternoon.

With that, as before, during this break I'll probably write a few posts and take it easy. But I just wanted to let you all know, updates won't be coming this week. To the people who enjoy my updates, thank you for your readership and I hope this week won't put you off too much.

Nothing

2009-08-07T20:20:00.002-05:00

I've come down with a cold. I blame going to the gym and the lack of hand sanitizer at Gold's Gym.

Maybe Monday I'll write more.

What I support

2009-08-06T10:00:00.000-05:00

I support life.

I support sustainability. I support nuclear energy, wind energy, hybrid cars, painting roads and rooftops white, recycling paper and pop cans, donating old clothes to homeless shelters and I support government grants and financing to aid research in new sources of energy and technology. I support the Circle of Life as taught to me by The Lion King and I support driving my car to work each day because it'd be a pain to walk 28 miles. I support free education and sharing sources and looking at new ideas with an open mind. I support questioning the purpose of existence, whether we exist, what it means to exist, how we can know we exist and what to do while we exist. I support living with nature since we're mammals and a part of the world just like Simba and Pumba and Flipper. I support biology, chemistry, psychology, psychiatry, neurology, epidemiology, nephrology, dentistry, orthopedic surgery, and I think we need to bring back phrenology because the busts were awesome. I support philosophy and mathematics and physics. I support growing your own food organically and I support buying from local farmers markets. I support cooking with olive oil because it's good for you and makes everything taste better. I support reading and creating art just for the hell of it and creating offensive art just for the hell of it. I support local charities and national charities and worldwide charities. I support celebrities going to other countries and helping to build wells and schools and just making the lives of the people who live there a little brighter if only for a day. I support holding the doors for women with children, old women with walkers, old men with canes, and cute girls with lowcut tops. I support free range poultry, pork, and beef. I support wild caught salmon. I support only taking what you need and giving back as much as you can. I support leaving places you've been cleaner than when you arrived. And that includes this planet.

[Check out this site: http://www.experiencetheplanets.com/ It's a work in progress, but shows promise of being quite cool.]

It's easy when you have nothing else to do

2009-08-05T20:36:00.003-05:00

Currently I've got a month off. No work. No school. Just free time to study (which I've been doing) and relaxing (which I've also been doing).

One goal I've set for myself during this month is to get back to the gym and get my meals planned out better. For the past month I didn't really care what I ate and hadn't been to the gym in about five months. I wanted to remedy this so that it's a habit while in school. When I was finishing my senior year I was going to the gym regularly and it helped clear my head and focus me--I always did better on tests after going to the gym (studies actually do support this) so I want to do that again. I started this week.

I've found it's about as easy as I remember it being when I was in college. At the time I would make Jared go with me--he was a great guy to work out with and just be around in general. It gave me someone to be accountable to and kept me pushing myself harder as Jared's taller and bigger than me, but I wanted to try and match him. My goal was to catch up to him, his goal was to always stay ahead of me. It worked out quite well.

When I started working full time in an office I found that at the end of the day, after six hours of sleep, sitting at a desk for nine hours, and an hour in the car, coming home to an overheated apartment with a broken AC unit, I had absolutely no desire to go get sweaty at the gym. This severely hurt my gym attendance.

It's amazing how much easier it is to go to the gym when you haven't been at work all day. Going to the gym is something I'm starting to like again (my back disagrees after deadlifting today). I'm excited to get back in shape; I miss feeling energetic and able to run. I think this month will be good for me.

[My AC unit was replaced today; my apartment is livable again!]

Epic Monopoly

2009-08-04T10:00:00.004-05:00

Classic Edition: nothing else

As Mark pointed out in his comment of my previous post, on Sunday last weekend I did in fact play an epic game of Monopoly and I completely failed to mention it. At 9AM I'm not the most lucid and my memory tends to be rather short-term.

Monopoly has become something we play on Sundays. We in this case is my Brother, a few of our friends, ane of course, me. We don't play friendly rules nor fair rules--we play to win. This means if you land on someone's place and they don't notice before the dice are rolled by the next player you get away free. This also means if you land on someone's place and you can't pay you're forced to mortgage everything and on top of every dollar to your name till you can pay your debt. If you mortgage everything and still can't pay, you're out of the game and the person you owe gets everything.

As my Brother put it, "In Monopoly, all morality and honesty is forfeit. We play to win." And it's a blast. (I should point out we don't tolerate lying in the amount you pay when taxed or paying someone, only that you can sneak by properties if no one catches you.)

The game that was played last Sunday was, as previously stated, epic. It was our 2nd game of the day and we only had three players. Within 43 minutes Mark was out of the game and it was down to me and Jeff; I had 3/4ths of the board and hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place; Jeff had a few places but no Monopolies so he couldn't build anything. The game was mine.

Feeling cocky I tossed Jeff Virgina Ave and States Ave to complete a Monopoly for him--the magentas right after the jail. I figured I had the game in the bag so I'd give him a sporting chance. He took the opportunity to build three houses on each, which I then landed on and he upgraded to hotels. Next round he managed to pass Boardwalk and Park Place and I, again, hit St. Charles Place (the 3rd magenta). This pattern continued: he would pass through Boardwalk and Park Place hitting either the Luxury Tax square or jumping them entirely, I would hit his hotels every time around. In a few turns, I was down to only Boardwalk and Park Place, still with hotels, but nothing else beyond $27 cash.

Then Jeff landed on Park Place.

He was so rich at this point that he shrugged and paid me the $1500 in three $500 bills. I took them happily and then the next round gave him back $750 for landing on his hotels. I was still alive though.

A few more rounds passed and Jeff hit Park Place again. I un-mortgaged some places, built hotels on the cheap purples, and went around again. For the next 2 hours Jeff and I went around passing money back and forth, each going from owning all the cash in the game to almost nothing.

Eventually after 2 hours and 47 minutes, the game ended after Jeff hit Park Place three turns in a row.

Rags to Riches

Throughout the game we each went from completely-sure-we'd-win to what's-the-point-in-even-rolling-the-dice about three times.

I gave him the two magentas to give him a sporting chance, and it prolonged the game for another 2 hours making it one of the most eventful Monopoly games I've ever seen.

And we're going to play again on Sunday.

Day One

2009-08-03T10:00:00.000-05:00

WARNING: Boring blog post ahead!

It's my first day off work and at home. I woke up at 8 AM almost on the dot; apparently after a year of having to be at work then my body just thinks it should be awake then. While I wouldn't say I was happy to oblige, I was ok with it as I want to go to the gym this morning.

I'm going to try and keep up the daily updates here, but we'll see.

[I warned you.]

One Video

2009-07-31T10:00:00.001-05:00

(This is the last time I'll ever try and incorporate a countdown into my blog titles/posts.)

Today is my last day of work. In honor of this, I present to you William Shatner performing Sarah Palin's farewell speech when she resigned officially from being governor of Alaska:

Two Games

2009-07-30T10:00:00.008-05:00

I think most people that know me know how much I love to play Risk. It started in junior high when Will, Lee, Peter, Sam, Craig, and I would have weekend-long sleepovers from Friday night through Sunday morning sitting in Lee's basement watching Star Wars movies and playing Risk. I'm pretty sure Lee's basement was designed for Risk: a big open floor, recliners, and a big screen TV for movies to play for those who had been knocked out early in the game. (The big screen TV isn't such a big deal today with everyone owning 52" plasma screens, but in 1998 a 52" projection screen was epic.)

This tradition continued throughout high school. Krister and John also played fairly often, giving us eight players who circulated in and out depending on availability. We rarely had trouble getting a group of at least four together for all night Risk games. I don't think we actually completed games very often. The most common ending would be someone having all of North America and South America and maybe Africa, while someone else owned Europe, Asia, and Australia. This would lead to a massive standoff usually with one side saying "screw it" and surrendering after 5-6 turns of give-take territories.

(Other game endings we experienced were: dog/cat/sleepy person walks on the board and ruins unit placement leading to everyone saying "screw it" and going to play Goldeneye; everyone saying "screw it" around 4AM with half going to sleep and half going to play Goldeneye; someone saying "screw it" after a broken non-aggression contract and quitting; someone saying "screw it" and resorting to good old fashioned violence; and I think once someone actually won legitimately.)

Towards my senior year Risk was replaced by Scrabble one night, quite randomly. It was pretty awesome. About 2 in the morning at a Trollwood (local theater arts group) cast/crew party one of us just got the urge to play Scrabble, so we went back to my house and started playing. At 6:13 we adopted the rule of not using the dictionary to find words after John spent 3 hours and 17 minutes looking through it, eventually finding the word "qiviut" giving him 54 points after a triple word score and winning the game.

In college my Risk playing days declined with our core group that played spreading itself across the US going to different colleges. Facebook has a Risk application called "Attack!" that we tried to play a few times, but without fail it would glitch out around round 3-4 and would randomly give the game to a player. Then Brad found something else, a website called Warfish.net. He said it was Risk online and invited us to join; I was excited but kind of tentative, afraid of the same glitches and errors in present in Attack!.

Thankfully, I was wrong. Save for a week when the Warfish servers were down, the games have played flawlessly. Even better, they log all moves and allow for replay videos of the games, log stats of victories/losses, and provide variations on maps and rules. Currently we're playing an almost perfectly replicated world map with 131 territories (slight change from Risk's usual 42) and includes rules like "fog of war" which means you can only see the nations next to your own. The fog really changes how you play since you don't know what bonuses opponents are getting or who's conquering Asia while you're trying to secure a few nations in Central America to just live a few more rounds.

We're having an absolute blast.

No mercy.

While we're all spread out--me in Utah, Brad in Massachusetts, Krister in wherever (something like Morocco or Uzbekistan probably), Lindsey, Will, Sam, and Craig in Minneapolis, Lee and Peter in Moorhead--we're still able to all log into Warfish and play Risk together just like in high school.

Three Questions

2009-07-29T10:00:00.005-05:00

questions to ask--if you want to answer them in comments, awesome. If you just want to think about them to yourself, awesome.

Do you believe in fate?
What are your thoughts on koalas?
What extinct animal do you wish was still around today?

Four Lights

2009-07-28T10:00:00.002-05:00

lights on my car don't work simultaneously. They'll work in pairs, but not as a group. I think the Left said something derogatory to the Right; something about being the "master side" because that's where the driver sits.

The point is, my hazard lights don't work in my car.

I just discovered this this morning. My Mother sent out my old factory car system to replace the one that was stolen and this morning before going into work I wired it in. I had noticed that when my car was broken into the clock stopped working in my car and just assumed it used the same power source as the stereo. When I got a stereo installed it'd start working again. It didn't.

A brief look again found that the clock and hazard button have their own power connectors that the thief had disconnected (instead of cutting them, thankfully). Connecting them back up the clock came to life but the hazard lights remain elusive. I'm not sure what's wrong--could be a fuse, could be the switch, could be the power cable. At this point I don't have much to go on and will commence trouble shooting when I get a free minute at work. If I'm unsuccessful in my investigation, I may have to call a Turn-Signal Relationship Therapist to come and try and reconcile the dispute. Just because I sit on the left sides doesn't mean I hold any animosity towards the right, that just happens to be where the steering wheel and pedals are. It's nothing personal, I swear!

That being said, counting today, I only have four more days of work.

UPDATE: About 5 minutes after I posted this I went to check a few things out in my care and discovered that there are in fact two identical power cables that can connect into the hazard signal; I had simply chosen the wrong one. Hazard lights work out. Calling to cancel the Turn-Signal Relationship Therapist appointment now.

Five Days

2009-07-27T10:00:00.000-05:00

days left of my job. Then I get a month off before starting school again.

I'm excited about this. A month off will do me good, give me time to prepare for classes and hopefully get into the habit of going to the gym again.

That's my goal for August: review my math and get back to the gym regularly.

Songwriting

2009-07-24T10:00:00.000-05:00

Simple music; great music

I was talking with a coworker a few weeks ago about music--we're both NIN fans--and he asked if I played anything. I mentioned I bought a guitar last year and was learning some basic chords and a few songs I liked. He said to make sure I don't just play songs I like from other artists but to actually write my own stuff, too. As we got talking I found out he played bass and had toured with some bands, one was Blind Melon (or what's left of the band).

This last week I've had free time and I've been playing around with my guitar a lot. I love just sitting down and playing, be it just a sequence of power chords or the intro to Hey There, Delilah. I'm sure no one within listening range feels the same; I'm not very good. I do enjoy it though.

I've been playing around and found some basic power chord riffs I really like. Listening to The White Stripes I've noticed that a lot of the stuff played by Jack White isn't incredibly complicated--the song Fell In Love With A Girl is played on only two strings using the perfect fifth of the power chords. What I'm saying is he uses two fingers and they're always in the same position, they just shift up and down the guitar. It's nothing like Eric Clapton's guitar work.

So, I'm playing around with power chords and seeing what I could come up with. I've found that I can't write lyrics at all, largely because I don't know the first thing about the process. I have this vision in my head that songwriters--just like authors and musicians and poets and anyone in a creative, artistic profession--get moments of inspiration, when a muse speaks to them and they hear the entire song or see the entire book laid out in front of them, and all they do is make it tangible. While there may be times when it does work like this, I believe almost every great work of music, of literature, of art in general comes from days and weeks and months and years of labor working to perfect it; to find that one word to finish the sentence or the sentence to finish the paragraph or the note to finish the measure.

The more you learn about something and the more skilled you become, the more patient I think you're able to be with it, because you know the outcome takes time. This is true with music, with science, and even with parenthood. In college I tutored math classes, and working with people who aren't familiar with math I find it interesting to see them expect the answer immediately or within a few steps, not knowing or wanting to go through the amount of work it can take to get to the answer sometimes. I'm sure artists think the same when they look at me and my expectations to be able to write a song in 20 minutes or a graphic in Adobe Photoshop in an hour. Painters can spend weeks on a painting, authors can spend years on a book, I can spend hours on a single math problem. I think it just comes down to knowing the process.

I think I'll take some time today and try and learn the songwriting process. At least get an idea of it.

What The Doctor taught me

2009-07-23T10:00:00.005-05:00

Classic British Television

Just about everyone I know loves Doctor Who. I first heard of the show (him?) in 5th grade when my friend, John Berdahl, talked about the show. John was the kind of kid who, by age 11, had seen every movie made and knew every show that had ever aired up till about 1990.

Of course, the Doctor Who he was referring to was different than the Doctor most people today know. The original series ran from 1963 to 1989 (thank you, Wikipedia). Then in 2005 they revived the series with new writers, using current special effects and CG, and written in such a way that you don't need to have seen 26 years worth of classic television to know what's going on.

And it's brilliant.

The writing is wonderful, the storylines keep me guessing, the events range from downright creepy to hilarious, and the total theme is uplifting--stand up and make a difference.

Instead of going on about the series, I'd like to just say what The 9th Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston, taught me.

When we first meet The Doctor he's being chased by plastic mannequins who are trying to kill him, chasing him to the top of a building, while he's holding a bomb to destroy them. How does he greet Rose, a girl trapped in a room with him? With a great big smile and a very enthusiastic "Hullo!" Time and time again in the series, The Doctor meets new people, travels to new places, gets in life threatening situations with no discernible solutions, and he does it all with a smile. He's cheerful through life and limb. He's happy, because even though it's dangerous and scary, it's an adventure, and it's having fun.

What a Doctor!

I think there's something to take away from that. Yeah, life is dangerous. Yeah, we can be in situations where we don't know what to do. Yeah, we can be lost in places we've never been. And we can still have a smile on our face, think positively, and greet people enthusiastically with a kindly "Hullo!"

At first I didn't know what to think of Mr. Eccleston as The Doctor. Now, I'm going to miss him.

Practice

2009-07-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

Me at age 45?

I've read that it takes an average of 10,000 hours of practice to become a master of something. Anything, according to the report I read. 10,000 hours is about the amount of time you need to do something. While people can become proficient in far less time, the 10,000 hours theory is one that seems prevalent in regards to what is often deemed expertise. Of course, "a friggin' lot" would be another fair unit of measurement.

I start playing the guitar about 8 months ago. In that time gone from not knowing my guitar was out of tune to playing power chords, finger picking, and I can play some basic songs (Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, Behind Blue Eyes by Limp Bizkit). It's fun and something I really enjoy doing. At my current practice schedule, if it keeps up, I should be a master of guitar playing around the time I turn 45.

I never expect to make a living playing the guitar or make any money at all; it's just something I want to do for relaxation and my own enjoyment. So far that's worked out well. I think it'd be fun to get with some friends who play the guitar and actually do something--granted, I'd be little more than rhythm guitar as I can only do basic chords, but I think it'd be fun.

Astute observation

2009-07-21T10:00:00.003-05:00

Free webpage stats

On any given day I get around 20 people reading this blog. At least that's what Google Analytics tells me. I like to think the number is a little higher since that doesn't register RSS feeds and I know a number of people read it from there, too. (Speaking of RSS feeds, quick question to anyone who reads this blog via one: does the formatting work ok or is it really mucked up?)

Looking through the hits history I've noticed I generally get spikes whenever I either a) write a product review (Skinomi guards for my cell phone, Lovesacs), b) rant about something in the news (Letter to Clair Suddath) or c) write something with excessively religious (Salt). 'A' is most probably from people doing Google searches and my blog coming up, 'B' is mostly from me posting the article on Digg.com and it actually being something people can relate to, and 'C' is from my brother pimping the article to everyone he knows.

The only other spikes in visits I've had have come in response to the two cartoon posts I've made. I quite enjoyed making both of those, though it's painfully obvious my artistic skills are lacking. (In my defense, I drew both at work with limited tools at my disposal.)

I will fully admit I'd like to have more regular readers of my blog. I do understand why random people don't find it interesting; it's just my life and the events thereof. As people have pointed out--those who know me read it because they're interested in what's going on in my life and what I think; those who don't know me don't care. Sometimes I think I write interesting thing--I'm particularly fond of my proposal post since it was a completely true story. Occasionally I write essays that people who don't know me personally might enjoy, but day-to-day I don't think it's overly interesting.

Start spreading the word, people!

I once read that if you have about 5,000 daily visitors then you can look into merchandising and be successful with it. That means I just need each person who reads this blog to tell 250 friends and then I can start selling "RampagingChocobo.com" shirts. I'd sell two versions, one with an angry chocobo dressed like the Juggernaut from X-Men charging somewhere, another with a chocobo with reading glasses sitting in a recliner in a smoking jacket reading Heidegger. Start those mass e-mailings now!

(I know; those shirts will never be made.)

I have been getting a number of positive reactions from some of my Twitter posts though. Looking at the list, I have 187 followers currently on Twitter; only about 65 are real people, the rest are companies and "click here for crazy monkey sex" spam-bots. It's kind of sad. From the living, breathing followers I do have I tend to get positive reactions from some of my more random thoughts though. I've considered trying to find an artist (or do a photo caption like A Softer World) to create some art to go with the more humorous thoughts; maybe create something fun that people enjoy.

In two weeks I'm quitting my job to focus on school--studying, talking with my Advisor and starting research, sleeping in. The usual school stuff. Maybe during that time I'll load up Adobe Photoshop and make some graphics for my ideas and see how they turn out. I'll probably post them here initially, and if the reactions are positive we'll see where it goes.

Guys, I have an idea!!

[I know this is a terribly poor idea; the internet is riddled with pathetic, wannabe comic writers and usually I only think my ideas are good when I'm either wired on caffeine (pictured left) or about to pass out from lack of sleep. Or both simultaneously.]

Maybe, just maybe, someday, in the distant future, I'll be able to justify making those shirts.

Feng Shui

2009-07-20T10:00:00.001-05:00

Clay, about to be flung

(For those who don't know, the correct pronunciation of "feng shui" rhymes with "flung clay.")

Last week a friend linked me to a sale at IKEA that was for this weekend only. For whatever reason they had one series of bookcases/desks half off. Good quality, too; actually solid wood, not the usual cheap particle board. Since I've been wanting to get a new desk for my apartment to replace the L shaped chunk of wood that comes off my bookcase and functions as a table, I grabbed my brother, went to IKEA, and picked up a desk and another bookcase.

I spent a good 7 hours on Saturday putting together the bookcase and desk and then rearranging my apartment. 400+ DVDs and books takes awhile to move around. But now that it's all done I really like the layout. It flows better.

When I first moved in I had this idea of putting my bookshelf in such a place it would create a little hallway going to the bathroom and bedroom. I couldn't do it though since the desk/table/board was attached to that bookshelf, so I was limited on where it could go. I ended up having it in the middle of my room, dividing the living room basically between a kitchen/dining area and a small area with my desk for watching TV. Not a bad design, but it was kind of cramped and the bookshelf prevented light from really getting anywhere.

I'm finally able to use the bookshelf to make the hallway, and I love it. My apartment feels a lot bigger now; more spacious, better flow. I'm almost certain it's not actually feng shui'd since that involves knowing the flow of energies and that fire should be on the South side and metal goes on the West. I haven't tried to match it with any of that chromatically or elementally. I just think it feels better.

Just Dance

2009-07-17T10:00:00.004-05:00

It's Friday. Go dance by a lake.

Distraction

2009-07-16T10:00:00.000-05:00

My favorite Ravenclaw

I loaded up blogger to write a post today and read the comment my brother left on my previous blog entry. I was most interested in the part about which house in Hogwarts he'd be in; a recent Facebook quiz told me I'd be in Ravenclaw, which didn't surprise me. I can see Jeff in Hufflepuff as he predicted. I'm not sure where Becky would go, but probably Hufflepuff, too. Brady would be in Ravenclaw with me.

(If I don't stop that list soon I could easily be sidetracked into categorizing everyone I know.)

What I'm getting at is that this train of thought led me to doing a Wikipedia search on Hogwarts and the house histories, which led to me spending the next 3 hours browsing the Harry Potter Wiki. I hadn't realized how many details I had forgotten or in some cases missed completely.

If you've read the books and know the story, spend some time and reacquaint yourself with the lore. It's good stuff. I do wish some articles were longer and more detailed, but some information just isn't available or created yet. (One of my favorite little articles I hadn't known about was on the Ministry Classification of Magical Creatures, with a "XXXXX" category creature being known as "known wizard killer/ impossible to train or domesticate" while "X" simply says "boring.")

If you haven't read the books, I'd avoid the site since it has no issue giving away storyline spoilers. My advice to you then is to read the books and then spend hours going over the details.

Childhood excitement

2009-07-15T10:00:00.011-05:00

Sad I missed that one

In high school I camped out for two movies: Star Wars: The Clone Wars and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. At the time I remember thinking Star Wars was amazing--it was a serious case of "not enough sleep" mixed with "seeing Yoda with a lightsaber for the first time." For The Two Towers I literally waited in front of the theater for 28 hours; 3 PM the day before for the 7 PM showing the next day. I was 13th in line. Ahead of me were a handful of college students, a few home schooled kids, and a music professor from one of the local universities. Two Towers was infinitely better than Star Wars in viewing pleasure, longevity of enjoyment, artistic quality, and campout festivities. (It was a significantly smaller group, but we got to know each other, shared Krispy Kreme donuts, hot chocolate, and had readings from the book.)

Yes, I was one of those those nerds.

I've gone to midnight showings since then, but nothing has really peaked my interest in quite the same way as those films. Last night Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince premiered and my brother entered childhood excitement mode as he tends to do around things either "Harry Potter" or "black-and-white and in Swedish." He didn't dress up like any characters, though he did wear his Harry Potter glasses. If he had a Gryffindor scarf, robe, uniform, or anything else I have no doubt he would have worn it. That's beside the point.

There was a large group of people who were dressed up. Much like the release of the 7th Harry Potter book, the movie had fans out in full force. One guy was even trying to profit from the night by walking around the line selling replica wands for $8 (later he dropped the price to $5). Maybe I'm biased, but the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings nerds seemed less geeky. It's one thing to have choreographed lightsaber duels or fights with broadswords; it's another to be

Yep, it was that sad

pointing sticks at one another shouting "Expelliarmus!" and hoping the other person reacts appropriately. I don't know; one seems more theatrical and cool to watch, the other is just sad.

I think the low point of the night in this category was watching two people dressed up as Hogwarts students trying to get a guy out of a tree by pointing their wands at him and shouting spells. It was as ineffective as a rational person would expect.

When the movie started there were previews for various films--a few looked interesting, but I was too tired to really care too much and my ears were bleeding from all the girls screaming at the New Moon trailer. It served to remind me that there's three more films in the series coming out that I'll have to tolerate girls going primal over. I suppose girls deserve it--a lot of films have had fan service for men for decades, women are due their share.

An hour into the film the power went out in the building. I was torn between thanking God that he had bestowed upon me a chance to actually get some sleep that night and sad that we were getting robbed of a movie premiere. Power came back on about 7 minutes later--if it had been 10 they would have had to evacuate the building and we would have been sent home--we finished the film without much issue save some light screaming. The movie is good; I enjoyed it, but either they changed a number of details from the book or I don't remember it as well as I thought I did. Not a big deal, just my thoughts.

Next year we get the first part of the 7th movie and the year after we get the finale. I'm glad they're actually doing the next film in two parts--they really should have done the last two films in two parts since the story demands more explanation and background. Without the character development and details the movies start to become little more than eye candy for those who know the books. It'd be nice if they were solid works in their own right. Lord of the Rings did that--they did change some details from the books but they still stand as very high quality works of art separate from being

What I didn't get last night...

visuals for the literary fanbase.

It'll largely depend on if/where I'm working and what my circumstances are, but it seems likely I'll go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I at a midnight showing, too.

Appropriate Attire

2009-07-14T10:00:00.000-05:00

Formal style

I'll be so bold as to say that anyone who knows me knows that I have a sense of style. I know what's appropriate to wear for various occasions and thanks to Details and Men's Health I have some insight about what looks good, too. I'm not perfect and still occasionally commit a faux pas--usually this is on purpose because I'm relaxing and just don't care.

At work it depends on my job, but I usually opt for the more relaxed look. I'm not a company representative and I'm not a businessman who needs to impress investors or a board of directors. When I worked at Barnes & Noble I was a bookseller and with constantly moving around and working in the receiving room I was usually dressed more casually for functionality and comfort. Working IT at my current job, I see other employees regularly, but they're fellow employees, not customers. My boss asks us to dress in a "business casual" appearance which according to sources can range from "suit with a slightly relaxed tie" to "jeans and a polo shirt" depending on the office.

I usually opt for the "polo shirt with chinos" look. While I think it's somewhat unnecessary, it's easier to go with what my boss says than to argue.

They can be creative; you can't

(Unless you work as a creative director at Pixar or Apple, companies don't like people who disagree with management, no matter how logical your argument. I've been threatened with termination for doing so on more than one instance.) Yesterday I received an e-mail that today is "professional dress day" for the office--this means only one thing: someone is visiting and the Director wants to make a good impression.

The last time this happened we had two employees from another office (our same company) visit. They wore the standard, daily attire of a polo shirt with slacks; the Director of the office had everyone here in suits and dresses. When I had a minute with them I mentioned that the Director put out a notification telling everyone to dress "professionally" today; they replied that they were happy to know that since they were feeling a little under dressed. I honestly don't understand why we had to look professional for people who worked for the same company at the same roles with the same dress codes. It only served to make them uncomfortable and inconvenience the employees here.

When I was a kid I remember my Mom asking me to help clean the house before company would visit. I never understood why--that wasn't how we lived, why should we give a false impression of who we are?

Not A doctor, THE Doctor

These days that feels akin to telling a girl I'm a doctor when I first meet her to make a good first impression. Yes, there is a hint of truth there--I'm in graduate school and will hopefully, someday, maybe, get a PhD and then be technically a doctor, but I'm not a doctor in the generally accepted and understood medical sense.

Asking who is visiting the office today I was told it's a friend of the CEO. A friend. I don't know if that means he/she is an executive, a consultant, a potential investor, or just someone who knows them and wants to see what their company is like. Doesn't really matter though, we're still lying to them. We don't dress professionally everyday; it'd be stupid for us to do so. We're a call center for heaven's sake! We never see customers so why in the world are we dressed professionally, other than to potentially increase the revenue of a local dry cleaner?

Comfortable and functional

By all sense of reason, we should be able to come to work in bath robes and towels. No customers see us, why does it matter if we're wearing suits and ties? I'm a firm believer in the theory that if people like their job and are comfortable they're more productive, and therefore we should be allowed to dress in a comfortable manner, and to me that means a bath robe.

Home

2009-07-13T10:00:00.005-05:00

I got home from vacation last night. On vacation I hung out with some close friends, saw my college roommate for almost 3 years get married, and spent a lot of time watching television.

I don't watch TV at home; I don't own a TV and so any shows I watch have to be on my computer. It was fun to sit and channel surf. I confirmed that early seasons of Scrubs are vastly superior to later seasons, that That 70's Show is best in the middle seasons, that Home Improvement is a generic "positive family image" show, and Full House is awful--though John Stamos is still entertaining.

I also found that the Discovery channel is the most entertaining channel after about 5 PM.

I could be here

It's a lesser known fact that a little over a year ago I applied for a job as the host of a new show for the Discovery channel. It was for a show called "Danger Man" that involved explaining and demonstrated the physics of extreme sports and stunts, which the host was then supposed to do as well. Things like bungee jumping, skydiving, and daredevil acts. Requirements for the application were that you had to have a degree in physics, be over 25, be willing/able to do the stunts, and create an under-three-minutes demo of you hosting the show and explaining the physics of an extreme stunt. I had the degree, was only 23 (I didn't tell them that; if Gillian Anderson can lie about her age to get the role of Dana Scully on the X-Files, my lying about this wasn't a big deal, either), had a background in sports and gymnastics, and borrowed a small digital camera from my school to make the video.

I tried making the demo myself and it was terrible, so I called and elicited the help of Lee, who as director of photography offered a lot of advice and helped make the video far better than I could have done on my own. We had less than 6 hours to record and cut the whole thing due to short notice from the company and minimal access to the camera. That may seem like a long time for a 3 minute shot, but in the professional world that's usually a full day's worth of work with a complete crew. We had some problems with the camera--it wouldn't record for more than 10 seconds before stopping recording. We used a lot of short shots because that fault. Lee suggested doing a Good Eats style show, which I liked, but I think if we had had a better camera (and perhaps another day) we could have made something a lot better.

I got an e-mail three months after we submitted the application that they were impressed by what I had done but that they had decided to go with a different candidate. By that time I had already given up on getting the job, but was amazed I had lasted in the running that long. Truthfully, part of me believes that if we had had a little more time and a camera that actually worked I could have made it to official callbacks and auditions. But that's a pretty big "if".

Baseball

2009-07-09T10:00:00.000-05:00

Little has changed

Baseball is known as the American national pass time. I never really understood that growing up. I wasn't a big fan of it; I always found baseball to be a rather dull game. I'd go to games occasionally with Lee and buy the $7 nosebleed seats; they were fun, but for the social aspect. I never really cared for the sport itself.

Yesterday around noon I got an e-mail from my Dad asking if I'd care to join him for a Twins game. He said they were playing the Yankees. I'd never seen the Yankees play, or the Twins really play anyone worth watching. I thought it sounded fun so I said sure. Unlike when I went with Lee, my Dad went and purchased good seats on the lower deck along the first baseline. (He almost got us seats right behind home plate but lost the tickets while purchasing due to a distraction at work.)

I can say with certainty that baseball is far more entertaining when you're actually close to the game. The Twins lost 3:4, but the game was still enjoyable. And I got to spend time with my Dad. I felt kind of awkward when I had to ask occasionally about who certain players were--I felt like I should know that being where I was. But it was a lot of fun. I was really tempted to buy a Twins jersey for the sake of pride in my home state, but $115 seemed a little excessive. I bought a Twins hat, instead.

I think I'll be keeping my eye out for an authentic Twins jersey for a decent price, but for now, I'm happy with the Twin Cities Twins hat.

Lund's

2009-07-08T13:20:00.003-05:00

Great produce

There's a grocery store up the street from my friend's place called Lund's. It's a high quality grocery store, with an amazing deli, olive bar, sushi bar, and extremely good produce.

I went there for breakfast this morning. I picked up some sushi, a couple donuts, apples, and cereal--food for breakfast and then for the rest of the week.

I plan on heading back, if only to revel in the quality of the food throughout the store.

Traveling

2009-07-07T10:00:00.001-05:00

The only way to fly

I'll be leaving shortly to head to Minneapolis.

I like traveling. I always try to look nice--a good pair of jeans, maybe a button up shirt, a sport coat--because airport security and personnel in general are a lot nicer if you look professional and stylish. Maybe that's just how I perceive it, but in my experience I get asked more questions and searched more often if I'm just wearing an old pair of jeans and a hoodie.

Anyways, traveling. Expect much twitterage.

Apologies

2009-07-06T10:00:00.001-05:00

I ♥ this city

It occurred to me on the 4th that I forgot to update on Friday, the 3rd. I think that's the first time I've ever accidentally missed an update.

Sadly this week more will (most likely) be missed. I'm flying to Minneapolis tomorrow and will be there until Sunday. I'll try to keep updates coming regularly. If nothing else I'm sure I'll be pretty active on Twitter--I always am while traveling--so you can keep an eye on that for random thoughts and updates.

As for today, at work I'm expecting a call from my Boss to reprimand me after the Director of the office here accused me of being "rude" to the employees and for "reading books and doing homework" at work. Admittedly, the being rude part I can understand--I made a joke with an employee that he wasn't allowed to have juice at his desk and apparently he didn't think it was a joke. My bad. I'm not sure where the "reading books and doing homework" accusations come from since I have never had a book at work and I've been out of college for a year and a half so it'd be pretty weird if I had homework.

I'm tempted to make a remark that his accusations to my superior about me doing homework and reading books on the job constitute slander as they are completely false and were made with intent to hurt me professionally. I'm not sure if there's any grounds for it but I'm looking into it, if only to get this guy off my back. This is why it's fun having a close friend in law school.

The Director has had it in for me since I told him I wouldn't handle the building security my first week working here. I think he assumed that since the alarm is an electronic system then it must fall under IT. This is the same guy who requested I guard the building for 4 weeks while it was being finished before we moved in.

He has absolutely no idea what IT does.

Because of those initial requests and my denial of some of them, he's seen me as a source of contention and problems. He also threatened to fire me after I didn't walk around the office and ask every employee personally if they needed any assistance with their computer. (He's not my boss and he has no authority over me; I'm in a different department, which made the threat nothing more than him trying to exert power he doesn't have.) Of the employees who have left voluntarily that I've gotten along with, about half have mentioned to me that his over-controlling and pushy attitude are why they left.

Thankfully it'll be over in a few weeks and I'll be back in the World of Academia.

Duh, daduh daduh daduh!

2009-07-02T10:00:00.001-05:00

For over 15 years I've held in my mind memories of a sketch comedy show that surpasses all others. Words like random, absurd, and hypotenuse don't begin to describe it. It's a comedic genius taco wrapped in a brainless burrito smothered in stupid sauce and topped with brilliant cheese, then sent through a mindless broiler. It aired in 1993, back in the glory days on MTV when they had one-of-a-kind shows and actually showed music videos.

I am referring to MTV's The State. Many people have never heard of this show and they're probably smarter because of it. That does not mean they're better, though. I know a few friends that don't particularly find the humor of MTV's The State funny, and I send them my condolences. Since I consider myself a relatively intelligent person, I'm led to believe there's a threshold of intelligence whereupon their jokes are absolutely hilarious. I imagine it's about 2-3 IQ points wide. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about, please watch the following sketch entitled, "Gang Fight":

That's one of their more "normal" sketches, if the word normal could ever be applied to such a group. At the time they were young, most in their early 20's and fresh out of college. They were given a TV show and allowed to do whatever they wanted. And that's exactly what they did. Some people loved it, some people were bored by it, and some thought they should be studied to try and find out how someone of such deficient mental capacities could function.

After the show ended many of the former members have gone on to do other projects: Michael Ian Black was on Ed and a regular on VH1's I Love The 80's, Thomas Lennon and others wrote the Night at the Museum movies and created/star in Reno 911!, others have had shows on Comedy Central or other such networks. Often their shows were short lived as their style of comedy is still rather, uhm, unique. It makes glad to see that Reno 911! has lasted.

On July 14th, the complete series will finally be out on DVD after almost 16 years. It's an understatement to say I've been waiting for this. Since about 2000 I've been regularly keeping up with it online, signing any and every petition I could find, scouring every fan page, and trying to do whatever I could to get this show on DVD. In 2002 for Speech I even performed a combination of sketches from The State. My scores were either 5's (lowest) or 1's (highest), almost entirely dependent on whether or not the judge was a college student who watched The State when it aired. It happened more often than I expected.

[I feel like I've already written a post on this, but was unable to find one. If I have, I apologize for repeating myself.]

I want a cat

2009-07-01T10:00:00.004-05:00

I want a cat.

Sorry, no in depth post today. I spent about 3 hours this morning writing a response to why I think certain drugs should stay illegal. I didn't mean for it to take that long.

Design and other things

2009-06-30T10:00:00.003-05:00

Dave McKean's art

I spent some time yesterday and setup a new design for the blog. A new background and a slightly larger font.

I'm thinking about changing the image at the top, but anything other than Dave McKean's art just doesn't look right. The man has an unparalleled style. Perhaps I'm egotistic in using his work, but I think it fits.

The reason for the change was I felt the old layout was too dark. It wasn't inviting. I'm not sure I'm totally satisfied with this layout, but I want to see how it works. I think it's more accessible.

I've been toying with the idea of buying a new ipod recently. I would like to replace my stolen one, but I'm not sure which one to get. I still have my 1 GB shuffle as I mentioned, it satisfies much of my portable music needs. I'm tempted to get a 120 GB ipod classic. They're somewhat bulky by today's standards, but for that size they're quite nice. That would allow me to take a good chunk of my music (about 1/3) and not have to limit my playlists. The 16 GB ipod nano is another contender--it's a much smaller hard drive, but also a smaller ipod (easier to travel with) and a $50 cheaper.

Other things that I've had my eye on include the Batman "Knightfall" series, in which Batman gets his back broken by Bane, and "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" which is about the death of Batman, written by my favorite author, Neil Gaiman. The "Knightfall" series came out in 1993; "Whatever Happened..." comes out in July. It's not like either will be out of print anytime soon. I'm personally not a big fan of Batman or the traditional superheroes (except Spider-Man) because they seem too perfect. I know they're not; Green Lantern went nuts and killed a lot of people, for example. There's just this untouchable, unrelatable air about them. Spider-Man I always identified with because he has the agility and isn't quite as perfect as the other more "seasoned" super heroes. (Yes, I know Spider-Man has been around almost as long as many of the others. To me he feels different though.) Still, I want the "Knightfall" series and the "Whatever Happened..." because they're well done graphic novels; more self contained and less never-ending series.

Then again, I might just crack and buy Chrono Trigger for the Nintendo DS. It would cost about the same as the "Knightfall" series.

The life of a critic

2009-06-29T10:00:00.013-05:00

Anton Ego, critic

I saw Transformers 2 this weekend. I personally felt it was an awful, trite film with an incohesive plot, poor dialog ("Only a PRIME can destroy me!"), unnecessary explosions, and a terrible violation of the honor and power of the original Transformers cartoon. This review sums it up almost perfectly (just a quick warning to my more conservative readers: the "review"--it's really more of a humorous, though accurate, Q&A regarding the massive holes in the movie--contains strong language and several spoilers).

While many critics agree with me--the film is sitting at a 21% on rottentomatoes.com--I am not with the majority. Numerous friends and people I know have reported it as "10x better than the first" and "incredibly awesome." Similarly, the film is a box office hit bringing in $387.3 million during this opening weekend worldwide. Obviously people wanted to see this film and ignored all critical responses. (I can happily report that I didn't pay to see it; I got a free showing.)

There was a report going around that Michael Bay had decided to quit making action movies due to all the bad reviews. This was later reported to be false, sadly. One thing about the internet is that rumors can spread quickly, especially when you want them to be true. If Bay was in fact giving up the Transformers franchise that would give another director and filmmaker a chance to actually make the movies good, and not just in a "stuff blows up and it was entertaining if you ignore any and all elements of story or quality" way. I'd like to see J.J. Abrams do the next film, but that won't happen--he's too busy dominating with films like Star Trek.

Of course, I can say all this because I'm simply a movie fan. I'm not a film maker. I'm not a director, a screen writer, a cinematographer, a special effects designer, a sound editor, a makeup artist, or an actor. I'm just a guy who watches movies. That's it. In Pixar's Ratatouille--a remarkable film in every aspect--the fictional, famous food critic, Anton Ego, writes, "In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little,

"In many ways..."

yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."

He's right.

As a viewer and amateur critic (aren't we all?), my job is simple: I go to films or listen to an album or watch a TV show and I just say what I liked and didn't like about it. I'm not responsible for writing the script or fixing it. I'm not required to suggest alternatives to the trite love scene dialog. I don't have to play a complex guitar solo for Katy Perry when I say that her music is terrible to show her what good music is. I'm under no obligation to create better character development for a television series that I don't find engrossing. There is absolutely no responsibility on my part to choreograph a better fight scene when I feel the action is dull. It is simply my privilege to say "I felt the dialog was well written" or "The character development fell flat."

While I received very little pleasure out of Transformers 2--truthfully, the degradation of my childhood memories did far more harm to my mind than any positive effects of the short-lived enjoyable moments of the film--it is highly unlikely that I could ever create such a work. At this moment I feel an odd sense of respect for Michael Bay, a man who has placated the masses across the world with explosions, un-inspired writing and attempts at humor, and the gratuitous use of overly sexualized females. He has created something that I could never create. I like to think that, should I enter the world of filmmaking as a director or producer, I could create something better, but it is not likely.

I'm curious to see what my brother will think of the film. He actually is a filmmaker. While none of the films he's had creative work on have gone on to become Summer blockbusters or gross millions of dollars, he's in a position where he can say "I would have done it like this," which I respect. He's far better at reviewing films for that very reason--beyond knowing what doesn't look good, he knows what does. I think that's what makes a good critic.

In tribute to the King of Pop

2009-06-26T10:00:00.005-05:00

They say deaths happen in sets of three.

Last year we lost George Carlin, Bernie Mac, and Isaac Hayes in the same summer. Richard Wright from Pink Floyd died shortly afterwards.

This year, David Carradine, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson within a month of each other. Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson on the same day (yesterday).

Say what you will about Michael Jackson later in his life--he delivered enough in the 80's to cement himself as one of the greatest performers the has and will ever know.

I, for one, am sad he's gone.

Rebooting fixes everything

2009-06-25T10:00:00.000-05:00

Great phone; terrible battery

Over Christmas of 2008 I got a new cell phone. I had been using a Sanyo Katana, a sweet phone in how tiny it was, but lacked every possible feature outside of making a phone call and texting. Being with Sprint for quite a few years, I qualified for a new phone and after searching, I picked up an HTC Touch Pro. It's kinda like an iPhone, but it runs Windows Mobile Pro 6.1 and has a full QWERTY keyboard that slides out. It is, simply, beautiful.

One major flaw in the HTC Touch Pro is the battery life. It sucks. Plain and simple. When I first got it, after 10 hours of light usage (a few text messages each hour), it died. Looking online for help, this appeared to be a common problem--everyone said they got about 10-14 hours of battery life and then it goes kaput. Using the GPS feature, the phone got about 34 minutes of use tops. It was incredibly pathetic and destroyed almost all usefulness of the phone.

Then I found a post on a forum explaining that it's a "known" (i.e. not officially acknowledged) flaw of Windows Mobile--whatever the battery is at when it boots up the first time is what it marks as "full." The feature is actually one with good intentions, as it tells the phone to stop charging the battery even if it's plugged in, thus preventing destruction of the battery caused by overcharging. The downside is companies ship batteries with about 33% battery life, so when the salesman takes that battery out, puts it in your phone and turns it on, your phone connects that 33% charge with "fully charged" and sets the marker. Therefore, instead of getting 2-3 days of use out of your phone per charge, you get half of one.

A hard reset of the phone fixes this, instructions for how to do so can be found online (it involves holding the volume down button, the enter button, and hitting the reset button simultaneously). It wipes the phone of all data--including the battery marker--and defaults it to the initial bootup. Do this when the battery is near dead, then charge it for 8 hours while the phone is off, and voila--the phone puts the fully charged marker at 100%.

Last week my phones battery life just started sucking again. Like, back to initial bootup sucking--10 hours of use and it's already saying "please recharge." I figured I'd have to do another hard reset but didn't want to do so yet, so I waited until the battery was actually about dead, did a soft reset (hit the button on the bottom of the phone), and then plugged it in. Miraculously this seems to have fixed the problem. My phone has been off the charger and on for nearly 11 hours and battery still reads at over 90%.

My phone is useful again. I'm happy.

(For anyone who owns an HTC Touch Pro and you're getting crappy battery life, try this:

Backup your contacts/photos/program install files
Run the battery to dead
Charge the phone for 3-4 minutes
Take the phone off the charger, turn it on and perform a hard reset
Leaving the phone off after the reset, charge the phone for 8 hours
Take it off the charger, restore your files, and enjoy

Hope this helps. The HTC Touch Pro is a truly remarkable phone; the battery is the one major flaw. This doesn't fix it completely--it'd be nice if it lasted for a lot longer [like the 400 hours it says it should last in the manual]--but it makes the phone significantly more useful.)

Some movies have it coming

2009-06-24T10:00:00.001-05:00

The following are excerpts from reviews for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen found on Rotten Tomatoes:

A great grinding garbage disposal of a movie, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen isn't so much a narrative film as a cacophonous series of explosions intermittently interrupted by needless dialogue.
-Tom Long, Detroit News

So what if he can’t put a coherent series of shots together? Bay’s going for pure sensation, and everyone knows dramatic continuity is for women and the weak.
-Ty Burr, Boston Globe

I hated every 149 minutes. This is so bad it's immoral. Michael Bay is a time-sucking vampire who will feast off your lost time. This is why the movie is so long.
-Victoria Alexander, FilmsInReview.com

Good when it is good, but extremely, shockingly, horrifyingly bad when it is bad.
-Willie Waffle, WaffleMovies.com (that's one of the POSITIVE reviews)

And of course, we can't forget Roger Ebert:

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.
...
The movie has been signed by Michael Bay. This is the same man who directed "The Rock" in 1996. Now he has made "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." Faust made a better deal.
...
There are many great-looking babes in the film, who are made up to a flawless perfection and look just like real women, if you are a junior fanboy whose experience of the gender is limited to lad magazines.

Even after these reviews, I'm excited for this film. Not because I expect it to be good--I don't--nor do I expect to like it on the same lines that I like Bloodsport or Big Trouble in Little China.

I'm excited for this movie because a new Transformers movie means a new RiffTrax for the new Transformers movie. If you're not familiar with RiffTrax, it's done by the same guys who created Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3k), a show where they mercilessly mock bad movies. It ran for 10 seasons. They usually did old B-movies since in order to air the movies they had to get the rights to them, and it's not exactly a small feat to get the rights to, say Star Wars: Episode II.

After MST3k ended, the same guys figured out that with the internet, they could simply record audio dialog of them mocking whatever movies they wanted and let their viewers just play the audio along with the movie they legitimately buy/rent (hopefully just rent). This avoids any of those legal snafus regarding rights of distribution and costs, meaning they can make fun of any movie they want. The first one I ever saw: Transformers.

It had it coming

I haven't laughed that hard at a movie in years, if ever. The first Transformers film is pretty awful, though it is entertaining. RiffTrax makes it hilarious with wonderful lines like "Based on the way it's shot, I fear Michael Bay involvement, Sir." and "I summon the power of hotness!" If you can spare the $3.99 to download the audio, it's worth it, I promise.

So, I'm excited for Transformers 2, but only because that means there's more material for Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy (otherwise known as Crow), and Bill Corbett (Tom Servo) to mock and humiliate. I'm already giddy.

My likes/dislikes

2009-06-23T10:00:00.003-05:00

Waking up with the sun after a full night's rest
Going back to sleep after waking up with the sun after a full night's rest
Breaking/cracking ice under my feet while I walk
Cloud-covered days that are perfect for wearing a sweatshirt
The smell of the coffee aisle in the grocery store
Critical thinking and questioning
The works of Neil Gaiman and of Bill Watterson
Framed art
Having my windows open
The Smashing Pumpkins' music
Black and white color schemes
Ducks with ducklings
Argyle socks
Falling asleep on the couch with a cat in my lap
Winter

Je n'aime pas:

Waking up before the sun has risen
Dead worms in puddles of water
Cloudless days when it's too bright to go outside and I don't have any sunglasses
Cranberry sauce from a can
The works of Ayn Rand and of Rhonda Byrne
Unframed art
Country music
Rodeos
Unnecessary complexity
Mistreated animals
Tornadoes
American Idol and any show involving audience voting
Willful ignorance
Socks that don't stay up
Pleated pants

The events of this weekend

2009-06-22T10:00:00.003-05:00

Dead lines

This weekend was somewhat disconnected for me. I imagine if I spent enough time looking through a thesaurus and cross referencing synonyms with a dictionary I could find a more fitting word; at the moment, I think 'disconnected' will do.

I've heard people describe being robbed or burgled as violating. I'm not sure I'd go quite that far. Surreal is a better word for my experience. It doesn't feel real. One day I go to sleep and I have a stereo system and an iPod in my car, the next day I don't. I don't know. It doesn't really feel real.

In what could be described as denial, I'm oddly liberated by this. There's an odd sense of freedom being without my ipod or my car stereo. With a small yet almost inseparable part of my material possessions taken from me--I don't think I'd spent more than 8 hours, that is, a night's rest, away from that ipod in over 2 years) I feel a slight burden is lifted. Of course, I have simply replaced my red iPod Nano, named the Red Star, with my older iPod Shuffle, the White Star. I'm remembering why I bought my shuffle in the first place--it's liberating. No playlists, no track lists to sort through...like the radio, you just turn it on and let it go. It's enjoyable.

(The most unexpected positive event of this weekend was having a reader of this blog donate $50 with a message saying "Regular reader; felt guilty enough reading for free, but getting robbed... Hope this little bit helps out with things!" I put a donation button up on this blog on a whim after making a payment on Paypal one day and saw an message saying "use this code to add a donation button to your site" and thought "meh, can't hurt." I never expected anything to come to it, but I am quite tickled and dearly touched that a kind man in Canada would donate to help cover some of my losses. It does help and I appreciate it dearly.)

Other events of this weekend included getting my window repaired, having a police officer tell me that the chances of getting anything back from this are about nil, and watching a lot of movies. (I had forgotten how much I enjoy Pixar's The Incredibles. It's a really good film.) It was an easy weekend, spent with good company, but that's all I wanted; it made me happy.

Today I get to take my car in to have it looked at and have the damage assessed. Then I get to find out exactly how much my insurance company will cover, but given I have a $500 deductible, I doubt I'll get much.

(And I forgot to call my Dad on Father's Day; I realized that near midnight last night and thanks to time zones that would have made it almost 1AM for my Dad. It didn't seem nice to wake him up, so I called him this morning.)

A Friday morning

2009-06-19T09:51:00.000-05:00

I started this morning by accidentally hitting the big red X on my alarm instead of the half-moon symbol for snooze. This turned off my alarm and as such I woke up with only 15 minutes till I had to be at work. Since it's a 27 minute commute to work, I sent in an e-mail saying I'd be in late.

After eating a bowl of frosted mini-wheats and taking a shower, getting dressed, and getting my lunch ready, I grabbed the garbage and went down to my car. When I threw the garbage away I noticed I forgot my cell phone and went back inside to get it. Cell phone in hand, I headed down to the parking garage and was greeted with this:

In case you were wondering what my car looks like...

My first thought was "I don't remember that glass there last night" and my next thought was "where's my window?"

Peeking my head through where my window should be, I saw this:

There used to be a stereo system and an ipod in there

After living in my new apartment for a month, my car has been broken into. This is, interestingly, the first time I've ever been robbed/burgled that I know of. (Ok, during my first year of college my cologne suspiciously went missing after a friend had a party, but I was never certain anyone took it.)

I called my insurance company first--office was closed, so I left a message. Then I called the Provo PD and an officer came over, looked at the damages, made a report, asked a few questions, and basically told me my chances of getting anything back are slim. I knew that. With ebay and Craigslist it's hard to track things down. (I do plan on watching Craigslist for car stereos and ipods that resemble mine being posted in the next day or two.) I also didn't have the serial number, so proving it's mine would be hard, too.

And that's been my Friday morning so far.

Of beds and bakeries

2009-06-18T15:58:00.002-05:00

I will make these soon

For almost the last week I had all my updates written ahead of time, at least 2-3 days, and was able to just relax and watch them post.

Today I had no such post written and forgot about it.

In about 2 hours I'm driving up to Salt Lake City to look at a KitchenAid stand mixer I found on Craigslist for $85. I'm not entirely sure why--I'm not an experienced baker and my kitchen is already full of appliances of every shape and size--but I really want one. It seems like something I should just have. My sister uses hers for baking bread; they're useful for making cookies and frosting and cheesecakes and, with a grinder attachment (which this one includes), making hamburger and (to my Dad's honor) potato baloney.

I think part of the reason I want to get it is simply because it's such a good deal. $85 for something that, at Macy's, would run $350 at least. I've also had someone interseted in buying my twin mattress, which, if that sells for the asking price of $80, will mean I'll only be out a total of $5 for this mixer. While I understand it's not the best to look at things based on net values, but I've already worked out my finances for the next month, and the extra money I'd have from selling my bed is fluff, so it might as well be spent on something that can create equally fluffy pastries.

Iran in real time

2009-06-17T10:00:00.001-05:00

Arguably the most powerful use of the internet and technology is the honest and open sharing of information and news. Unlike news companies in the past that film something, edit it, then air it on their network with the approval of corporate sponsors, places like Flickr allow for anyone to take photos and upload them, and Twitter allows for anyone to make an update of current events. The news is uncensored, unedited, and--a necessary evil--unchecked. Sometimes the news isn't accurate; sometimes it's more accurate than people would like. The power of this has become evident in the last four days with the Iranian election riots and protesters.

While Twitter is being overwhelmed with Iranian news--some legit, some falsified--these photos don't lie:

(Warning: some images contain violent content.)

Hundreds of photos like these can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fhashemi/

And that's only from one flickr account.

CCC

2009-06-16T10:00:00.002-05:00

300 posts in two years

This is the 300th post for in search of a muse. I was thinking of making a 300 movie reference or perhaps talking again about the 300 Workout again (which I'd really rather not talk about since I am not nearly in as good of shape as I was then and it'd just be a sad physical display for all who witness it). I thought about doing similar to what I did in my 200th post and talk about things relevant to that number. I thought about not mentioning it at all and going on business-as-usual.

This is also the two year anniversary of my first post on this blog. That's only half a coincidence. I noticed I was close to a two year mark when I wrote this. This was meant to be posted last Friday when I noticed I was four days away from the two year mark. Then saw I had a few unposted entries from the past two years which it was counting towards my 300 total. Technically this meant that while 300 posts were written, only 296 were posted. Had I left it as it was, I would have been robbing you of four posts, most of which are the ones you've been reading over the weekend. I went through the drafts and found the ones I liked, cleaned them up a bit, refined them, and posted them. (Two of which I didn't think were very good but I was too lazy to rewrite them so I just posted them on their original written dates.)

I thought about linking to Seth Godin's blog (the most popular blog written by a single person on the net) where he says the best way to success on the internet or in life is just to be persistent and patient. I thought about linking to some talks from TED or from Intelligence Squared that have had an effect on me and how I view the world personally. I thought about writing something long and drawn out detailing how I'm surprised I've made it to this many posts.

Then I thought "Why should I write something long and drawn out when I can just post something long and drawn out that someone else has already written?"

So that's what I'm doing--I'm passing the buck and am posting the "I Believe" speech from Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen–I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones who look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline of good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of The Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies too. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

And that's my 300th post. If you keep reading, I'll keep updating. With enough practice I might be able to write something as good as that speech someday.

Bike seats

2009-06-15T10:00:00.004-05:00

My parents came out two weeks ago to visit. It was nice to see them. While I may not be the most openly affectionate person towards them, I do love my parents and am quite grateful for everything they've done for me. Most recently what they've done is bring my bike out for me.

When I was 14 I was biking everywhere. I couldn't drive till I was 16 and eventually convinced my parents to buy me a really nice bike. I rode it a lot. When I started driving I rode less. After my freshman year of college I decided I wanted to get in shape so I got my bike from my parents' garage and started biking for about an hour every morning, followed by a liter of water and about 80g of protein (moderation and serving sizes didn't really occur to me then). I biked a lot that summer and I think I got in decent shape.

After Jared married Marvia (seriously good choice on his part) I left my bike at his house and they were gracious enough to not complain or demand I remove it from their garage. It stayed there for about 4 years. Then, as I said, my parents did the far-too-kind thing of going to Jared's house, picking up my bike, and brought it out here and left it at my brother's. On Monday last week I walked to my brother's place and picked it up, rode it home, realized I left my hoodie at his place, rode it back, picked up my hoodie, and rode home again.

That was a week ago.

My butt still hurts.

Apparently when I was younger I had a much less sensitive butt or at least one far less prone to bruising. I want to bike regularly and more often--it's great exercise and something I love being outdoors--but if the seat hurts this much I may need to replace it. Looking around, it looks like I managed to get the one bike that has a seat originally designed for splitting wood. Most bike seats are wide, cushioned, and rather plush. With minor changes mine would be best used for propping open doors.

I think I'll give this seat another week of regular riding to see if I can adjust to it. Obviously I was ok with it for 6 years so I think I can adjust again.

I'm on my way to this future

I also need to do some maintenance to my bike--I don't think I've ever greased the chair, oiled the tires, or looked at the brakes. Should be a fun side project to work on. I love working on mechanical things--even something as simple as a bike. It feels manly.

I feel like Calvin's Dad.

Oatmeal to Go

2009-06-13T10:00:00.001-05:00

I'm not getting paid for this

A few weeks ago I started seeing a girl. We get along well and have a lot of fun hanging out, making dinner, and running errands together. She helped me decorate my bathroom when I moved into my new place (it's now tastefully frog themed) and whenever we have to go to the store, instead of going to Walmart she's gotten me to go to Target instead.

In my hometown I liked Target more than Walmart. Walmart has the convenience of being open 24 hours. Target has the benefit of not eating your soul when you walk in and the employees look like they're actually happy with their lives.

I also have a history of dating girls who have worked at Target. I guess it just attracts the kind of girls I like.

The Target is Orem is a Super Target, which just means they sell groceries, too. This is nice because unlike Super Walmarts with grocery stores, Super Targets actually have food I don't get sick from eating. (After a bad incident involving an angel food cake from Walmart I haven't been able to look at one since without almost gagging. It's a pity; I used to love angel food cake.) The store is really clean, everything is neatly stocked, and I feel like a better person just by saying that I shop there. I'm not contributing to the downfall of Western society! (And despite any rumors you may have heard, Target is not French--they're corporate HQ is in Minneapolis, MN, which means I'm both buying American AND supporting my home state. It's a trifecta of awesome.)

While walking through the cereal aisle and browsing the granola bars--I do love them--I found the Quaker "Oatmeal to Go: High Fiber" bars. They contain 10g of fiber, 13g of sugar, and about 210 Calories. That's pretty good for a granola bar. Having that much fiber makes them as solid as a brick, and eating them is not something to be done casually. It's a feat. I also imagine that much fiber entering my system at one time will result in another feat in about an hour.

I chose the Maple Brown Sugar flavor. They're not terribly sweet which is good, since I despise my oatmeal tasting like syrup. (My family will probably notice this is a drastic shift from my childhood when I would put so much brown sugar on my oatmeal it would often become super-saturated to the point of creating pools of melted brown sugar.) While they're somewhat caloricly dense, for a bar that's intended to replace a meal, I think I quite like these bars. If you're feel a stuffy and don't mind eating something reminiscent of a brick, the Oatmeal to Go bars are good. (But don't eat two in a short period of time; that much fiber can cause issues, trust me.)

It's Not My Time

2009-06-12T12:57:00.004-05:00

I think more than just about any other video, the music video to "It's Not My Time" by 3 Doors Down makes me want to go running. I remember first seeing it at Gold's Gym while on the treadmill, and I think I ran longer and harder that day than I have in a long time.

See for yourself (sorry if there's a commercial first; YouTube disabled embedding so I had to link it from VH1):

It's all parkour. It looks like so much fun; I'd just love to be able to do that.

I think I'll go running when I get off work today.

Risks

2009-06-12T10:00:00.002-05:00

Come back in like 2 minutes

In the words of J.D. from Scrubs: "Whenever you take a big risk in your life, no matter how it turns out, you're always glad you took it."

Take a risk this weekend. Ask someone out you've liked for a long time, buy that pet you've been thinking about, paint your room a non-standard color, eat a food you've never tried before, go skydiving.

It'll be good for you.

Amy

2009-06-11T10:00:00.001-05:00

Don't take the blue pill

From 1999 to 2003, the show Futurama aired on Fox. The show had a hint of Simpsons comedy, but in general had a fairly new angle on comedy. Recently, I've been watching episodes in my spare time and I've realized that since I'm more highly educated now, I get a lot more of the jokes. They make a lot of science and obscure math jokes--even a good number of political and pop culture jokes similar to News Radio. More than that, I really like the character of Amy Wong. I'm not sure why: she's a rich brat who isn't very bright. Still, I think there was something endearing about her character.

When the show first aired I enjoyed it and watched it whenever I could. In 2007 they released a DVD movie to good reception, and over the next year and a half released 3 more.

Two days ago they announced that Futurama is officially back on Comedy Central with 26 new episodes. I'm quite excited about this.

Bedding

2009-06-10T10:00:00.001-05:00

Sorry colorblind people

Color is an important part of our lives. Psychological tests have found certain colors invoke certain feelings and moods. Fashion designers pick a new set of colors every few months and declare that they're the "new black" or whatever the last fashion-chic color was. Most people just dance around a simple wardrobe of fairly neutral colors usually consisting of black since they didn't hear what the new black was.

The apartment I moved into last month has walls that are slightly-sun-kissed-sand-desert-wood colored. Or something. It's that generic, neutral color that everyone uses for apartments and rental rooms. It's non-threatening and as bland as uncooked tofu. Thankfully the girl who inhabited the place before me painted two of the walls a pleasant darker-than-milk-but-lighter-than-dark-chocolate brown to give it some accents. This compliments the slightly-sun-kissed-sand-desert-wood walls nicely.

My furniture is dark-roast-espresso from IKEA. It's almost black, but still slightly brown in direct light. The bed I just purchased and assembled yesterday is a natural-oak-varnish-light-stain color. This somewhat compliments the darker-than-milk-but-lighter-than-dark-chocolate brown and the slightly-sun-kissed-sand-desert-wood walls. Now I'm trying to find a bedding set. I currently have a comforter that is lighter-than-usual-tan on one side and red-wine-but-not-a-merlot on the other. When I purchased the comforter the red worked well in the room; ivory walls, dirty-sand-but-not-icky-sand carpet, a natural-wood bed frame. The red-wine-but-not-a-merlot comforter gave it a nice look of deep color. In my current place it doesn't compliment so well.

Looking around at color palettes, it's looking like blue is the normal color of choice. A friend recommend a deep royal blue. I was leaning more towards a sunny-day-sky blue. Or perhaps a newly-budding-leaf green. Something vibrant to inject some color into an otherwise various-shades-of-brown room.

This also goes along with buying the Sumosac/Monstersak; I'd as I said, most of my furniture is dark-roast-espresso. I'd like to find something colorful for a the Sumosac/Monstersak to go along with the bedding. There's also a very high possibility I'll find something on sale and buy that

Like this, but far less chic

regardless of color simply because when you get picky you tend to pay for it.

I get paid tomorrow and can work out exactly how much I can afford to put towards creating a chic room design. Until I actually make a purchase I'm open to suggestions for colors.

Whoops

2009-06-09T16:43:00.006-05:00

I forgot to update today.

I did think that perhaps some of you reading this are sitting around going "Gosh, I wish there was some way I could give this guy money." Well, wish no more! I have heard your wishes and have put up a Paypal donation button on the right side.

Truthfully, I really don't expect it to ever be used, but I figured "meh." It took about 20 seconds of blog layout editing and this way, if you have any extra money and you'd like to help me pay for graduate school, you can.

Yes, I'm shameless.

A friend of mine might be moving to a new house in a few weeks. The details are still up in the air, but he showed me some shots from around the place he's looking at. I tried to point out that the backyard might be hazardous to his daughter, but apparently he's not worried. Four other people I've spoken to aren't worried either. Three noticed something a little odd about it. Only one showed concern.

I don't know what the world is like where my friends live, but if that's a normal backyard I'm glad I grew up in the Minnesota where the worst thing we have to worry about are mosquitoes, Canadians, and poison ivy (my sister may disagree).

Monster-Sumo-Lovesac

2009-06-08T10:00:00.004-05:00

Mine's not this nice.

When I moved into my new apartment the previous tenant, my friend Lyndsie, left me a good amount of furniture. Truthfully that was part of the reason I took the place: free furniture is awesome. The left items consisted of a tiny bookshelf, a TV stand, a coffee table, a dinner table, some chairs, and a loveseat.

The tiny bookshelf I put in my closet to give me some shelf space, the television stand is now being used as an end table, the coffee table is serving it's intended purpose (although right now it simply provides a resting place for the latest issues of Details and Men's Health; no coffee), the chairs and dinner table serve their purpose, and the loveseat faces my computer which works as my TV, too.

It makes a nice setup. The one problem is the loveseat isn't quite long enough to lay down on. In order to lay on it I have to have my head on one armrest and my feet hanging off the other. This isn't horribly uncomfortable, but it's not ideal for sleeping. Short naps are all I can manage without emergency chiropractor visits.

Awesome, but not all too comfy

As a kid beanbag chairs were pretty common. They were (I'm guessing) about 36"x36"x24" or so with a faux-leather/vinyl cover and usually found in a kid's playroom. I never had one as a kid but I loved them, and so did every other kid I knew. Well, now us kids who grew up with beanbag chairs are adults, and y'know what? We still love beanbag chairs. And thanks to the ingenuity of my generation and our adamant refusal to actually grow up and act adult, we created beanbag chairs for adults.

Thus was born the Monster/Sumo/Lovesac.

They're all basically the same thing we had when we were kids: beanbag chairs. Except these have a high quality microfiber cover and are packed with soft fluffy "beans" instead of the hard plastic ones of our youth. The result: massive, comfortable, beanbag chairs. Sheer brilliance.

I want to get a Sumosac Gigantor or a Monstersak XXXL. I'd get a Lovesac but they're about $795 for the largest ones. Monstersaks are the same things with slightly different dimensions, half the price, and I think they're a little lower quality--I'm honestly not sure, I'd like to take a look at them firsthand before purchasing. Lovesacs are the most common in Utah and Sumosacs are almost unheard of; Monstersaks are in between, usually only found when actually looking to buy as they're not advertised much. Still, I like the Sumosacs; I've played with them, I know they're comfortable. And something about supporting the company that supports sumo sliding makes me smile (for the record, I hold the 2009 Digital Overload Sumo Sliding record).

I'm not really sure if I'll get a Sumosac Gigantor (86"x60"x40") or the Monstersak XXXL (90"x72"x38"). Price-wise they're about equal: $399 for the Sumosac and $395 for the Monstersak. I think the Sumosac might be a big higher quality with the filling, but I don't know. I also think the dimensions of the Gigantor would be a bit nicer than the Monstersak XXXL, which probably wouldn't fit in the same space as a couch very well.

Seriously. Dang. Awesome.

I don't know when/if I'll ever get these ordered. I'll probably put my loveseat on Craigslist sometime in the next month and try and sell that first; presuming I can get $100 for it, I putting up another $300 for a massive beanbag chair doesn't seem too bad.

National Breakfast

2009-06-05T10:00:00.003-05:00

Balanced on a massive scale

I'm not sure who decided a glass of orange juice is an essential part of breakfast. When I think of bacon and eggs I don't think "and orange juice!" I think "and waffles" or potentially "and more bacon." Every commercial for a breakfast food or cereal always has that same image of the bowl of Fruit Loops/Cheerios/Lucky Charms/Cocoa Pebbles/oatmeal next to two pieces of toast, a muffin, some sausage links, bacon, a glass of milk and a glass of orange juice. Meanwhile the voice over says "(cereal being advertised) is a part of a balanced breakfast." Let's be honest here, the breakfast they've got displayed is probably at least 1,300 Calories; you could remove the cereal component altogether and you'd still get a "nutritionally balanced" breakfast.

Last month Twitter updated their site so that the search and trending topics (popular things to tweet about) are listed on the right side of the homepage. I've found this can be very useful in finding out what's going on by simply looking at the topics. For example, yesterday I found out first thing that David Carradine was dead thanks to the trending topic "RIP David Carradine" and "Kill Bill." Sometimes it's not that obvious, though. Today the trending topics as of 8:55 AM are:

Follow Friday
TGIF
National Doughnut
David Carradine
Krispy Kreme
Saved by the Bell
World Environment
Kobe
Susan Boyle
BNP

David Carradine, Kobe, and Susan Boyle are all pretty easy to figure out: famous people who have died/won basketball games/been hospitalized for whatever reason. Follow Friday is a Twitter thing where you recommend people to follow; TGIF is obvious; Saved by the Bell is a little odd but not unheard of; BNP is the British Nationalist Party which most people seem to greatly dislike; and World Environment is, well, I have no idea.

I'm assuming that the National Doughnut trend goes along with Krispy Kreme in something that is to be connected like "Krispy Kreme declares National Doughnut Day." Which is kind of cool, but I'd much rather there be an actual ceremony declaring what the national doughnut of America is. We have a national flower (the rose), a national animal (Bald Eagle), a national song (Star Spangled Banner) and I've heard rumors that the blueberry muffin is the national muffin and apple pie is the national pie. Frankly, I think we need a national doughnut.

With that I would like to officially propose the national doughnut of America: the simple raised doughnut with white frosting and sprinkles.

The American National Doughnut nominee

Just look at it. It's beautiful. A simple raised doughnut--nothing fancy, but it has some substance, like America--with some sweet icing on top to compliment the dough and sprinkles of every color representing our diversity. And just like America, it goes best with a glass of milk.

It's a fated match. Doughnuts, like Americans, get bad reputations because it's fashionable to bash on them. Doughnuts get ragged on because of their high carb content and a few years ago the world decided carbs are the embodiment of evil. Americans get ragged on because of our former government's international policies. It's not the doughnut's fault it has a high carb content--it's not a choice of the doughnut personally to be full of carbs, that's just how it is. Similarly, it's not an American's fault for what the government did as most people didn't approve of it or had no strong feelings either way. We're friendly, I promise.

I really don't see how we don't have a national doughnut already. It seems remarkably obvious to have one. Please join me in this and rally together to push congress to declare the raised doughnut, topped with icing and sprinkles, to be America's National Doughnut.

Once this passes we'll rally for a National Waffle (which will be, ironically, Belgian).

Just relax

2009-06-04T10:00:00.000-05:00

It's Thursday. Just relax and spend some time crushing the castle.

(No, that's not a euphemism.)

On playlists

2009-06-03T10:00:00.003-05:00

It was beautiful.

In the late 90's a friend introduced me to Napster. This was in it's early days, and it was incredible then. No speed controls, no ISP's limiting upload/download, no companies putting out false songs: just pure music being shared person to person with only your internet connection to limit you. Of course this was during the 56k modem days, so downloads went at about 1.3 kB/s, maybe 3 kB/s if you were really lucky and no one else was using that ISP in your town. I remember when I finally got the full version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida downloaded, it was 17.3 MB--took almost 4 hours (this was before you could start and stop downloads at your leisure; if the connection was lost, you started over)--and I copied it to 4 separate locations on my system so that I'd never accidentally delete it. If you were on a college campus and had a T1 for uploading, glorious light would shine down from the heaven's when you connected to Napster and songs were written about your greatness.

A decade later and I have about 282 GB worth of music on my system. (I'll leave you to determine how it accumulated.) This basically equates my computer to a miniature radio station, able to play whatever I want. When I first got my ipod nano a few years ago for Christmas I spent a good amount of time acclimating myself with iTunes and setting up playlists. At the time, I carefully went through my music--then a measly 168 GB--and took out the songs I liked and put them into a playlist entitled "good stuff." The "good stuff" playlist was about 13 GB at the time, and since my ipod was only an 8 GB it meant I needed to cut it down again. Over the next week or so the "good stuff" got refined into the "better stuff" and finally, through a process of purification usually only found in high class vodka factories, "best stuff," a 4.3 GB playlist compiling the best music I had.

The "best stuff" was easy to maintain. Whenever I added new music I'd grab a few tracks that stood out to me and add them to the playlist, whereupon a leprechaun inside my computer would quickly scribble the new songs onto a scroll and store them in the "playlists" file cabinet. This system worked well--my ipod always had a solid playlist of music (the other 3.6 GB I filled up with albums of various sorts) and the leprechaun in my computer had good job security.

Then I upgraded to a new computer and a new version of Windows: Vista 64 bit. Personally, I liked Vista. I know a lot of people hated it and said it was flawed, but it was no worse than XP upon release. XP was pretty flawed, too, until they released the service packs for it.

Upgrading to Vista came with a price (and I don't mean the $299.99 price tag). A new OS on a new computer meant my playlists wouldn't transfer over. I tried everything to get them to transfer but there is no simple way to do that in iTunes. It is not designed to save playlists easily--in order to do so you have to export each playlist individually then load them back up. While this sounds like an easy ordeal, it becomes rather complex when the file destinations are changing as well (going from an E: drive to an I: drive). It's possible to edit the XML file, but when it's cataloging 56,000 songs that takes awhile and it's easy to muck it up. Similarly, even if you do get it changed, iTunes still doesn't transfer over the content of playlists, just the names. At least it didn't when I tried.

One of these days I'll crack down and start the 2 week long journey through setting up another all-encompassing playlist. On average it takes about 30 minutes per letter of the alphabet to sort through, listen to parts of certain songs and decide if they should make the first cut. From there I do 2 or 3 more cuts of the playlist before it's down to an acceptable size. I try to keep it under 4 GB so that I can still put other stuff I want on my ipod, and making the album playlists I want will probably take another few hours.

By this time I think the previous leprechaun has moved on to bigger and better things; hopefully he has a son I can employ.

Things go boom at the YMCA

2009-06-02T10:00:00.001-05:00

New 1993 remix!!

Despite going to sleep in good time last night, I didn't sleep well.

I had a dream that involved a friend's father (played by Al Pacino in this dream) being abusive and my friend then talking someone into bombing the YMCA--which in this dream was more like Disneyland--where his father worked. He chose bombing the place because shooting him failed to kill him. Most of this dream took place in the locker room of the pool--that place where you shower in you swimming suit after the pool (not the naked showers)--and was about the actions themselves. Eventually they happened and it really surprised everyone. I left the locker room right afterwards to avoid any questions about if I knew anything about what happened.

And someone had taken my hoodie when I was swimming.

I woke up around 4:45 AM, probably because that was about 5.5 hours after I went to sleep and that's about as much sleep as I'm used to getting. Any more than that and my body assumes I've over slept. Looking around I realized what time it was, got a drink of water, pondered staying up and going running or doing something equally productive, and eventually went back to sleep. When my alarm went off at 6:40 I felt like I'd been punched in the face--I was groggy, could barely open my eyes, and any movement took extreme effort. My body once again began it's usual sales pitch. Remembering those venomous words from before, I fought it and got out of bed.

I feel like I haven't slept at all.

While showering I realized I hadn't moved in about 10 minutes. I literally got in the shower and just stood there. No washing, no singing, no re-enacting the Battle of Waterloo. Just standing there with my mind totally checked out. It's an odd experience realizing I haven't been doing anything for a period of time. It's slightly unnerving that I can go so long without any recognition of my surroundings. Normally I'm quite observant and can remember things in pretty good detail, sometimes down to exact conversations word for word. Other times I don't even notice I'm naked and being blasted with water.

So that was my morning. I can't imagine it bodes well for the rest of the day. Or the week. It's only Tuesday and I'm already this fried.

Purpose

2009-06-01T10:00:00.003-05:00

www.xkcd.com

While reading through wikipedia, I came across an article about an upcoming film called Julie & Julia. The movie is based off a book which is from blog by a woman named Julie Powell. The blog chronicles a year during which she set out to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

This got me wondering what the purpose of my blog is. Initially it was just to write about topics I felt like writing about, but recently I've felt like that's getting stale (hence the two week hiatus). I'd like there to be a theme or topic that I do regularly, perhaps including random personal events occasionally.

I'm just not sure what to write about.

I honestly adore the idea of cooking all the recipes in a cookbook, but that seems to have been done already--quite successfully, too. There are blogs of various themes from stuff white people like to awesome things to cute animals to ugly animals to reasons why a bitter guy hates girls or why we're fat. I'm tempted to use it to chronicle my efforts to learn the guitar or perhaps my experiences in grad school. Those both seem kind of trite.

I could do a variety blog--Mondays write about guitar playing and progress, Tuesdays school, Wednesdays exercise, Thursdays cooking, Fridays simple comics I've doodled. That seems too scattered though. Specialization is what leads to quality sites and blogs. Being all over the place just looks random and unfocused; too hard to follow and get into.

What do you recommend I write about? Any suggestions for new experiments to undertake?

Dear USPS

2009-05-29T10:00:00.001-05:00

As slow as...

Dear USPS,

Sometimes I wonder what you do during work hours. I mailed a package almost three weeks ago to Phoenix, something that should only take about 3 days at most--historically that's been the time frame--and it just arrived today. While this normally might not be a huge deal, that envelope contained my expense reports and reimbursement forms from my last business trip. This caused me about a week of distress believing that my forms had been lost.

In the future I'd appreciate it if you would deliver things in a timely manner. Thanks.

Sincerely,
Tim

Deceptively sleepy

2009-05-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

This morning my body outsmarted my brain.

My alarm goes off at 6:40 AM like it does every weekday. The alarm I've chosen is the soundtrack to Katamari Damacy, a game with a musical score somewhere between 8-bit Nintendo music, Frank Sinatra, and J-Pop. I choose for my alarm to go off at 6:40 because it provides me enough time to hit snooze 2-3 times before I actually have to get up while still having enough time to shower.

I hit snooze and go back to sleep.

Ten minutes later the alarm is once again singing something in accented English that makes me think I should be wearing a smarmy suit in downtown Tokyo while holding a cocktail. I hit snooze again. The third time the alarm goes off it plays a piece of music never intended to wake anyone up; a piece that sounds similar to the score of a NOVA outer space special if played underwater. I groggily wake up, turn off the alarm and check the time. It's 7:06. I think, "Alright, time to wake up."

This is where my body becomes deceptive. Instead of getting up like my brain is ordering, my body offers a counter proposal.

"How about before I get up, I just lay down for a quick second--the bed is warm and it'll feel good to get one last boost of comfort before starting the day." it coyly suggests.

Playing with the idea, my brain offers a rebuttal, "But wouldn't that just make it harder to wake up? Wouldn't that be like offering a heroin addict one last hit before he finally quits?"

"Of course not! This is one last rejuvenating second of blissful splendor before going out in that cold world and starting your day of long, menial work. It'll be a booster shot of energy. Think of it like you're staying with a friend. Your bed is your friend, after all, right? It's better to leave on a positive note after a good night out than a resentful one where you begrudgingly just walk out the door." My body has had practice with this argument.

"Well, I suppose if you put it that way. A few seconds to say goodbye to my friend can't hurt."

And I laid back down for a minute. It was just as my body said; it felt good. It felt right. Deciding that minute was probably enough time, I got up--more rejuvenated than when I tried to get up before--and checked my phone. The clock read 7:42.

"That lying sack of meat!" my brain exclaimed. "It didn't want another minute of sleep, it wanted another 30 of them!"

I quickly throw on some chinos, socks, shoes, a polo shirt, and grabbed some Pop Tarts on my way out. And I'm a little wiser--don't trust the arguments made by my body at 7 AM. It's deceptive.

NIN|JA

2009-05-27T10:00:00.004-05:00

Yep, it's the NIN|JA tour

Yesterday I left work at noon, drove to the SLC airport, flew to Denver, met a friend there, went to the Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction (NIN|JA) concert, played a few games of pool, slept for about 3 hours, then woke up at 5AM and went to the Denver airport to fly back to SLC for work.

I was 45 minutes late.

The concert was incredible. Part of the reason I was willing to fly 373 miles from Salt Lake City to Denver is because this is supposed to be NIN's last concert tour for awhile. Trent Reznor said that he wants to take a break--he's not saying NIN is done, but he's going to take a break and do something else (he's getting married, too!). While I'm not a huge Jane's Addiction fan, I know some of their stuff and know their pretty iconic. They were the band that Trent Reznor credits with giving NIN their break in 1991, inviting him to performing at Lollapalooza with them. (I just found out that Lollapalooza was originally formed as a farewell tour for Jane's Addiction by their front man/singer Perry Farrell.)

Jane's Addiction officially broke up in 1991 the first time. Then they partially reunited at various times, but the whole band never played together again until 2008. Based on the band dynamics, I doubt they'll stay together much longer. Reading through the Wikipedia article on Jane's Addiction it looks like the biggest riff was between the bassist, Eric Avery, and the singer Perry Farrell over royalties--Farrell apparently demanded 62.5% of the royalties leaving everyone else with 12.5%. While their guitarist, Dave Navarro, would occasionally play with them from time to time, it wasn't until last year that Avery returned to the band to remake the original lineup.

Watching the concert and the footage recorded, I can easily see that resentment. Avery did not look happy during the performance. He looked pissed off the whole time.

Ok, that's enough history on the bands I saw. (Street Sweeper Social Club also performed, who I'd never heard of. They sound a lot like Rage Against the Machine, which is largely because their guitarist is Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine.)

Here's a few photos from my phone of the concert. (I took more with my digital camera but I don't have the cable to transfer them to the PC right now; I'll upload those later.)

As I'm sure you can see, we were pretty far back.

It was an outdoor concert and the sun hadn't set yet. The light show was still good at this point, but it got far better after the sun finally set. (I have pictures of that, but they're on the digital camera; my phone couldn't do low light shots well.)

You can barely make out Reznor in the middle of the light on stage.

I also have some photos of Jane's Addiction on my phone--they put on a really good show. They're a full on 80's alternative rock band with a performance to match. Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro are all over the stage, climbing on speakers, yelling "We love you Colorado!", interacting with the crowd, the whole shebang. They have tons of energy on stage! As I said, I'm not a big Jane's Addiction fan and aren't too familiar with their stuff, but I couldn't help but cheer and jump around to some of their stuff because there's just so much energy coming from them. NIN is one of the best acts around, and Jane's Addiction follows and compliments their performance very well.

On budgeting and gaming

2009-05-26T10:00:00.005-05:00

My budget doesn't look like this

In April I put every spare cent I had towards paying off my credit cards and I got them paid off. For the first time since high school, I was free of credit card debt.

The last two weeks, I've gotten back into it. Things came up--a business trip that I haven't been reimbursed for yet, unexpected moving expenses, quality cutlery--and so my credit card once again has a balance on it. It's nothing massive. It'll be paid off in about two weeks, maybe even by the end of the week. Probably by the end of the week, actually.

It just made me realize that I need to get a bit more frugal with my budget. I took a lot of liberties last month with expenses. As I said, I'm awaiting reimbursement for a business trip which will cover more than half of the current credit card balance, so it's not as serious as it may sound. (I write this faithfully trusting in the United States Postal Service to deliver the mail to it's intended recipient as my company still hasn't received the receipts I mailed to them.) I do need to live within my budget though. I'm skilled at justifying purchases; things that will last are one-time expenses and more valuable over the long run. It's still an expense.

On Sunday I started playing Team Fortress 2 again. I've been playing on a server that has no respawn time (instead of 10-15 seconds), meaning as soon as you die you're back in the fight. This makes it very difficult to get anywhere since everyone is always in the battle. It's a good way to kill 20-30 minutes though since it's nonstop action. One of these days I'll have to find a good server where objectives can actually get completed. That might be a new experience. I also want to get a game of Left 4 Dead going again. On my new connection, my ping would be so sexy.

My history of road trips

2009-05-25T10:00:00.001-05:00

Road trips are awesome

I've taken lots of road trips in my lifetime. Growing up in Minnesota it was tradition to go to my grandmother's apartment for Christmas to see family. (My grandmother's apartment entrance had one of those brick walls that's "textured" where the bricks aren't flush and some stick out; I always tried to climb it while waiting for her to buzz us in.) As I got older trips to grandma's became less common, replaced by a trip to Oregon one year and soon enough the people coming home for Christmas weren't my parents but my siblings. After I moved out I took a few more road trips with roommates, some were just weekend trips down to Minneapolis for the Renaissance Festival, others were across the country to Baltimore.

(For the record: if you're ever driving from Baltimore to Minnesota and you see a sign that says "Welcome to Lake Erie"--that's a bad thing.)

Since I've moved to Utah I've taken a few road trips with friends. We've driven down to Las Vegas for various reasons. We've also learned it is worth paying for a suite at the Venetian versus just getting a cheap room at the Excalibur. Remote control curtains are awesome.

I actually like road trips. As Shepherd Book replies when asked about why he doesn't care about where he's going, "how you get there is the worthier part." When you're driving with someone for hours you talk and you get to know a lot about them. Sometimes after 20 hours in the car with someone you want to kill them, but that usually passes after a brief nap. (And sometimes that brief nap is interrupted by someone opening the door you're sleeping against

Not a balanced meal

and you go tumbling out onto the pavement.)

Road trips have also taught me that a diet consisting entirely of Red Bull and Mrs. Freshley's Cupcakes is a good recipe for becoming very sick; and that Doug was a pretty awesome roommate.

Knives

2009-05-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

As I've stated, I like to cook.

There is something I've neglected about cooking recently: my knives. When I lived with Jared, I used the knives he had--a moderately priced set. When I lived with Doug, I bought a cheap 8 piece set from Walmart for $19.99. When I lived with my brother, I used the Farberware knife set he had. Now that I live by myself, I don't have any roommates who provide me with knives, nor do I have a cheap knife set to use (I left that with Doug when I moved). So last week, I ordered my own knives.

Still love him.

Searching online, I found a website for cutlery that carried every major brand. Shopping around, I looked at Global, Wusthof, Calphalon, Shun, and JA Henckels. Reading reviews, looking at different styles of knives (chef's knife vs. santoku), and comparing prices, I went with the Alton's Angle Shun knives. (I would be lying if I denied the influence of Alton Brown's recommendation and namesake attached to these knives. He endorses so few brands and products that when he actually does, it means something to me.) I've got an 8" chef's knife, a 6" utility knife, and a 4" paring knife ordered, along with a magnetic strip for storage. I was tempted to order a bread knife as well to put it over the site's threshold of getting a free honing steel, but decided it wasn't worth it at the moment. I'll order those later when I have a bit more money saved up.

They should be delivered today. I cannot express how excited I am.

On Reading, Part Three

2009-05-21T10:00:00.001-05:00

David Sedaris: my inspiration

The first line I ever wrote on this blog was "I like to read." When I started this blog almost two years ago, my first two posts were titled "On Reading, Part One" and "On Reading, Part Two," respectively. Looking back at all my posts, I think "On Reading, Part Two" is one of my favorite posts I've ever written.

I think it's time I write Part Three.

When I took my break from blogging two weeks ago I picked up a copy of David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day and read through it. He's a remarkable writer. His stories range from simple family vacation trips involving sun tan competitions on the beach to realizing he's effectively the village idiot in a rural French town to his brief stint as an artist while high on crystal methamphetamine. For him it doesn't matter much what he's writing--he could be describing the taupe paint on an office wall and it'd be entertaining.

This links me back to a post I wrote awhile ago regarding famous authors and writers not always writing quality material. (I just spent about 45 minutes reading through past blog entries--I'm pleasantly surprised most are quite entertaining--but was unable to find the exact post for linking purposes.) The point is is that not everything David Sedaris has written is as well worded with subtle cynical humor; it takes time, editing, and lots of failure to do so.

Reading his essays on the various events and moments of his life made me take a look at my own life. While I don't think I'll ever compile the stories regarding my sister and I wearing our onesies and sliding down the stairs or the winter day my brother once decided to see how thick of an ice chunk he could break over my head (we got to 2" if I recall; my memory of that's a little hazy), I think the source material is there. My life hasn't been dull; very few lives are, really. It's all a matter of perspective. And maybe some creative exaggeration when storytelling.

What this all culminates to is that reading his works has helped to give me a new perspective on my own life. I'm a pretty strong cynic--something that I don't see as a bad thing; Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and Shakespeare were all cynics--but that doesn't mean I can't be happy and enjoy life for the quirks and stories it provides. Think about it, when was the last time you read a story that went "we went on a family vacation and we all got along and all our plans worked out and it was fun"? No; the entertaining stories are the ones that involve your sister spilling her scrambled eggs in front of Minnie Mouse at Disneyland or shooting the only plastic arrow that goes with your favorite toy bow into the Grand Canyon (or whatever that massive gourge we visited when I was a kid was).

Things haven't been perfect in my family, but I love them. Without them, I'm afraid I'd be a fairly boring person.

IKEA

2009-05-20T10:00:00.001-05:00

About a year ago exactly my brother and I went to IKEA and shopped around for furniture for my bedroom. We looked around, found some things we liked, went home, covered the floor with tape mapping out where things would go, then went to buy them. They didn't have what we wanted that trip, so I opted to not get anything than only get part of it. A week or so later my Mom came out to visit and we went back to IKEA, this time actually buying my entire bedroom set.

I furnished my entire bedroom for $989.63. It looked pretty nice, even if it was all IKEA stuff.

Last week I moved into a new place. All the furniture I had in my old bedroom is now in my living room and my bedroom is, again, empty. A trip to IKEA is in order.

I'm waiting to get reimbursed for my business trip to Phoenix two weeks ago. I plan on heading back to IKEA and, once again, furnishing my bedroom. This time it can be a bit simpler, though--I just need a desk, maybe some accent lights, some artwork perhaps and maybe a new bed (I'd like to replace the twin I have now).

Phoenix

2009-05-19T10:00:00.002-05:00

Phoenix, AZ

Two weeks ago I took a business trip to Phoenix. It was a simple trip--just to meet the new employees in the IT department and help them with a move to a new office, setting up computers, network connections, etc. I went down on Wednesday and was going to work with them on Thursday and Friday, the move would happen on Saturday morning and that evening I'd fly home.

I arrived on Wednesday night and picked up my rental car--a Kia minivan. Last time I got a 2008 Ford Mustang; this time, a Kia minivan. Alright; a car is a car and I wasn't going to complain.

A few months ago my company revised their business travel procedures and required all sorts of paperwork for them. One of the policies they implemented was that employees are eligible for $50 a day food reimbursement. Personally, I live off of about $32.49 worth of groceries a week. It's not that my budget limits me to that, but rather that I can cook good meals for a week without paying as much as a many people worldwide make in a month. My initial reaction to this stipend was that I'd buy some peanut butter, jelly, and bread, and then pocket the cash each day since I had no reason to spend $50 on food daily. That would be too easy, of course. The money isn't given as a stipend; it's a reimbursement. This means I only get $50 a day for food if I spend $50 a day for food.

Realizing this, I made it my goal to spend $50 on food each day I was there.

This proved challenging on Wednesday night, as I had one meal to blow it all on. I went to a restaurant called Fajita's and ordered some nacho appetizers and a top sirloin fajita; the total came to $28.68 with tip. So far I was failing on my goal.

Thursday and Friday it wasn't too hard--going out to lunch each day I'd spend about $15 or $20 on sushi or what is arguably the greatest sandwich ever (Miracle Mile's "Straw"--if you're in Phoenix, go there and get it). For dinner on Thursday I went to a nice Cajun seafood place I went to last time and got a very good salmon; $28 for a salmon with asparagus gets you some good fish.

I did find that sometimes the price of a meal isn't proportional to quality but rather the quantity. On Friday I ate at a Mexican place that the hotel front desk recommended and I decided to order the steak and chicken enchiladas for $21.99 on the menu. As it turns out, this wasn't a high class place where $21.99 gets you a nice salmon; instead it got me about 8 enchiladas covered in refried beans, cheese, rise, lettuce, and pico de gallo. I ate two of them.

On Saturday the move to the new office didn't happen; the building wasn't ready yet.

This meant I had a Saturday to spend in Phoenix with no obligations and a $50 food budget. Eating breakfast at the hotel, I figured I'd drive around see what I could find. A coworker from Utah recommended a place that sells Nordstrom returns and overstock for really good prices on Camelback road, so I thought I'd try to find it. Driving down the road I passed several restaurants, small business, large business buildings, and a strip mall; no sign of the place my coworker told me about. Figuring I had a few hours to kill, I decided to stop at the strip mall.

This wasn't an ordinary strip mall.

Instead of Gap they had Gucci. Instead of Banana Republic they had Tommy Bahamas. Instead of Express they had Saks Fifth Avenue. They had valet parking. The lot was filled with BMWs, Mercedes, Porsches, and Bentleys. I parked my large white Kia minivan myself next to a bright red Porsche Carrera S and shiny black Aston Martin.

Walking around the shopping outlet was like walking through an issue of Details. Everyone was dressed in nice polo shirts or suits; everything was made by a fashion designer from Italy; all the store clerks either ignored me or assumed I was shoplifting.

I found a little bistro called Tru Food where all the waiters were dressed in cotton pants that hadn't been dyed and used notepads made of bamboo. The menu had items labeled vegetarian and vegan and the few options that had meat explicitly mentioned that the animals were all raised organically in free range farms or wild caught and humanely given anaesthetic prior to being killed. I ordered the open salmon sandwich along with the "antioxidant doctor berry juice" that had no added sugar and was made solely from blueberries, acai berries, and 8 other berries found only in the remote hills of Sweden. Both the drink and the salmon were exquisite. Looking at my budget I still had a little over $20 to spend on food. Walking around I found a Cheesecake Factory and decided dessert sounded good--walking in I was quickly seated, the waiter quickly attended and recommended the vanilla bean cheesecake, I accepted and ordered a shake to go with it. (I was on a trip and I had money that had to be spent! Don't judge me.)

When all was said and done I realized that I don't particularly enjoy the posh shopping centers. I don't fit into that world--I assumed the world that Details magazine covers existed only in their own minds; I didn't know people actually dressed that stuck up.

People dress like this?

I'm all for looking nice, but I mostly use fashion and style as a guide that I then apply to my own wardrobe. This place followed it exactly and it scared me. I always assumed fashion shows were to give ideas, not to tell you exactly what to wear. These places had no imagination; the people weren't unique. These stores--Ralph Lauren, Tommy Bahamas, Saks--these aren't where style is created; this is where it dies because it's all dictated. While the quality was remarkable; the originality was lost.

Each day I was there the temperature hit about 106 F; I didn't enjoy that part.

Turbulence

2009-05-18T10:00:00.002-05:00

The Boeing 747-8

Having a background in science, flying doesn't bother me. I don't mind takeoffs, I don't mind landings, I don't even mind turbulence. I understand it happens regularly and is nothing to worry about.

Despite that, there are still times when it can be unnerving. When the plane drops so sharply that you actually feel your butt leave the seat it's easy to think, "When was the last time I spoke to my bishop and repented?" Having a window seat can only exacerbate this as thoughts like "Is the wing supposed to be bending like that?" and "That's a funny angle for the ground to be at..." don't instill confidence that a 490 ton hunk of metal can in fact glide safely 6 miles up. Turns out a little math and some Greek symbols on a napkin "proving" you're safe doesn't always trump natural survival instincts; I do get a little scared on flights sometimes.

Despite these thoughts and experiences while on my last flight, we landed safely and no one was hurt. So it goes.

Quick update

2009-05-14T10:00:00.000-05:00

My weekend plans

I said I was going on hiatus for about a week. It's now been a week and a half. Regular updates will hopefully resume next Monday. They're postponement is due to a few factors, namely: I was in Phoenix last week for business; I'm moving this week; lack of motivation.

On the plus side, I do have some ideas for posts that should hopefully rejuvenate things here and make it a bit more entertaining to read. More essay-like posts instead of oh-crap-I-forgot-to-write-something-quick-write-about-a-stupid-event-that-happened-yesterday posts.

Thanks for being patient (all 20 of you).

Hiatus

2009-05-04T10:00:00.000-05:00

Back next week

I've decided to put my blog on hiatus for about a week.

When I started the regular updates over 6 months ago I didn't think it would last this long. The reason I started doing weekday updates was because I found myself having more ideas and writing more often than just 2-3 times per week. In one day I'd find myself writing 2-3 blog posts on various topics--on days when I couldn't think of anything, I still had 3 or 4 days worth of posts waiting for me. Recently I've been finding myself running out of ideas on what to write about, usually trying to crank out ideas on the last minute on whatever topic would come to mind. I don't like that. Whenever I do get ideas I find they're usually things I've already written about.

I'm going to take the next week off of posting. Hopefully during this time ideas will come to me and I'll write some and save them for next week so I can get back into my 2-3 day grace period window.

For those of you who read this regularly, I do appreciate it. If no one read this I don't think I'd really write. I greatly enjoy writing, but I enjoy writing things that people like to read more.

No short fiction today

2009-05-01T10:00:00.003-05:00

Due to a lack of creativity on my part right now, and a shortness of time, I will spare you any other random stories that don't really go anywhere and instead let you learn how Hugh Jackman's son (an 8-year old) picks up chicks--it occurs around 1:50 to 2:30:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Hugh Jackman

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

First 100 Days

And here's a cat version of whack-a-mole. Someday I want to create an automated version of this--cats would be entertained for hours:

Kitty whack-a-mouse

Crystal Skulls

2009-04-30T10:00:00.001-05:00

The Mitchell-Hedges skull

I'm not sure I believe in the myths surrounding the crystal skulls--truthfully I'm quite positive I don't--but that doesn't mean they're not cool.

Initially when I paid off my debt I was going to reward myself with the purchase of a handgun, most likely the Bersa Thunder .380 (the James Bond gun look-a-like) or a High Standard 1911 .45. Due to unforeseen financial obligations, I found I no longer had room in my budget for a $300+ handgun. So I decided to treat myself to something else: a Crystal Head Vodka decanter.

Is it superfluous? Yes. Unnecessary? Of course. Cool? Bloody right it is.

My glass skull!

Sitting in my room I now have a glass skull. I plan on actually buying a bottle of vodka and filling it up with it, simply because having it empty seems like a shame and every other liquid will go bad and grow bacteria over time. High end spirits don't. Along this note, I've decided that in my new apartment I'm going to decorate it with whiskey decanters, old bottles filled with rum, unopened wine, and my crystal head vodka skull. I've got an idea of where everything will go, and I'm excited to see how it turns out.

I move in two weeks, it'll happen after then.

I have a lot of movies

2009-04-29T10:00:00.001-05:00

My collection

I just counted my movie collection, it consists of the following:

416 movies (78 televisions seasons, each counted as 1)
19 are rated G, 99 are PG, 189 are PG-13, and 109 are R (adjusting unrated films and television shows into what ratings I believe they deserve)
There are 61 films and television seasons I own that I have never seen
Averaging a DVD as 3 hours long--that's a very conservative average as seasons of tv shows like X-Files (9 seasons) and Buffy (7 seasons) are 18 hours per season--I have over 1,248 hours, or just under two months, of 24-hour entertainment
Averaging 200 g per DVD in a case, I own an estimated 83.2 kg, or 183.4 lbs, worth of DVDs
Averaging 2 DVDs per movie and 4 per television season, there are 1144 individual discs
Averaging each movie and television season at $15, my collection is monetarily worth $6,240
And it is completely organized in alphabetical order (I still have the desire to organize it by director's last name or by release date; might do that when I move and get really bored one day)

So, there you go.

The Material

2009-04-28T10:00:00.004-05:00

The Material

Rock Band has introduced me a lot of new music I wouldn't have otherwise listened to. Some is very mainstream, like All American Rejects. (I seriously had never heard the song Dirty Little Secret before I played it on Rock Band.) Others are less mainstream and more classic, like David Bowie and Boston. Then there are bands I never would have ever heard of, like The Material.

The Material is still a rather unknown group. They have one EP--six tracks--called Tomorrow. It's remarkably good if you like pop/alternative rock. And they're completely independent: no labels or record companies behind them. They do everything themselves.

If you get the chance, I do recommend them. They're very personable--they post on Twitter, one person talked about how they chatted with her on AIM and helped her through a breakup (how many bands have done that for fans?), and they're just trying to make it as a band. I really hope they do and hope you check their stuff out on iTunes. Their album should be released shortly--I just won a signed copy last night. :)

For the time being, here's a live performance of their biggest song (the one that was on Rock Band), Moving to Seattle:

And here's them playing their song on Rock Band for the first time:

Really, they just seem like cool people. And I'm all for supporting cool people.

As I said, they aren't that well known and they don't have a record label promoting them, so do independent artists a favor and check them out. If you like them, tell your friends. I'm pretty sure they'd tell their friends if they liked you.

Protein

2009-04-27T10:00:00.000-05:00

THE bodybuilding expert

There's a lot of misconceptions about protein. Most people think the more you eat the better you are and the more muscle you'll gain. Interestingly, that's not really the case.

The World Health Organization recommends eating 0.45g to 0.8g of protein per kg of body weight per day to maintain muscle mass. For endurance training, 1 to 1.2g is what the WHO recommends.

Strength training athletes need a bit more. How much more is often debated--I've seen bodybuilding sites and the big tough guys at the gym talk about how they need 150+ g of protein daily. Basically, the mentality is "I always need more protein." Everyone uses the "this is what (famous bodybuilder/fitness trainer) said he does so I'll do it, too"--it's all anecdotal. The medical facts are a bit harder to find since they're not incredibly well documented.

Looking online for some nutritional facts to help someone with their diet, I found this medical study from 2006 about protein intake:

Comparison of protein intakes on strength, body composition and hormonal changes were examined in 23 experienced collegiate strength/power athletes participating in a 12-week resistance training program. Subjects were stratified into three groups depending upon their daily consumption of protein; below recommended levels (BL; 1.0 – 1.4 g protein per kg of body weight; n = 8), recommended levels (RL; 1.6 – 1.8 g protein per kg of body weight; n = 7) and above recommended levels (AL; > 2.0 g protein per kg of body weight; n = 8)
...
The results of this study do not provide support for protein intakes greater than recommended levels in collegiate strength/power athletes for body composition improvements, or alterations in resting hormonal concentrations.
(Looking at the charts listed, those eating more than 2g of protein per kg of body weight had gains of 3 lbs more than those who didn't--11 lbs increase vs. 8 lbs increase, so while there were differences, they were not significant.)
...
For strength trained individuals to maintain a positive nitrogen balance it appears that daily protein consumption should be between 1.6 to 1.8 g protein per kg of body weight per day.
...
Recommendations of a greater protein requirement for resistance-trained athletes have been based on studies that have primarily examined recreationally-trained individuals and not competitive athletes. This may suggest that the protein requirements for experienced resistance trained competitive athletes may be even higher than what is presently accepted. Since protein supplementation is considered to be one of the more common nutritional supplements used by collegiate athletes, it is likely that many competitive athletes have daily protein intakes that exceed the recommended daily allowances. Whether daily protein intakes greater than what is presently accepted (> 1.8 g protein per kg of body weight) is efficacious for strength/power athletes is not well understood. Unfortunately many competitive athletes using nutritional supplementation often go by the 'more is better' philosophy, causing many athletes to make uneducated decisions regarding their supplementation habits.

So, there you have it.

1.6-1.8 grams of protein per day per kilogram of weight is all you really need when training.

That is, that's all you need to maintain that weight. Men's Health has often reported that you should eat for the weight you want to be at, so if you weight 60kg and want to weigh 75kg, eat for 75kg. If you weight 100kg and want to weigh 80kg, eat for 80kg.

But then, that's just common sense.

Short Fiction Friday: Dream Logic

2009-04-24T10:00:00.001-05:00

A story in dream logic

Last night I dreamt of a world
where logic had it's own logic
and lines were bent and broken.
It was a real world
and while logic was different
and lines were bent
it was just as real as
where I am now.

Inside the dream the stories
followed the lines
and every action was logical
in dream logic.
In this dream where the lines
were broken and the stories
followed the lines and the
dreams were logical but
only as logical as the logic
was logical in dreams
I met a man.

Meeting a man in a dream
(who stuttered his speech)
and who's logic was logical
(in a logical way)
disrupted the lines the story
was following.
Disrupting broken and bent
lines that a story is on
creates a broken and bent
story in a world with logic
that A is not B
and B is A--the only
absolve in such a world
is that the story must be
on a line that is no longer
broken and bent and thus
the story that was logical
(in a dream logical way)
is now logical in a logical
way.

In this dream where a man
changed the logic by being logical
and could take lines that were
broken and bent and straighten them
so the story that was once
straight, and by straight
I mean broken and bent,
is now broken and bent,
and by broken and bent
I mean straight,
(for dream stories should never
be straight)
there is only one course of action
to take:
one must awake.

IQ2

2009-04-23T10:00:00.002-05:00

IQ2 Debates

Earlier this week I decided to start listening to some NPR podcasts at work. I needed something other than my usual music to listen to and thought I'd give some radio shows a chance. I quite enjoyed the one podcast of This American Life that was available, the few This I Believe shows, and the last few weeks worth of Science Friday. I'd heard of each of these and kind of knew that they were quality, having been told so by numerous friends whose opinions I respect.

The biggest surprise for me was Intelligence Squared, which I'd never heard of. It's a debate show, where they bring in experts on different subjects and have them compete in Oxford style debate in an attempt to win the crowd to agree with their viewpoint. The subjects covered ranges from "Should performance enhancing drugs be accepting in professional sports" to "Is the art market less ethical than the stock market" to "Is universal health care the government's responsibility." While I've listened to each debate usually with my own preference beforehand, I've been quite surprised as the quality of the arguments made for both sides. Truthfully, the health care debate has made me greatly reconsider my position, though I haven't changed it entirely.

If you're looking for something to listen to, I cannot recommend these debates enough. They're mentally stimulating and fascinating. (The debate on "Is George Bush the worst president of the last 50 years" with Karl Rove is quite good.) Only the older debates are available for download in .mp3 format--and those are the edited (for time) versions of the debates that broadcast on NPR. If you have the means, that is to say, you don't need it in .mp3 format and can listen to it on your browser at your computer, the unedited debates are usually about twice as long--50 minutes edited, 1 hour 40 minutes unedited--and are significantly better.

As I said, if you have the time and want something to listen to, I highly recommend them. You just might learn something.

Business Model

2009-04-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

He looks happy, doesn't he?

I'm not a businessman. I never have been. The idea of charging someone for something that I do seems odd to me. I don't see why I should charge $25 to fix someone's computer when it only takes me 10 minutes and all I do is reboot it and run a virus scan. It doesn't make sense to me.

That being said, I had an idea for a business the other day. Not a tech support business, but a bread bakery. I am fully aware that starting a bakery isn't exactly a unique business idea as they've been around since probably several thousand years B.C. and haven't gone away since.

An old roommate of mine, Jared, worked at a bread bakery. I felt bad for him that he had to go to work at 1:30 and 2 AM to make the bread so it'd be ready by 5 and 6 AM. It never made much sense to me--who wakes up at 6AM and thinks "I want to go buy some bread..."? This is what separates my business model from the rest: instead of baking bread at 3 and 4 and 5 in the morning, we'd bake it in the afternoon so when people get off work, there's freshly baked, warm bread just coming out of the oven for them. Instead of making my employees come into work at 2AM to make bread for people who don't understand how wonderful sleep is, my employees would come in at 9 or 10 and leisurely work to get bread ready for the 5 o'clock and dinner rush--people who have worked hard throughout the day at their jobs and want a hot baguette that's just come out of the oven to go with their dinner.

So, that's my business idea.

Energy

2009-04-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

The joy of being in shape.

Yesterday at around 6:30 PM, I was ready for bed. I was ready to change into my pajamas, lay down in my bed and call it a night. But I didn't. I've been going to the gym regularly for the past 4-5 weeks (I've lost track) and I want to keep that going, so I went.

While I don't think I exactly stressed myself, to the limit, I did get in a good workout (I think). It was a rather new experience for me: after I was done with my workout and I was unable to lift my arms, I wanted to go running. It wasn't just a "it'd be nice to go running" feeling, but rather an "I want to go running through this city as fast as I can--I want to jump off walls and leap fences and sprint through parks." It felt good. Really good. I had energy--I wanted to do something with it.

Sadly I can't recount details for you of flying through the city and amazing feats of physical prowess because I didn't do anything with it. I sprinted to my car across the parking lot coming out of the gym, and when I went to get the mail (got my David Sedaris books in the mail!) I sprinted to the mailbox and back. I suppose I could have worked myself to the bone and gone running, but I actually enjoyed the feeling of just having the energy. It's made me excited to take up martial arts again--I know, I've been saying I'll do that for over 9 months now--which I do plan to do next month since I can now afford it, being debt free. (My initial thought was to just sign up for it as a class, but it appears that BYU doesn't offer Aikido as a class and only a generic 'martial arts' class.)

Parkour.

I've also been thinking it'd be fun to take up parkour--that's what I really wanted to do last night. Ever since I was a kid I've loved bouncing off things and climbing and running and flying through the air. The reason I like to stay in shape is greatly because I get such a thrill from being able to do those things, and that's what parkour is all about. It's the lovechild of gymnastics and running, usually in an urban setting. There's a group in Salt Lake City, but I'm not sure what Provo has. I'll have to look around.