I first registered ryanware.com 10 years ago: June 1999!
Before that I think I was hosting my software on a user account (eg. example.com/~ryan/) on an old ISP. Before that I was on geocities. Before that I was on Netcom back when it was an ISP. I’m probably missing a few in there somewhere. I had a bunch of awesome websites. And by awesome I mean awesome for the 90’s. At least I thought so.
To celebrate 10 years of ryanware.com I decided to move my blog to a new domain which, you’ll notice, has not happened yet. Today is not the day for the switch, but I did make a step in the right direction this morning: I moved ryanware.com from the server it lived on since the beginning to a newer, shinier one*.
I don’t want to publicly announce what I’m planning because, hey, I tend to take a long time to do anything with my website. Besides, it’s not that exciting. All you really need to know is that, someday, my blog won’t live here anymore (and you probably don’t even need to know that). I’m only posting this at all because I wanted to post something about the 10 year thing before it became 11 or 12 years.
* I went with a VPS at Linode. I set up the hosting account months ago. Seriously. Like 4 or 5 months ago. Thankfully, it’s amazingly inexpensive for what you get, though that comes with what will be a downside to many: you setup everything on your own. You pick a linux distro (or install your own from scratch) and install everything you need, all by yourself. No plesk, no cpanel (you could pay for, and install them if you wanted, but why would you want to?). It’s rather fun, I think.
If you were sitting next to me, or anywhere else in my apartment, you would hear an awful lot of Latin American music. There’s an outdoor concert practically outside my window.
Last week I said I was going to post more, and perhaps even walk a whole bunch or something today.
If I were able to calculate the total number of feet I’ve rolled around in my office chair today I bet it would be more than the total number of feet I have walked today.
Yeah, I’m working today.
So, that’s more of something.
Just not what I had intended.
However, I did choose this. I traded a day. Work today for no work another day.
Perhaps on that day, whenever it may be, I will walk somewhere.
Hopefully that somewhere includes donuts and/or ice cream.
It appears that my average post count per year is about 103. My last post, nearly 2 months ago, was about doing less. I wasn’t really thinking that I’d blog less when I wrote that post. It just sort of happened that way. At least it was a funny post to have be at the top for 2 months, yeah?
Today I walked a little over 7 miles. I had no destination. I was bored so I started walking. I kept thinking I’d turn back soon or decide on a destination and go there, but I didn’t. I just walked. I eventually found a pizza place and, as is the tendency in pizza places, bought and then ate pizza. I also drank some cream soda. It was pretty good.
Perhaps next Saturday I will do more. Maybe even more miles (though I’d prefer they not be in the city).
I’ve now been reading, or walking and listening (to an audiobook), in Central Park for hours and hours. I’m writing this on my iPhone. Isn’t technology grand?
And yet, at the same time, it isn’t grand.
One of the books I’ve been reading is called The Power of Less by Leo Babauta. The book was gifted to me by a very good friend. I don’t intend to review the book, as I haven’t finished it, and because others are much better at book reviews than I am; however, the book is perfect in its timing, or rather, my decision to read it at this particular time was perfect, though I certainly don’t intend to suggest I am anything close to perfection, nor are my decisions.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about doing less. Don’t get me wrong, I have no intention of being less productive–this isn’t about being lazy–rather, it’s about accomplishing more with less, however trite that may sound.
Anyway, I’m at a park, enjoying a beautiful sunset, reading.
Five and a half, really, but five sounded better for a title.
My alarm sounded at 1:30 AM. An hour and a half wasn’t enough sleep, that was obvious, but I figured I would do better with at least a little sleep. On Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week I woke up at 4 AM, hoping it would prepare me for today. Perhaps it did, but not enough. I reset my alarm for 1:40. When that went off I reset it to 1:50, and 10 minutes later to 2:00. That was it, I had slept as much as I was able. Now was the moment.
I knew that if I sat down on the couch I would be tempted to lay down, then to get a blanket, eventually leading to the demise of my plan to read for 24 hours straight. Several times this week, however, I stayed awake at 4 AM by listening to audiobooks (Ender’s Shadow and then Mistborn: The Final Empire). I even laid on the couch while listening. The books were interesting enough to keep me awake, despite wanting, desperately, to sleep. I knew that it would be harder with less sleep. But knowledge does not always translate into action. Can you really know if you don’t do what you know?
If you didn’t catch the hint already, I fell asleep. I think I lasted about 20 minutes on the couch before I drifted off. I was awakened at 4 AM by my roommate’s return from a dance and made a half-hearted attempt to stay awake, but once again drifted off into the world of make-believe, or rather, a world of make-believe, for there are many. Sleep is one such world, reading is another. I find it fitting that at least I was in one of these worlds instead of, say, scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush, though that might have kept me awake.
It’s now almost 9 AM. Since awaking on the couch I’ve been listening to Mistborn. I will now commence reading a real book, perhaps The Alchemist? I’m not sure after that. The Power of Less? Lord of the Rings? A Narnia book in Spanish? High Performance MySQL? No, most definitely not that.
I will read until 2 AM, longer if I can. I’ll be posting updates on here and twitter throughout the day.
Patriotism is something innately due our country in return for the many riches and opportunities it affords us. Taxes are statutory entitlements the people grant to the government in return for certain constitutionally mandated obligations.
“Country” is not synonymous with “government.” Country is a diverse union consisting of the citizenry – we the people. Country is the basis and the process from which innovation abounds, dreams are realized, and goods are produced.
Government is merely an autocratic bureaucracy that attempts to regulate and control the actions of the country. Government produces no goods and no products. It only consumes resources and redistributes them.
– A friend of mine
This means that, as the “24 hour” part of the read-a-thon’s name implies, I will read for a solid 24 hour period starting at 2 AM EST on April 18th, 2009 and end at 2 AM the following morning (that’s how a 24 hour period of time works).
Yes, I expect to stop reading for those pesky survival habits like eating and using the restroom; however, I have no intention of letting a single moment pass without the words of some book or another stimulating my brain. This will be accomplished through audiobooks. I will read until it’s not possible to read, at which point I will switch to an audiobook and carry on until I can read again. This way I can start out reading at home, walk to Central Park or something, and resume reading there.
A few quotes I’ve collected over the last few weeks on twitter, or just had lying around, or whatever.
My Goal of the Day: Fully listen to my critics, even if they may not know exactly what they’re critical of.
– Malcolm Gladwell
I don’t think I mentioned it, but I ran into Malcolm Gladwell in the lobby of the office building I work in. I always feel a little bad in interrupting someone who probably gets interrupted a lot, but if I actually care about who they are I will usually interrupt anyway. Some may see that as backwards, but whatever. I don’t try to become their friend. I just say hi, express my appreciation for their work, and go on my merry way.
The following advice, given by the deceitful Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood in C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, describes a common malady afflicting many of us today: “Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.”
– Michael J. Teh quoting The Screwtape Letters
I posted this quote back in November of 2007 and I’ve already said everything I have to say about it (for now).
“To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.”
– William H. Walton
Which would be pretty terrible, especially if you had no allergic reaction to the bee. I choose a grudge-free life.
Also, that would be quite the persistent, death-resistant bee.
Few concepts have more potential to mislead us than the idea that choice, or agency, is an ultimate goal.
– Dallin H. Oaks, “Weightier Matters,” Ensign, Jan 2001, 13
Choice, or agency, is a condition of life. This should not be confused with the ability to act on choices without undesired consequences. That’s called freedom.
If your knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you need to seriously rethink your life.
– Calvin (Calvin & Hobbes)
And in the spirit of Calvin & Hobbes, here’s a semi-sad reminder (if you love Calvin & Hobbes) about saving things for your children instead of throwing them away. I’m really just putting it here because I like Calvin & Hobbes, I’m sentimental, and I wanted an excuse to post it.
I started reading Perelandra by C.S. Lewis today. In the second chapter the character Ransom says something I find extremely interesting.
Haven’t you noticed how in our own little war here on earth, there are different phases, and while any one phase is going on people get into the habit of thinking and behaving as if it was going to be permanent? But really the thing is changing under your hands all the time, and neither your assets nor your dangers this year are the same as the year before.
– Perelanda, C.S. Lewis
Then, I read this post, How far away is your emergency? by Seth Godin, and marveled (mainly because I wanted to use the word) that Godin illustrates exactly the point Lewis was talking about.
It’s amazing that people have so much time to fret about today’s emergency but almost no time at all to avoid tomorrow’s.
A glimpse at the TV and internets shows one talking head after another angsting about today’s economy. These are the same people who needed to devote entire hours to mindless trivia nine months ago when they could have done an enormous amount of education about avoiding this mess in the first place.
…
They say the best time to look for a job is when you don’t need one. And the best time to invest in a new Purple Cow is when you’re still milking the old one. Move your emergency back in time and you’ll be amazed at how far your money goes.
– Seth Godin
It’s important to remember that our present circumstances are not permanent. Tomorrow’s emergencies will be different from today’s and we ought to keep that in mind so as not to be surprised and, more importantly, so that we’ll be prepared when the changes occur.
If I read 76 books a year until I’m 80 years old I will have read 3,000 books.
Of course, I don’t know the actual number of books I’ve read. I only know that I’ve read or listened to approximately 82 books in the last 3 years. A few of those are books I remember reading while growing up (real books).
If I could remember all the books I read growing up the full number would probably be closer to 150, or at least I hope it would.
So basically, my depth of reading is pretty sad.
I recently started twittering about my book reading over at 3000books. I also have the domain 3000books.com, but I haven’t set anything up on it yet. When I get around to it it’ll be a book reading blog, naturally.
I am sitting here, in my home office (sounds so official), starving to death. Some people (you know the types), upon reading that last sentence, immediately thought, “well, you’re not really starving to death because you’re going to eat food soon enough. you’re just experiencing hunger pains because you haven’t eaten in a little while. if you waited long enough, they would go away. give it a day or two and then you’d really be starving to death.”
To those types of people I respond thusly: You’re wrong. I’m not experiencing hunger pains. You see, I started to eat a bag of chips right before I started writing this post. The feelings of death by starvation have been dissipating ever so slowly.
I knew when I opened the bag of chips that it might keep me from going outside (in the ACTUAL outdoors) to get food. I accepted the consequences, though I think I’ll regret it later.
I decided a few weeks ago that I was never going grocery shopping again (for as long as I don’t have a car). It wasn’t a completely silly thing to decide, and you might be making all sorts of wrong conclusions about my eating habits, but the decision did have one consequence I did not intend: starving to death.
In the battle of quantity vs. quality, quantity almost always wins. For example, I’d rather eat two bags of plain tortilla chips than one bite of amazing pizza. The deciding factor being this question: “if this is the last thing I eat, how long would I last before starving to death?”
There all sorts of flaws with my quality vs. quantity decision making, and an examination of my behavior would no doubt provide ample reason to distrust everything I have said thus far. The fact remains, however, that my cupboards are almost completely empty and if I don’t do something about it soon I could easily be hungry way more than I like to be.
I do have pancake mix, some eggs, some chips, hot chocolate mix, a bottle of hot sauce, and plain yogurt (I thought I was buying vanilla). This is a suitable amount of food on which one can survive (not for long), but not on which one would pleasantly thrive.
So, a few weeks ago I ordered food from FreshDirect, an online grocery delivery service for the New York area. I ordered, and the food arrived. I didn’t have to walk. I didn’t have to take the subway. It was awesome.
So I decided to shop like that for the rest of my car-less existence.
Then, I ran out of food. So I bought a few things from the grocery store. But not too much because it’s cheaper and easier online.
The problem with online shopping is that you have to wait for it. You don’t get instant satisfaction, which is fairly important when you’re trying not to starve to death.
So now that I’ve rambled on and on and have eaten way too many chips, I’m gonna go outside and find something to eat. Wendy’s? Subway? Crown Fried Chicken?
It would be nice if restaurants had signs that said “our food prevents starvation.” That way, if a restaurant didn’t have the sign, you would know not to get food there.
Upon reading the title of this post you may think to yourself, “self, I think he must have meant ‘Lost World – Jurassic Park’.” If you thought that, I’ve been wondering, is it a book I should read? It’s been on my list for a while now.
Books are awesome. Especially books wherein the story takes place in a different world, or in an alternative or modified version of our own world. It’s as if the books came from those other worlds. They are a gateway to a different reality—often a more desirable one than our own. Separating myself from this world and learning of another allows me to accept things I might not otherwise accept (which can be good and bad), and hopefully use those things to improve my life.
When I moved to New York I packed up the stuff I could bring with me, which wasn’t much, and then boxed up the rest and shipped it to New York. I got most of it last week. Today I got another box, full of books. Earlier this week I got a letter from the U.S. Postal Service stating, “an empty wrapper with your address was found in the mail and it is believed to have been separated from a parcel during handling.” They even tapped the address label to the paper so I could see it.
I can fill out a description sheet and mail it back and they’ll try to find my stuff. I waited until today for the other box full of books to come so I could get a better grasp on what I lost. While I still have both my English and Spanish versions of The Chronicles of Narnia, I lost all my other C.S. Lewis books, which I am very bummed about (I mark up and write a lot in the margins of my books). I also lost my Malcolm Gladwell books, Gordon B. Hinckley’s biography as well as some of his books. 13 is the total number I cannot account for. I’m sure I’ll remember more later.
Oh, I also lost a few movies on DVD. I used to be the proud owner of 6 movies. That number has now been reduced to 1. Pride cometh before a fall, they say.
One funny thing. I packed the books and DVDs in these two boxes and used my socks to keep them from sloshing around. I kept expecting the boxes to come so I didn’t go out and buy socks. It’s been rough. I like socks.
So, in a lost and found, under a machine at a post office, on the side of the road, or perhaps in some happy postal worker’s living room, lay my books. Lost worlds.
One writer said: “Again Christmas, abiding point of return. Set apart by its mystery, mood and magic, the season seems, in a way to stand outside time. All that is dear, that is lasting, renews its hold on us: we are home again.”
President David O. McKay (1873–1970) declared: “True happiness comes only by making others happy—the practical application of the Savior’s doctrine of losing one’s life to gain it. In short, the Christmas spirit is the Christ spirit, that makes our hearts glow in brotherly love and friendship and prompts us to kind deeds of service.
“It is the spirit of the gospel of Jesus Christ, obedience to which will bring ‘peace on earth,’ because it means—good will toward all men.”
Giving, not getting, brings to full bloom the Christmas spirit. Enemies are forgiven, friends remembered, and God obeyed. The spirit of Christmas illuminates the picture window of the soul, and we look out upon the world’s busy life and become more interested in people than things. To catch the real meaning of the “spirit of Christmas,” we need only drop the last syllable, and it becomes the “Spirit of Christ.”
According to the weather app on my phone, it’s currently snowing in the great outdoors. I actually noticed this by looking out the window before I looked at my phone.
I suppose it’s always snowing somewhere in the great outdoors. It just so happens that it’s snowing in the part of the great outdoors that is viewable from my window.
It’s not snowing much—a light snow is what it’s called. Most snow is light, compared to steel cube of roughly the same size. Some snow is lighter other snow, though. For example, the snow in Northern Utah, specifically in the Salt Lake City area, is especially light and fluffy. It makes for amazing skiing. But that’s not what I meant by “a light snow,” which you probably knew.
When I was young I remember really liking the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I just looked and it turns out it was published the same year I was born. Cool.
So today was cloudy. I also ate meatballs today. They were on top of pasta, smothered in marinara sauce with a slice of garlic bread and a small salad. I also bought a cookie, and my bed frame. And desk. And an ice cream cone, and a hot dog. Oh, and a cinnamon roll. And a bunch of groceries. Oh! And rope. The rope was for taking the old bed frame back. That was an adventure. So if you’ve been following this blog at all you know that I went to IKEA today. I also did 50 push ups in a total of 5 sets, which is 5 more than 2 days ago.
And now I’m going to go dream of raining meatballs, because they taste really good (though I admit I’ve never tried the rain variety).
Low, rumbling noises usually signal a few things. A few of these few things would be: a hungry stomach (or, rather a hungry person whose stomach is reminding them of said hunger), a train, or perhaps a giant who is so big that his stomach apparently never stops rumbling (or is it the footsteps that make the rumbling noise when they approach?).
In my case, I’m pretty certain that I’m not hearing giants, and while I do occasionally hear my stomach rumble, most often the noise is from a train.
If you were standing in my room right now you might ask me to turn the light on. That’s because my light is off. I’m posting this from my iPhone, in the dark, ready to go to bed. So I’d say no, and leave the light off. Having the light off is better for looking out the window, which is what I think you’d want to do if you were here. Why? Because you’d see train tracks. Well, not exactly. You’d see the elevated railway, but not the physical tracks themselves. But you get the point.
So every few minutes I hear a low, rumbling noise in the distance. As it gets closer, it gets louder, as noises have a tendency to do. At night, when I’m laying in my bed, waiting to fall asleep, you might think the trains would keep me awake. On the contrary, I find that the noise helps me fall asle…
It’s not that the number 100 changes how big it is depending on where it’s at—it obviously doesn’t. It’s constant. 100 is 100. This is a fairly well-established fact. The perceived size of 100, however, is directly proportional to the effort involved. 100 steps to the bakery? Depends how hungry you are. 100 steps to the lavatory? How badly do you need to get there? 100 steps from your loved one in a movie or TV show, with happy music playing all around? You’re likely to get shot so you probably want to remember to mind your surroundings instead of running at top speed towards each other, ignoring the deadly monster you were just fighting. Sure, running towards each other with arms open and silly grins makes for a more exciting/sad show, but I highly suggest you proceed with caution. Then, when you’ve conquered the evil aliens or whatever you can re-create the moment on some lonely beach with a stereo and a cardboard cutout of the evil monster.
So my boss decided that we should have a push up contest at work. The goal is to work up to be able to do 100 push ups at a time. Yes, 100 push ups all at once. Well, not really all at once, but rather in fairly quick succession, one after the other.
Two days ago we did an exhaustion test to see how many push ups we were capable of doing at one time. The purpose of this was, naturally, to humiliate the weak. No, not really. The purpose was to place each person into a workout plan designed for their level of strength/weakness. I was able to do 17 push ups before collapsing on the floor, completely wasted. While that may be a slight exaggeration (the part about being completely wasted, not the 17 push ups), the fact remains the same that 100 seems like an awful lot.
We do push ups every other day. So yesterday I reveled in keeping my hands where they belong: not on the floor doing push ups, but rather stuffing myself with food.
Actually, I didn’t actually eat much yesterday. But this morning I had a smoothie from Jamba Juice. It was amazing. And then I did 45 push ups. The 45 were spread out over 5 sets, but still. 100 is still a big number.
If my bed were Pinocchio, which it’s not, it wouldn’t yell out “I’m a real bed!” because, well, it’s not a real bed. It’s trying to be, and, I suppose in a very simple sense, it really is, but there are a few critical problems that one notices with a simple glance–a glance much like that which you’d give an uninteresting book in a dull library and not at all like the glance you’d give an oil tanker in your living room.
The first and only, and therefore most significant thing you’d notice, is this: my mattress is on the floor. That’s because, as is natural and right, gravity is keeping it there instead of letting it float around aimlessly. Also, I don’t have a bed frame. Well, I do, but it’s in a box. And it’s the wrong bed frame. I could set it up, rendering my bed situation into a better bed situation, but that’s not really what it would do. It’d make the bed situation worse, because then I’d have the wrong bed frame set up, in my room of all places. Which is not what I want, which is why it’s not set up.
So this weekend I am taking the very large box back to where it came from. I will return with what will probably be a bigger box, hopefully with the right bed frame enclosed in its interior.
Have I talked about my chair at all? I like my chair a lot. I’m sitting on it, as is pretty standard for a chair, and not anything like a standard for, say, a large venomous snake.
In case you were curious, my feet are on my mattress. It makes a nice, warm foot rest.
Yesterday, after dropping the zipcar truck off at its parking spot, we wandered around looking for food and garbage, but not for the same purpose. The food was to eat, the garbage was for a bag of broken glass I was carrying around. Because that’s a totally normal thing to do at night, in the city, or anywhere else for that matter.
As it turns out, a bag of broken glass would be a really good weapon.
Rewind an hour to an hour and a half before that and you’d see me, holding a dish drying rack with two boxes of glasses on top of it, walking up to the apartment building on the sidewalk. You’d also see me get my keys out of my pocket and attempt to open the first door. You’d see me finally get it open, walk inside towards the second door, and then, drop a box of glasses. Remarkably, IKEA packs the glasses in the boxes very nicely, and only one of them broke into a few big pieces and several thousand smaller ones.
After unloading everything, we swept up the broken glass and put it in a plastic bag. We were in a hurry to get the truck back, and, not seeing a garbage can around anywhere, carried the bag of glass around figuring we’d find a garbage can later.
Okay. Fast forward back to the hunt for food and garbage after dropping the truck off. Somehow, I managed to hit my hand with the bag as I was changing hands or something. I felt something sharp on the middle finger of my left hand. I looked, and beheld much blood. That’s odd, I thought, as I stared at it. It didn’t hurt at all. The cut is 3/4ths of an inch long? Maybe an inch? I had 3 bandaids in my pocket, which didn’t really help. While Justin found a store on his iPhone, in the which I could purchase better bandages, I bled all over the place. Not really, of course, but it sounds more exciting that way.
The moral of this story is, if you find yourself carrying a bag of broken glass, keep it away from your flesh, as well as the flesh of others (unless it’s an angry mob). And probably clothing, too. Unless you don’t like the clothing, or want clothes with holes in it. Since clothing with holes seems to be the fashion I bet you could put the broken glass in the dryer with your clothing and viola! Expensive clothing without the expense.
My finger is fine. I’ve got a butterfly bandage and a bigger bandage over the top of that. No more profuse bleeding.
Justin and I spent the day today moving into the new apartment. I like it a lot. It was recently renovated and is very nice. It was originally intended to be sold as a condo, but for some reason or another it’s now an apartment.
To do the move Justin rented a truck from Zipcar and we then loaded all his stuff and what little I brought (boxes full of my stuff are in-transit) and, then, spent a long time in traffic.
It wasn’t that bad, but it was pretty stressful trying to get to the new place, unloading everything, then to IKEA to buy my loft bed frame, mattress, desk, chair, and bookshelf, along with silverware and other random kitchen and house stuff. Then, we had to get back to the apartment, unload everything, and drop the truck off at its parking spot before our time ran out (which costs a lot more money). We had to extend the rental 2-3 times, and still went over the allotted time (couldn’t extend again due to another person who had it scheduled). Traffic is terrible here, but we’ve established that before.
I know some of you are wondering what this apartment looks like. Never fear, I’ll take pictures when everything has been setup. That may be a few days. Right now, everything is a mess. I’m sitting next to the door to the apartment in my newly assembled chair from IKEA. I’m sitting by the door because that’s where I assembled the chair. From here I can see a fantastic mess. I like it, a lot. The chair, that is, not the mess.
You might think, upon reading the title of this post, that rain and water always go together. Well, I’m here to tell you that, as matter of fact, they usually do. I’ve never experienced acid rain*, or any other type of non-watery rain. All I know is that it rained today, and there was water involved.
* I suspect acid rain isn’t really acid in the way that I usually think of acid. What first comes to my mind when I think of acid? Stomach acid. Why? Because it happens to be inside of me. Not that I always think of myself and my stomach first. Really. The first thing on my mind when I wake up is usually myself; how tired I am, etc. Just the other day, though, I thought of my computer instead**.
The second thing that comes to mind when I think of acid is a car battery. Those are the only two things I thought of before reading the wikipedia article about acid rain. So now I’m thinking of other things, like brook trout and a girl named Brooke I knew in elementary school (no, she doesn’t have a wikipedia page***, but the page about brook trout had a link to a Brooke Trout, who apparently sings or something and the word ‘Brooke’ made me think of the Brooke I knew a long time ago). Why? Because that’s how wikipedia works. You read one thing, but then you click on a link and the next thing you know you’re learning about popular sovereignty.
In case you were curious, it took 41 clicks to get to popular sovereignty from acid rain.
So, I like rain. Unless it’s acid rain, but since I’ve never experienced any such thing, I think it’s safe to say “I like rain” without any further qualifying statements, except when deemed necessary by any extraneous circumstances which may or may not matter.
** Please don’t take anything I said in this post seriously.
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.
– Cicero, ‘Pro Plancio,’ 54 B.C.
I can’t think of a better excuse for a holiday than a day set apart for gratitude.
So, if gratitude is the parent of all other virtues, what about, say, the testing point of every virtue? Oh, whaddya know, I have a quote for that too.
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
– C.S. Lewis
To be virtuous we need to be grateful and courageous.
Sometimes, it takes courage to be grateful.
So now we’ve got the greatest of all virtues, which is also the parent of all the others, but to be grateful in tough situations gratitude becomes courage, so is courage the grandparent of all other virtues? Only in some situations? I think I’m confused.
Happy Thanksgiving! And for those outside the United States, I hope you have a great day. Thanks for reading.
This evening I went to a friend’s house and, among other things (like eating pizza), played Tecmo Super Bowl. This classic Nintendo game from 1991 was a huge part of my childhood. We used to go over to another friend’s house and play for hours and hours. Good times.
The game brought back a lot of fun memories. The graphics and sound were just as amazing as we remembered. Also, I was probably about as bad as I used to be. Okay, I was probably better than I was today. I won 1 game out of… 6? 7? I sure hope I was better than that all those years ago…
Today, while working, I came across this little piece of text: “asdfasdf nelkjlkj meh aaa af”
As anyone in their right mind might do, I tried pronouncing that. Yes, out loud. I was on a conference call so I muttered it under my breath. I caught myself on the “meh aaa af” and, had I not been on the phone, would have laughed out loud. As it was, I still laughed out loud, but it was more of a silent laugh. Like this: “hahahahaha” without the “hahahahaha” so really it was “ ” but my face looked like it was saying “hahahahaha.”
Does that make any sense at all? I hope so.
Anyway, I’m not sure why I thought the gibberish needed to be read, but I suspect it’s not the first time I’ve tried doing this.
Maybe someday I’ll discover some secret code that will save humanity from all sorts of evil, like mutant pickles. Or, I’ll just get a good laugh out of it. I’m cool with both options.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
– Charles Mingus
The lesson of Henry Eyring’s life is that simple people, people just like you and me, can change the world. We do it a little bit every day. And we have the potential to change the world much more, if we can better understand and use our unique gifts.
– Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
– Albert Einstein
To hear is relatively simple. To heed and apply what is heard becomes life’s perpetual challenge.
– Charles Didier
I could make this post longer, but there’s no point in complicating things.
I like driving, especially at night. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth mentioning again right now because I just got back from a drive.
I drove for perhaps 30 minutes south along the west side of Utah Lake, which isn’t a particularly impressive lake. Well, it looks impressive. It’s huge. It’s not, however, a very fun lake to be in or around as the water quality isn’t what I’d call superb. The average depth is 9 feet with a maximum of 14 feet.
While it’s not a great recreational lake, it is nice to look at, and I’ve recently decided that it’s good for night drives.
It was incredibly quiet. Lots of stars were visible. Across the lake I could see Provo, Utah, among other cities (for some reason I can never pick out the border lines in real life like I can on a map).
I stopped and just sat there for a while, taking it all in. And then I came back, ready for bed.
I move to New York City this week. Thanks to Justin, I actually have a place to live now! I am excited to get back to the city for a number of reasons: the city is exciting, working with my coworkers in person, NY pizza, more food, and just doing something different. I will, of course, miss a few things here, one of which is being able to go driving at night whenever I please. So I hope to go a few more times this week.
I’ve recently decided that I have a soundtrack going on in my head at all times. Sometimes, it comes out. Say, for example, that I’m walking down the street on a crowded sidewalk at night. The likelihood of a crowded sidewalk in Eagle Mountain, Utah is about as probable as a seeing a nuclear submarine surface in my living room; however, it’s just an example, okay? So I say I’m walking down a crowded sidewalk at night. If someone tripped and fell and I had to either jump over them or kick them in the face, I would probably kick them in face. No, not really. What I would do is yell out “do doo doo!” and jump. The “do doo doo!” is the soundtrack in my head. It would decide “whoa! something exciting is happening, this music must be made known to the world!” and I’d have no choice—the music would escape.
Write a blog post. Check.
Do laundry.
Eat.
Get oil changed in my truck.
Decide what I’m going to do with my truck when I move.
Get in a really scary situation involving large amounts of cheesecake so the soundtrack in my head can tell the world how scared I am (dun dun dun!).
Why am I still home when I could be out having fun?
I don’t really want to go dancing tonight.
I am going to go dancing anyway.
Going on a road trip to Seattle sounds fun.
Or maybe New Mexico. I’ve never been there.
Is there anything to do in New Mexico?
Which of my 4 or 5 book ideas do I start first?
People are weird.
I like weirdness.
I have an awful lot of stuff to pack.
I’ve gotta get some boxes.
I wonder if anyone’s online on facebook. It is a Friday night…
Wow, at least 5 other people have no lives. 22 others are marked as inactive.
For how many friends I have, I do remarkably little with any of them.
Does that make me anti-social?
Probably.
Dang it!
Actually, I disagree with myself. I’m not anti-social.
I’m selectively-social.
The selection process is pretty straightforward.
Is ___ weird? If yes, hang out.
That’s really not true.
Like I’d give away my who-do-I-hang-out-with-tonight formula.
Hint: it involves a rubik’s cube and lots of cheese.
Have I ever made cheese?
Making ice cream is awesome.
I don’t usually eat because I’m hungry, even when I’m hungry.
I eat because it satisfies some other need.
For example, I’ve never been sky diving. So I eat instead.
I do understand, though, that eating keeps you from all sorts of unpleasant things, such as starvation, so I do also eat for that reason, too.
I think I use commas too much. Perhaps I should throw in some em dashes here and there for good measure.
Semicolons are nifty;
however, I don’t always know when to use them.
The problem with a brain dump is that your brain has a tendency to keep thinking once it’s started.
I think I’ll go eat.
I’m not really hungry, but I should be. I’ve only eaten once today. And I didn’t even eat that much.
If the universe had no meaning, would we ever have discovered such a thing?
C.S. Lews is awesome.
I don’t like unpacking.
The funny thing about all these thoughts is that they’re all somehow related. It’s not always easy to draw relationships between them all, but I think they’re there. If nothing else, they’re related by being in my head—they’re a part of me.
About an hour ago I said the following in response to a question: “very rarely.”
Rare is already pretty rare, as the word itself implies. So to be very rare it’s gotta be, well, very rare.
While I don’t know for certain, I think ‘very rare’ is overused. In fact, the cases where it’d be appropriate are rare.
Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
– C. S. Lewis
I am far beyond guilty of this.
See? I just did it again. It’s a disease!
Does this really matter? I think so. It extends beyond words, reaching into our lives and sucking out everything good. Maybe.
“Outlier” is a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience. In the summer, in Paris, we expect most days to be somewhere between warm and very hot. But imagine if you had a day in the middle of August where the temperature fell below freezing. That day would be outlier. And while we have a very good understanding of why summer days in Paris are warm or hot, we know a good deal less about why a summer day in Paris might be freezing cold. In this book I’m interested in people who are outliers—in men and women who, for one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August.
– What is Outliers about?
I’ve been waiting for this book, Outliers, to come out for, well, as long as I’ve known about it. I don’t know how long that is, but it’s felt like a long time.
I bought it in both audio and paperback. If you like audiobooks at all I highly recommend the audio versions. He reads them himself and does a fantastic job.
Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.
– Douglas Adams
The vastness of space has fascinated me for a long time. And by a long time I mean at least 3 weeks.
Okay 3 weeks is a gross underestimate. I’ve been fascinated by space for a really long time. I bought this telescope 8 years ago? 9 years? 10? I don’t really remember. I bet I could find out, but I’m not going to today.
So we know that the universe is vast. Hugely vast. Bigly big. Thinking about how big it is makes my cares feel so small and insignificant. But, they are significant. Even if we care about something we shouldn’t care about, the very act of caring about it makes it important.
Caring about something simply means means that action needs to be taken. If that action is to stop caring about it because it shouldn’t be significant, then it’s probably a pretty big deal. Little things add up. If our lives are full of the mundane and what we deem unimportant, that’s significant.
If you recall from my post on Saturday, I woke up really late. I worked until about 10:30 PM. I was bored. Tired of being indoors. Still not happy about having slept in. I wanted to get out of the house. I went for a drive.
I didn’t have any specific destination in mind. I just started driving. I ended up in American Fork, UT (about 15 miles away). I stopped at a McDonald’s and bought an M&M McFlurry. Yes, very unhealthy. I made it even less healthy by requesting Oreos be added. Yeah, I know. It was a total sugar overload and so not worth it.
After ordering, and just before driving up to the window to pay, I noticed something interesting on that little screen where they show you your order. It was photo of this guy:
Not really though. What I saw was this: “Extra Salad Dressing 0.25″
25 cents for Oreos? Ok, sure. That’s fine. I thought it was funny they charged it as Salad Dressing. I wonder if anyone in McDonald’s upper management ever looks at trends. “Why are so many people buying salad dressing with McFlurrys? Should we market this?”
When contemplating the vastness of the universe, and then 25 cents for extra salad dressing (I choose Ranch) on a McFlurry at a McDonald’s in American Fork, Utah (located on a tiny little rock floating in space), it feels markedly ridiculous to think for a moment that those 25 cents matter. And yet they do.
This realization is mind boggling. How is it that the sheer mass of the universe (and perhaps multiple universes) is not more important than the needs of one individual, or even 25 cents?
The vastness of the universe does not supersede my individual cares, nor yours. And, of course, vice versa. Or, are the ‘cares’ of the universe as a whole made up of the sum of its parts?
Is it possible for the collective needs of a society to supersede the rights of any individual?
My schedule this whole week has essentially been this: wake up between 7-9, work until 3 AM (with a few breaks here and there), sleep; repeat. It wasn’t like that every day. Friday wasn’t.
Today (Saturday) was going to be a little different. I was planning on waking up early and working until the evening and then going out on the town, or something. Instead, I slept 6.5 hours longer than planned.
So I guess I’m all caught up on the lack of sleep I’ve been enjoying, but now my day is shot. Wheeeeeeee!
In yesterday’s post I told everyone I don’t know how to bake bread. While I think it’s possibly true that I’ve never baked bread, it’s not like I couldn’t do it if I tried.
Similarly, I might be able to blow up the universe if I tried.
On second thought, that’s not very similar at all.
What I’m really trying to say is that I went to a friend’s house (Tim) this morning and we made really good french toast. Seriously. You should be jealous.
Sure, French Toast is easy and what we made was easy. The point is, though, that I cooked.
Actually, I’m pretty sure there is no point to this post.
Ah, high school! Those were the days! Oh wait, I didn’t go to high school. Whatever. They were still the days. Whatever “the days” really means.
And they really weren’t “the days,” anyway. Who says that about adolescent years? A lot of people, actually.
They were “the days,” if that’s meant to imply that the days were awkward and weird. Because that’s what they were. But only in retrospect.
I’ve seen a lot of photos of my two older sister’s high school days. Whenever I see one I think “wow, I’m glad I wasn’t that awkward.” But then I realize I was. Probably more so, since I was the home schooled kid. Perception plays a big part of awkwardness and telling someone you are ‘home schooled’ makes that perception, whatever this perception is, bigger. The words ‘home schooled’ generally evokes images of anti-social, geeky people learning how to bake bread.
Not that there’s anything wrong with learning how to bake bread. I would have loved doing that. Baking bread smells amazing.
It’s usually delicious, too. Especially with homemade raspberry jam (that you learned how to make while in home school!).
Anyway, eventually you look back on your life and realize everyone was awkward, everyone was geeky. 10 years from now we’ll look back and think we were all sorts of awkward. This means two things: we’re all hopelessly awkward, or we’re not at all. I vote not at all because that means we can all just move on and not worry about what we look like.
So, I’m the guy in the back left of the photo. I don’t remember my date’s name. I remember having a hard time with her name that day, too. It’s weird. I can’t remember her name, yet I see people I saw once 15 years ago I know who they are and what they do. Okay, maybe not to that extreme, but still. My name-remembering ability seems to be mere random coincidence. So if I call you George when your name is, in fact, Sally; I’m sorry. I apologize now.
P.S. I loved my home school experience and wouldn’t trade it for anything. Except, maybe, for large amounts of freshly-baked bread with homemade raspberry jam.
1.5 years ago I came across an article in the Washington Post describing, in great detail, a musical experiment. The article is called Pearls Before Breakfast, the experiment was to see if one of the greatest musician’s could distract people from their rush to work in a D.C. Metro station.
The musician behind the experiment was Joshua Bell, an utterly amazing violinist. I read the article (it’s long) in amazement. I wondered what I would have done in the same situation: you’re in a hurry to get to work and hear some amazing music. Do you stop and listen or plow on?
I’ve often wondered “what would I do?” or “what would I have done?”, not only with simple things like this, but with bigger things. What would I have done during the American Revolution? What would I have done if I’d lived in Jerusalem 2000 years ago? What would I have done if I had been the one to discover how to make donuts?
I took this photo on Nov. 1st, underground in the New York City subway. It was late Saturday night, I wasn’t in a hurry, and it wasn’t very crowded. Still, I almost walked right on past. I caught myself and thought about the Washington Post experiment. I stopped and listened for a few minutes. She was good—not as good as Joshua Bell, but good. I’m glad I stopped to listen.
I had a lot of opportunities to stop and listen in New York. Sometimes I stopped, sometimes not. When I didn’t I was either in a hurry or the musician wasn’t that great. I wanted to stop whenever the musician was good, and tried to listen as long as possible even if I didn’t feel like I could stop.
While questions like “what would I have done?” are important, they’re much less important than the here and now. I believe that one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves is “what will I do?” I’ll never know how I would have acted had I been in that D.C. Metro station that day, but I can decide what to do in similar situations. The key is remembering what we’ve decided when the moment arrives.
There’s something thrilling about skyscrapers. For some it may be the view from the top. For others, they represent the apex of human civilization—power, money, human ingenuity, thousands upon thousands of tiny cubicles.
For me, it’s the diversity of life. Not only of the sentient occupants, but of the plant life as well. I love the challenge it takes to rise to the top. The weather is all sorts of different as well. A few months ago I hiked one with a friend, Kevin. It was a hot day in the valley, but cold and windy on top. The snow never fully melts up there. We scaled hundreds of feet of hard, slippery snow, in places at least 20 feet deep.
While some like the dazzle of the city variety of skyscrapers, I prefer the natural type. Mountains are my skyscrapers.
Flying Home by Lionel Hampton is one of those classic jazz songs that, when played at a dance, you just can’t help yourself—you have to get up and dance. It’s quite fantastic.
As you may have guessed, astute reader, I am back home in Eagle Mountain, Utah. I’m exhausted. The flight itself was about 4.5 hours. It felt like it was a lot longer, though I did talk to the guy next to me quite a bit. He was cool. I mostly listened to an audio book though. The book was called The Opal Deception, which is a part of the Artemis Fowl series. Fun books. I’m far too lazy/tired to make links out of those at the moment so if you’re at all interested you’ll have to actually do the searching yourself. I know that’s asking a lot of you, but really I didn’t ask anything of you so it’s actually not asking anything of you at all. Uh… ok I’m moving on.
I flew Delta, non-stop from JFK to SLC (non-stop is the only way to go!). The airplane was a bigger, newer airplane of some kind. It had a 7 in the number. 700? 770? 777? Something like that. There was a monitor in the back of each seat on which you could watch movies, live TV via satellite, play games against other passengers, and see a live map of where above planet earth the plane was currently along with other information. On the flight to New York I browsed the TV channels and played trivia for a while. This time, I just sat there, listening to my book, intermittently talking to the guy next to me.
It’s good to be back in Utah again. I’m not entirely certain how long I’ll be here before moving to New York for good, but I’m guessing it’ll be at least a few weeks. I’ll figure that out later. Right now, all I can think about is sleeping in my own bed tonight! I’m pretty much super stoked about it.
Edited to add: I think I edited this 6 times after posting it to get the date right. I’m writing this just before midnight on Nov. 8. First the time settings were wrong in wordpress so it was showing up with a Nov. 9th date. So I changed the settings, then then changed the post to the 7th, then edited some other post and changed its date, then tried changing this one again and failed, and then failed again, and now finally have it right. I really need sleep.
I started writing the title of this post with a specific thought in mind (apartment hunting), but that changed as soon as I had it typed. The imagery in my mind went from a big city and lots of buildings to an apartment complex being chased down by a hunter with a gun. You know, hunting. Hunting for apartments. Like deer hunting, only different.
I don’t own a gun and I’ve never been hunting. Unless, of course, you count the years of my early adolescence when my days consisted of going down to the local river and trying to trap birds with homemade cages and other contraptions (rocks on tree branches that were supposed to fall on unwitting fowl who stepped on some string). We also made some sweet bows and arrows that didn’t work very well (but they were still sweet). We even tried throwing rocks. I hit my friend in the head once (on accident). Our hunting/trapping attempts always failed, but we did manage to catch a lot of fish. I’m good at catching fish. We even made a fish trap, placed it in a deep fishing hole, and came back the next day to quite the catch of 3 or 4 fish. It was awesome. I think there were a few sucker fishes and a rainbow trout.
So I took the day off today to find a place to live. In the process, I discovered that the nearest Wells Fargo bank is in Illinois. I was told, though, that that will change in January when Wells Fargo’s acquisition of Wachovia is finalized. Or something like that. I fly back to Salt Lake City tomorrow (the 8th) so not being able to deposit checks isn’t a huge deal. By the time I get back to NY direct deposit will be setup and I won’t have to worry about depositing checks. Good timing.
Anyway, apartment hunting. I did a lot of looking on craigslist. While I don’t have time to go look at much, I am going to look at a place tonight. If it’s not trashy then it’ll work out well as it’s a month-to-month lease and quite cheap. That way, I could live there for a few months while I find a better / more convenient place to live.
I could go on, but I must end this here so I can go make a sweet bow and arrow for my apartment hunting expedition this evening. Wish me luck… or happiness. I like happiness.
There was a lot on my mind last night as I walked home from work. Or more accurately, there was a lot on my mind as I walked from work to the subway, rode the subway, and then walked from the subway to my friend’s apartment in Queens where I sleep on a couch that folds out into a bed. The point is, there was a lot on my mind last night.
The streets are crowded in the morning, afternoon, and evening. They are at night as well. Especially if you go to Time Square. Especially if you were at Times Square last night with the whole election thing going on. Normally, though, the streets are generally less crowded at night than during the day, just like every other place I’ve been.
I have noticed that whenever I drive on a crowded freeway I tend to drive faster. At night, when the freeways are far less crowded, I slow down. I’ve caught myself driving under the speed limit on more than one occasion at night. I walk slower at night than I do during the day.
It’s not my intention to delve into the fundamental attribution error yet again, but I can’t help realizing that the way I act on the streets and the way I drive is not so much about what kind of person or driver I am as it is my environment that in large part determines what kind of person and driver I am and and what other people think I am. It also effects how I feel about myself and about my driving. Time constraints also play a huge part (eg. during the day you’re more likely to be in a hurry). Something to think about.
My friend’s apartment is located in Queens. It’s not really his apartment as he’s renting from someone else, but I digress. The apartment is on the 3rd floor of a building with more than 3 floors. I do realize how incredibly not useful that is in helping you create an image of the building in your mind. I think it has 4 floors. The apartment is very small and the floor is dirty (at no fault of my friend).
Queens is what’s called a borough of New York City. The other boroughs are Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, and Staten Island. Queens is basically east of Manhattan, and as I understand it, one of the best places to get good, cheap food (cheap for here).
Last night on the way home we stopped at a 24-hour grocery store. 24-hour grocery stores are nothing special or out of the ordinary. In fact, there’s nothing at all special or out of the ordinary about this place at all. It wasn’t even that late when we stopped there. We did stop there, though, and I bought some chips, grape nuts, raspberries, and milk. I know, very exciting.
Upon arriving at the apartment the number of items on my mind decreased, but only because one of the items decided to take up all my thoughts. As it was election day that item was, naturally, chips.
Seriously. It’d been a while since I’d had a good bag of chips to much on. There are few things I like more than opening a bag of chips and eating it all in one sitting. Especially if cheese is involved. Or salsa. Both is even better. I didn’t eat the whole bag, for the record.
Since I didn’t have cheese or salsa I bought a bag of lime-flavored tortilla chips to compensate for the lack of pizazz that the cheese and salsa usually bring to an otherwise boring bag of chips. Believe me when I say that the pizazz was not missing with the lime chips. If you’re on a small budget and want some pizazz in a bag, go for lime-flavored chips. If you’re in the UK I highly suggest the lime-flavoured variety (chips meaning chips, not chips as in “french fries.” the brits are just confused).
As the events of the evening unfolded before my bag of chips and I (along with my friend and his roommate), it became increasingly clear to me that I should have purchased two bags of chips. And maybe some ice cream.
For today’s post I could post about how I’m really sad that I didn’t get an absentee ballot in time to vote. Or I could talk about something completely different, like donuts.
Sunday evening I attended the latest CES Fireside (a LDS church education system meeting primarily for young single adults). It was a spectacular meeting. I attended at an LDS Institute of Religion building somewhere in Manhattan. I think that’s where it was anyway. I’m still learning where everything is. For all I know it was New Jersey (it wasn’t).
The meeting is broadcast to church and institute buildings all over the world via satellite. After the meeting was over, there were refreshments to be had, as dictated by tradition. The refreshments consisted of apple cider and glazed donuts from dunkin’ donuts.
For those who don’t know, I talk about donuts quite a bit. I don’t know if I’ve posted about them on here much, but I talk about them in person a good deal. Actually, that’s not really true. I doubt I talk about donuts more than 10% of the year. I do, however, talk about them enough that there are people who associate me with donuts. And I’m not even shaped like a donut (which would be awkward considering I’d have no legs, head, or arms).
I’m pretty sure the people who associate me with donuts think I eat donuts every single day. But I don’t. In fact, I can’t remember the last time (before yesterday and the day before) that I ate one. Wait, that’s not true. I had one last Saturday. Wow so apparently I eat them more often than I thought.
No really, I don’t eat them that often. Before the last few weeks I probably hadn’t eaten a donut in at least a month or two. Maybe more.
I’m not really sure where this is going. Oh yeah! The institute bought too many donuts so they gave me a box to take home. On Sunday and Monday combined I probably ate a good 12 donuts. I felt gross.
I still feel kinda gross, actually. I need to put something healthy into my body.
In the book he mentions some studies that suggest that the more social an animal, the bigger its brains are. I’m sure I’m greatly oversimplifying, but basically the size of our neocortex is directly related to how many people with which we can maintain a stable social relationship. This number is about 148.2. You may have heard of Rule of 150. Many social groups and even colonies have used 150 or numbers close to it for years because they recognize that when a group of people gets bigger than 150 you end up with groups within the group and it gets really difficult to maintain cohesion. If you’d like to verify these facts, read the book as I don’t intend to put references here.
Anyway, as I listened to that portion of the book I couldn’t help but wonder that with all our social networks (facebook, myspace, linkedin, twitter, friendfeed, etc.) if the human race will evolve huge heads a few thousand or million years in the future. Or maybe even next week! I have 380 or so friends on Facebook alone. If I tried to have a stable social relationship with all of them, I would fail, but what if my neocortex grew and I succeeded? I’d have a huge head and look funny. Forget about balance, especially if I had to wear a motorcycle helmet. It’d be hard to even find a motorcycle helmet that big. That would be tragic (about the big head, not about the motorcycle helmet).
I like our heads the size they are. If you do too and want your great great great great great great great great grand children to have good sized heads I suggest you cut back on your facebook friends.
P.S. I’m glad we’re on this end of the evolutionary scale. Nevermind the fact that I don’t believe in that whole evolution thing.
In light of my recent discovery of my great counting skills (see last post) I thought it would be a great time to elaborate on my experiences in Manhattan. It hasn’t really been two weeks though, and as I stated 2 posts ago I also haven’t been in New York the whole time, let alone Manhattan. I just thought “2 Weeks in Manhattan” sounded better than “Tomorrow I will have been in or around Manhattan for 2 weeks.”
2 Weeks in Manhattan should be the name of a movie. This movie would be a true story about a car chase around Manhattan. It wouldn’t, of course, be a very exciting movie because I’m pretty sure it takes at least 2 weeks to drive across the city. The traffic here could be likened unto 15 adults trying to slide down a slide on a children’s playground all at the same time: there’s no way it’s going to work, but they’re going to try anyway. Someone is bound to get pushed off and go tell the recess referee (is that what they’re called?).
No really, you could do a car chase. It’d just require doing it at night or perhaps roping off a section of the city and staging the whole thing. Since it’d be a movie, that’s what they’d do anyway.
I’m getting distracted. Traffic in Manhattan is pretty much irrelevant to my experiences here. I’ve driven once and it wasn’t in the city, and it was only for a mile or two.
The subway is nice. It’s funny how many people you can pack into one of those things and not have anyone say a single word to another person. Then, dress people up in halloween costumes* and pack them in even tighter and you get the most friendly people on earth. Dressing up removes people’s inhibitions. Or maybe it’s that no one is thinking about work. Or both. Everyone, myself included, ought to be more friendly and talk more.
* You wouldn’t actually dress them up yourself. Let them do their own dressing.
I’ve spent way too much money on food. It’s been really good food though. There are fast food restaurants, but when you’re hungry and in a hurry you don’t have to go to one of those unless you really want to. There are so many options. And they’re all so much better than fast food. I guess there are always alternatives to fast food, no matter where you are. The difference here is that there’s far more alternatives. I quite like it.
In summary, I’ve given a pretty bad summary of my experiences here so far. I think I’m okay with that. I am, after all, posting every day this month. More experiences are bound to come out.
I have 5 things to do today. 11 things, actually, if I count all the things I have to do, but I’m not going to do that. I’m just counting 5 of them. That seems much more reasonable.
Because I know you want to know: today I’m getting a haircut, buying some blue socks, doing laundry, writing this blog post, working on a website, and calling a bunch of people on the phone. That’s 6 things. I’m really good at counting.
If you’ve skipped ahead and read the tags at the bottom of this post you might notice a funny acronym. If you remember, this funny acronym was a part of my posts last November.
It’s true. It’s NaBloPoMo time: National Blog Posting Month. And I’m doing it again. I’m going to post every single day this month.
On my last post a few people suggested that I ought not to wait so long between posts. Perhaps by the end of this month I’ll be getting the opposite requests.
Anyway, I better get going on the 4 things I have to do today. Or however many it is.
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
– C. S. Lewis
3 weeks ago I was happy, albeit quite stressed. Over the course of the month prior to that I took my consulting (web dev work) full time. It was quite fun. Life was great.
It’s interesting how things can change in an instant. No, things didn’t get worse. Life is still great. It’s just a bit different than before. One moment I was planning on staying where I was, perhaps buying a house in Salt Lake City early next year. The next moment brought new choices and new opportunities that, if chosen, would take me far from where I was.
Not that any given moment is really that different. We always have new choices to make, new opportunities to take advantage of. It just so happens that that which was presented to me 3 weeks ago was not what I expected that day.
I’ve been in New York for 1 week now. Well, that’s not really true, but I don’t need get all technical and explain that I’ve been in both New York and Connecticut so really I’ve been in this region of the country for a little over a week, and not in New York itself. Anyway, I got a job in New York and moved. Sort of. I am only here until Nov. 8th, at which point I return to Salt Lake to pack up my stuff and come back out here to move into the place I hope I soon find.
The company is located in New York, with a few different offices. The office in Manhattan is where I will be working. Therefore, I will be living in or around Manhattan. Yeah, I know. From Eagle Mountain, Utah to Manhattan. Huge change. But not really. Yes, I need to learn the Subway. Yes, there’s gazillions of people. Yes, it’s more expensive. But, on a very basic level it’s exactly the same: there are people who live and work and travel. While there are drastic differences, that one level is essentially the same everywhere. Because of that, I’ve never been anywhere that really shocked me in the way that people tell me it will.
Yes, there are shocking things. You could easily say that the beauty of the east coast is shocking. In the same way, seeing the mountains in the Salt Lake valley is shocking if you’ve never seen them. But shocking in a way that I have a hard time adjusting? Never.
In the same way, but reversed, while my plans have changed, my actual life goals have not changed. I would have not have taken the job had it required a change in my life long goals. :)
Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called “geocaches” or “caches”) anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and “treasure,” usually toys or trinkets of little value. Today, well over 800,000 geocaches are registered on various websites devoted to the pastime. Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.
- Geocaching, Wikipedia
I’d been wanting to go geocaching for quite some time, but didn’t have a GPS device, until now. Well, up until a few months ago when I got an iPhone. This possibility didn’t dawn on me until last week. So I went on Saturday.
It was a bit of a pain with the the phone. I had to go to geocaching.com, put in a zip code, find a cache, write down the latitude and longitude, exit safari, fire up google maps, and type in the latitude/longitude. This page explains the process in more detail. I’m very excited about an official geocaching.com iPhone app to be released soon.
One funny thing with the GPS/Google Maps on the iPhone: the little blue dot.
Yes, the little blue dot. It’s hilarious.
Not inherently so, but somehow it still manages to pull off a striking sense of humor.
The little blue dot marks your location. When the iPhone was new (and if you were really irresponsible and stared at google maps while driving) it was fun to watch the little blue dot move along the streets. “Look! There we are! That dot is us! We’re on the freeway!” As if you didn’t already know your precise location (unless you weren’t watching the road, of course).
Then it got more fun: “Hey! Look! The little blue dot isn’t on the road anymore. It’s driving through those buildings! hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahaha!!!!!1!!11!1!” As if this were the funniest thing ever.
And it totally was the funniest thing, ever.
So, while geocaching I noticed that they fixed this little problem. Now, there’s a new problem. See, we looked up the latitude/longitude for a geocache and drove to the location. The location, however was off. Google Maps placed it on the road when it wasn’t on the road. The reason for this is because Google Maps on the iPhone is made for directions and driving and the like. Not geocaching. So if a location is not on the street, but close to a street, it thinks it should be on the street. So it moves it.
The little blue dot also stays stubbornly on the street, even if you’re not on the street. As we walked along a ditch on a little dirt road behind some houses I watched the little blue dot have a little conversation with itself. It went something like this “I’m on the dirt road! No, I must be on the street! But I’m pretty sure I’m on the dirt road. No, it can’t be. It’s a mistake. I’m on the road. Yes. The road. Whatever.” The little blue dot jumped back and forth from the street to our actual location, repeatedly.
This new feature is especially unhelpful if, for example, you’re driving down the freeway staring at your iPhone and fly off a cliff. While the little blue dot had an argument with itself, you would be flying to your death without even knowing it. What a tragedy.
Why? Because then you’d have cheesecake! All the time!
If, that is, you had a beech tree.
Not recommended if you don’t like cheesecake, or beech trees (you tree racist!).
Discworld, “a comedic fantasy book series by the British author Terry Pratchett,” are the weirdest books I’ve ever read (listened to, actually). There’s something like 36 books and I’ve listened to two of them thus far. Beyond random and weird, they’re completely hilarious. Maybe it’s just my wacky sense of humor.
Here’s an example from the second book, The Light Fantastic:
It was a still night, tinted with the promise of dawn. A crescent moon was just setting. Ankh-Morpork, largest city in the lands around the Circle Sea, slept.
That statement is not really true.
On the one hand, those parts of the city which normally concerned themselves with, for example, selling vegetables, shoeing horses, carving exquisite small jade ornaments, changing money and making tables, on the whole, slept. Unless they had insomnia. Or had to get up to go to the lavatory. On the other hand, many of the less law-abiding citizens were wide awake and, for instance, climbing through windows that didn’t belong to them, slitting throats, mugging one another, listening to loud music in smoky cellars and generally having a lot more fun. But most of the animals were asleep, except for the rats. And the bats, too, of course. As far as the insects were concerned . . .
The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh some legislation was passed in attempt to put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty into reporting. Thus, if a legend said of a notable hero that “all men spoke of his prowess” any bard who valued his life would add hastily “except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a liar, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him.” Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like “his mighty steed was fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,” and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.
Quimby was eventually killed by a disgruntled poet during an experiment conducted in the palace grounds to prove the disputed accuracy of the proverb “The pen is mightier than the sword,” and in his memory it was amended to include the phrase “only if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp.”
So. Approximately sixty-seven, maybe sixty-eight percent of the city slept.
This is how I think, people. Not all the time, of course. Perhaps only sixty-seven percent of my life is spent thinking this way. Maybe.
[Yesterday], U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) announced his opposition to the $700 billion plan proposed by the Bush Administration to bailout Wall Street.
What’s your take on this huge financial bailout?
“It’s more of the same. More debt and more inflation and more pressure on the dollar. Ultimately, although the markets are responding very favorably at the moment, I think it is going to be devastating to the dollar and to our financial situation in this country.”
- Ron Paul: This Bailout Won’t Be the Last
Given that Ron Paul is one of the few living politicians who understand how government should actually function (in my so humble opinion), it’s not surprising that he makes me wish I lived in a time when those in power had no real power. However unlikely that may have ever been, there have, at least, been better times in the history of this country than now (I think everyone would at least agree with that).
So, I don’t really wish I lived in a different time. Not at all, actually. I’m glad to be living here and now. What I do wish is that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. Apparently I’m not the only one, either.
A Rasmussen Poll out today puts the support for the bailout at 7%! For any legislator to vote yes on this plan is to spit in the face of his constituents and reveal his utter contempt for the democratic process and the voice of the people. To do so would require them to utterly disavow the Constitution that they swore by oath to uphold.
- Now is the Time to Unite and Say with ONE Voice… – From the blog on campaignforliberty.com
Another excerpt from the Ron Paul interview:
Before the Depression, [the government] generally allowed these kinds of problems to unwind. They were very severe. They would last six months or a year—a lot of liquidation of debt would be wiped off the books. And then it would go back to work again. What we’ve been doing now—especially since 1971—is preventing the real liquidation of the malinvestment and the excess of debt… If this process continues, we’re going to own General Motors and Ford, then we will have to own the airlines. We are socializing our country without even a vote by the Congress. It’s a horrible situation.”
Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory.
- Henry David Thoreau
For quite a long time now I have read and listened to podcasts and articles dedicated to speculation. Speculation about upcoming products, who will win the browser war, the OS war, political races, what will happen in the next episode of a TV series (Doctor Who is the only one I’ve ever speculated about), and on and on. Speculation galore.
The speculation is important, perhaps, at least for people who work in those specific industries. I tend to think, though, that it’s all a waste of time—nothing but a huge distraction. The successful ignore the distractions and work smart.
Yes, this is an oversimplification and perhaps even speculation, but I can’t help thinking that we’d all be a bit better off if we spent less time worrying about that which is transitory. Does it really matter that much? Probably not.
I challenge you to spend a little less time on the transitory and more time on the truly meaningful: on your family, friends, and the world around you. You’ll be happier and less stressed.
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “set up a straw man,” one describes a position that superficially resembles an opponent’s actual view, yet is easier to refute, then attributes that position to the opponent.
- Straw man argument, Wikipedia
In case that description didn’t make you think of Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads, read it again. It should now.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, Microsoft has launched a new ad campaign to reclaim Windows’ supposed battered image. The response seems largely in response to Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads.
The first two ads were really weird, but I have a wacky sense of humor so I quite enjoyed them. The New Family is hilarious. As funny as I might think they are, I still don’t know why on earth they made them. They’re very random and weird.
The newest ads, released yesterday, are much better. They make owning a PC look cool again. Not that I needed any more reasons. I’ve been happy running Windows for years. Barraged as I may be by Mac lovers, I really don’t see myself switching. I won’t say I won’t switch, because it’s always possible. It’s just that right now I don’t have any compelling reason to switch. They’re both good operating systems.
Anyway, these ads are cool. I hope this will help people see through Apple’s straw man argument. They aren’t educating people about the truths of the PC. They are creating a misrepresentation of their competition, and then tearing it down. I guess it’s pretty common in advertising, but I’ve never liked it. I believe a company should and can tell people why they’re better than the competition without tearing anyone down.
Tearing someone else down to build yourself up is really just another way to express jealousy. I know all those Mac users out there are extremely jealous of my sweet Dell. Yes, it runs Windows. And I like it.
Challenges people may face when they consider making choices that matter (which I wrote about yesterday):
It’s not practical.
It won’t work.
It sounds hard.
Today I’m simply posting a rebuttal to those and similar complaints.
What we see, over and over, is that the brave but cheap leadership that leads to passionate movements always (always!) defeats the top-down, mediocre, slow-moving and very expensive techniques we all grew up with.
- Seth Godin, How to Sell a Book (or Any New Idea), free summary PDF
In other words, we don’t have to choose A or B on the basis that choosing anything else won’t make a difference.
It does matter, it does make a difference, and you can do something about it.
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
- Peter Ustinov – English actor & author (1921 – 2004)
With the upcoming election I am pretty sure I am not the only American with feelings similar to those described by Peter Ustinov.
The challenge when faced with an apparent nothing-to-choose-from situation, is to make a choice that matters. How do you make a choice that matters when your choice is “none of the above”? Choosing none of the above feels so hopeless, pathetic, futile. Choosing option A or B, on the other hand, doesn’t make you feel any better.
The answer lies in being true to yourself. Though being overly trite an answer, I actually believe what I just said. If you believe all your options are bad choices, don’t choose A because A is less bad than B, or vice versa. Choosing the least bad option in order to keep the more bad (don’t you love that? more bad? ha!) option from happening is conforming to the conformity that brought about this choice in the first place.
Also, what happened to personal accountability? If you choose a bad option because it’s not as bad as the other option, you’re still choosing badness. I’m going out on a limb here, but I think most people would agree that choosing badness is bad.
So since when is choosing bad a good thing just because the worse bad (I’m pulling out all the stops on good grammar here) didn’t get chosen? Bad is bad. If I choose bad over worse bad and bad is the result, who is responsible? If we’re talking U.S. politics here, then I am responsible because I am a voter. That’s how a democratic republic works. In a monarchy, the monarch is basically responsible for what happens in government. In a democratic republic, the leaders of the nation obviously have a lot of responsibility, but they are only there because we the voters put them there.
Ultimately, we are responsible for everything that happens in our nation.
But what if worse bad is chosen because I didn’t vote for bad? Then you’re not responsible for the worse bad. That’s good. Yay for being responsible.
I do not and cannot feel comfortable supporting “bad” in any form. Where do you stand? It’s your choice and your responsibility. We all have to answer for our responsibilities. Somehow, I don’t think explaining that you supported bad because bad was better than worse bad will go over too well.
P.S. Feel free to write my name in for president when you vote in November. I promise to use good grammar in any speeches I give. Well, maybe.
P.P.S. A choice has to be made, a vote cast. Making no choice at all isn’t any better than choosing a bad option. By not voting at all you’re not opposing badness, which is still bad. To shun badness you have to oppose it.
… people have an unjustified tendency to assume that a person’s actions depend on what “kind” of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces influencing the person.
- Wikipedia, Fundamental Attribution Error
I would like to suggest that the fundamental attribution error relates, not only to the actions of individuals or groups (group attribution error), but also to their opinions, and knowledge.
Here’s a very simple example. I was told today that one should not put egg shells down a garbage disposal in the sink. I thought this was a ridiculous thought. I told the person who told me (who heard it from someone else, who heard it from someone else) that it was absolutely crazy.
I decided to do some research on the internet in order to find out who the crazy one really was. I discovered that I’m not crazy, but also that those who hold the egg shell theory as fact may not be so crazy either. And not because it’s true. I still don’t think it is.
Here’s a few things I found in very short research:
Plumbers say not to put eggs down the disposal.
Many plumbers also say not to put anything down at all.
Water is OK to put down the drain. (whew!)
People think ice and egg shells sharpen garbage disposal blades.
Egg shells supposedly help clean a garbage disposal.
Lots of pasta down a garbage disposal is not good.
One guy said he’s been to garbage disposal manufactures, installed/replaced many disposal units, etc. and that egg shells are not an issue.
Too much of anything down the drain at once isn’t good.
Some thoughts from all this:
People don’t understand how sharpening a blade works. Basically, sharpening is the process of removing material from the blade in such a way that it leaves a thinner edge. The thinner the edge, the sharper the blade. You can also heat up the metal and shape it into a thinner edge. Ice in a disposal will not shave metal off the blades and it certainly doesn’t heat it up. If either of these were the case you’d have little bits of metal shards in your homemade shakes and smoothies.
Plumbers have a skewed experience. I don’t mean to suggest that their experience is wrong. Just skewed. Their experience (in my very limited knowledge of plumbers) is pretty much limited to two things: installing and fixing. When they install plumbing they don’t have to deal with clogs. When they’re fixing, there’s a good chance it’s a clog. A plumber can incorrectly assume that because many clogs have egg shells in them, you shouldn’t put eggs down the drain. The reality is probably far closer to: don’t put 4 cartons of egg shells down the drain at the same time. Or don’t put down 12 eggs plus potato skins plus spaghetti. I’m guessing many hard boiled eggs at once wouldn’t work out very well.
People’s view of life is based on their experience and what they believe of the experiences of others. Trust your own biased experiences or the skewed/biased experiences of someone else and you’ll only end up with more biased experiences. Trusting a plumber by not putting anything down the disposal probably won’t be a big deal, but other things might.
I do realize I’m making a huge generalization about plumbers. I apologize, I don’t mean to skew anyone’s view of what a plumber does or thinks. I’m merely suggesting that making judgments off of the actions, opinions, and experiences of others, while valuable, should be used with caution. One should always get as much information as possible (from the right sources) before making a judgment call. Who said it? Where did they learn it? If it’s an action, is the person shy? Confident? Stressed? Perhaps their computer blew up yesterday and they lost all their family photos. You never know.
Yes, this is an email forward. I don’t even know if the 143 days is correct. I don’t care to find out. I just liked this. That’s all.
You couldn’t get a job at McDonalds and become district manager after 143 days of experience.
You couldn’t become chief of surgery after 143 days of experience of being a surgeon.
You couldn’t get a job as a teacher and be the superintendent after 143 days of experience.
You couldn’t join the military and become a colonel after a 143 days of experience.
You couldn’t get a job as a reporter and become the nightly news anchor after 143 days of experience. BUT….
From the time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate. That’s how many days the Senate was actually in session and working. After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World, to fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan. 143 days? We all have to start somewhere. The senate is a good start, but after 143 days, that’s all it is – a start.
AND, strangely, a large sector of the American public seems to feel comfortable with this and campaigning for him.
We wouldn’t accept this in our own line of work, yet some are OK with this for the President of the United States of America?
Come on folks, we are not voting for the next American Idol.
Dear America, please don’t vote for Obama. Please.
The problem with an epidemic is that just because it’s gone doesn’t mean it will stay gone forever. Unless you developed an immunity in the first pass, you’ll probably die the second time. When it comes to epidemics, the glass isn’t half empty: it’s broken. Unless, of course, you use a glass that isn’t made of glass. I recommend plastic.
What would be better than a plastic drinking cup, though, is some sort of shield to go on my head that keeps certain things out, and alters my brainwaves, making it impossible to think specific things or sing certain songs.
The first thing I would filter out of my brain is a certain song that has long haunted not only my dreams, but every waking hour as well.
Yes, it’s true. It’s back. With vengeance. My permanent head song.
So I’m pretty sure that everyone who knows me well just read the title of this post and had one of the following thoughts: A) What? B) What?! C) I bet the recipe is disgusting.
But this actually isn’t a post with a recipe in it.
Do you know what 1080p (pronounced ten-eighty-p) is? Here’s a brief intro:
1080p is the shorthand name for a category of display resolutions. The number “1080″ represents 1,080 lines of vertical resolution (1080 horizontal scan lines), while the letter p stands for progressive scan (meaning the image is not interlaced). 1080p can be referred to as full HD or full high definition to differentiate it from other HDTV video modes. The term usually assumes a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9, implying a horizontal resolution of 1920 pixels. This creates a frame resolution of 1920×1080, or 2,073,600 pixels in total. The frame rate in Hertz can be either implied by the context or specified after the letter p, such as 1080p30, meaning 30 Hz.
- Wikipedia
For everyone who almost fell asleep reading that, many HD TVs are 1080p. It’s a hi-def thing.
So now that you know what 1080p is, at least on an introductory level, you will understand my reaction upon seeing the following title on a book in a library: “1080 Recipes.”
“Ten-eighty-p Recipes? What?! ……. oh. ha.”
I still can’t read “1080 Recipes” as it should be said: one thousand eighty recipes. I just keep saying ten-eighty.
So I suppose I could post a recipe. Here’s one of my favorites:
1. Buy vanilla ice cream.
2. Buy some really good raspberry jam.
3. Mix.
4. Enjoy.
Raspberry jam is also really good mixed into grapenuts cereal.
Take a moment and think about your best friend, or several good friends. Can you remember when you first met? Was that meeting memorable? How was it different than meeting any of the hundreds or thousands of people you’ve met since then?
More likely than not, meeting your best friend, or whoever we’re thinking about here, was just like meeting anyone else: nothing special. Perhaps you were introduced through another friend, bumped into each other at school, or maybe he/she punched you in the face.
The memories I have of my best friends are there, but faded. Best childhood friend: my dad took me over to his house shortly after he moved in to meet him and his family. I think I was 5 years old. There were lots of unpacked boxes in his room and all over their house. We might have played with legos. That’s about all I remember. Two friends I’ve had for 14+ years now were public enemies number 1 and 2. I couldn’t stand them, and I’m pretty sure their feelings towards me were pretty hostile, too. Of course, looking back, I have no idea why we didn’t get along. Maybe we did the first time we met? No idea. That’s not the point though.
The point is, when I look back on those first meetings, I remember very little about what actually happened. What I do remember is the outcome. I think of how it is now. Looking at those first meetings from the perspective of someone living in that same time period, nothing special happened. Looking at it from 2008, it’s quite different.
The poem is a good example. For the most splendid line becomes fully splendid only by means of all the lines after it; if you went back to it you would find it less splendid than you thought.
- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
Perhaps you’re married. Think of the first date with your spouse. Was it that different from any other date you may have been on? Probably not. But you remember it with fondness because of what your relationship has become.
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff.
- The Tenth Doctor, Doctor Who (British sci-fi TV show), in the episode “Blink”
To think of our experiences, all the people we’ve met, everyone we really know, as being part of some time line places a brick wall between us and who we are. We aren’t on some time line. Well, perhaps we are, but I don’t see it that way. I see it like this: today is the only day there is. There is no tomorrow, there is no yesterday. There is only today. All our experiences fill our life, our today. That doesn’t mean we can’t correct mistakes; it makes correcting mistakes possible. You don’t have to change the past. You can’t change it, because it doesn’t exist. The only thing you can change is what is actually real: yourself.
A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, [Human], as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. … What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then–that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it.
- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
When you reflect on what we call the past, when you remember pleasures gone by, do not wish you could go back. Remembering pleasures is what makes the pleasure full. It makes it real.
And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back–if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?
- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis (emphasis added)
I love Independence Day. No, not the movie. Today, the 4th of July. I figured today would be a good day to listen to a portion of John Adam’s biography by David McCullough. I didn’t listen to any specific part of it. I listened to the abridged version years ago and for the past few months have been listening to the 30 hour unabridged version, while also trying to listen to podcasts and other audiobooks.
I have no profound thoughts from listening to it today, though I did gain an heightened sense of appreciation for what is enjoyed here in the United States of America. I highly suggest everyone either read or listen* to the John Adam’s biography. I also suggest reading at least the first and last parts of our Declaration of Independence.
* You can get the abridged version for $7.49. And no, I don’t get any affiliate benefits of any kind from anyone buying anything linked in this post.
So a few weeks ago I bought a washer and dryer off of craigslist for $25. I only needed the washer, but the guy I bought them from told me I couldn’t take the washer unless I took the dryer too. I have no idea if the dryer even works.
I haven’t figured out what to do with it yet so I’ve just left it in the back of the truck. The last time I filled up the gas tank I reset the trip odometer or whatever it’s called. The tank is now almost empty and I’ve driven about 75 miles over what I usually do on a tank.
Reason? The dryer.
No really. The dryer. Since it’s been back there I’ve been driving more cautiously, not taking corners as fast as before and not accelerating/decelerating so quickly. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a crazy driver. With the dryer in the back I’m driving like I try to drive all the time. The dryer reminds me to drive slower when I’m in a hurry as I don’t want it sliding around in the back.
As my family and close friends will attest, I get bored a lot. It doesn’t, however, take much to remove said boredom. I’m pretty easily entertained. For example, I was bored 3 minutes ago. Now I’m not. I was bored the other day, then I went outside and sat on the porch and was bored no more.
I’m far from an avid moviegoer. The number of times I’ve heard “what? you haven’t seen ___?! how have you lived?” numbers in the hundreds. I can probably name all of the movies that I have not liked… Mission to Mars, The Brothers Grimm, some movie that was so terrible I blocked the name from my memory, High School Musical and… okay no I can’t name them all, but it’s not that many.
Okay I must confess: I’ve never actually seen High School Musical. I know I would detest it though. I heard part of it from another room and that was enough. I am not a fan of musicals. Except Newsies. Newsies is cool.
Other people do like musicals though. And that’s ok, so long as I’m not roped to a chair in front of the screen with my eyelids taped open.
Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create.
- Calvin Coolidge, speech, Jul. 25, 1924
From time to time a movie will come out that I am really excited about. So I go see it. And it’s amazing. And then because I’m all excited about it I read reviews to see what other people thought (if I happen to come across them in my daily browsing). And they didn’t like it. What? And I look at the box office results, and it’s going crazy. Apparently people like it, so why are most of the reviews negative? I don’t get it. Have professional movie critics seen too many movies? Is there something in a movie critics’ job description that states they must be negative? What’s more interesting is that if the movie does get super popular the reviews seem to change from negative to positive (Napoleon Dynamite anyone?). Maybe I’m wrong? I don’t actually have any data to prove this; it’s just my perception. Also, I’m not sure if that’s a correct use of a semi-colon.
Any guesses about where this all came from? If you read my last post you’ll have a pretty good chance of getting it right. Prince Caspian was really good. The 18 people I saw it with liked it too, but the reviews I’ve read have been rather negative. Why? Well obviously they didn’t like it. No big deal. Some people are bound to have differing opinions, and who am I to say they’re not just as valid, or more so, than mine?
I guess my issue here comes from the word critic in “movie critic.” I am often guilty of being critical, skeptical, and doubting. Perhaps I am just being critical here, I won’t argue with you on that one. I don’t expect every movie or book review to be glowing with praise, that’s just silly. We read reviews because we value other’s opinions. I read a few reviews this week about an episode of a TV show I saw (Doctor Who). I didn’t think the episode was super amazing, but I did enjoy it. As I read the reviews (all negative) I found myself liking the episode less and less. I started thinking of more reasons why the episode was rubbish. An enjoyable experience (watching the episode) quickly became a painful experience.
What on earth. Did you catch that? A decently positive experience was turned into a negative one by something that happened after it. History was changed. The present moment changed the past.
More on this in an upcoming post with a few C.S. Lewis quotes from Out of the Silent Planet, which I recently finished.
Edited to add: apparently I read all the wrong reviews. Prince Caspian is getting good reviews. So like I said was possible: I’m wrong. Nothing new there. Still though, it’s not the first time this has seemed to happen. Also, my main point of this post was about cynicism and what it does, but the post got long and I never reached the conclusion. So I split in two.
So a few weeks ago I announced to a bunch of my friends that we should all go see Prince Caspian on opening night. So we did. We ended up with a group of about 19 people. We went to a 12:15 AM showing. I chose the 12:15 showing because it was a DLP (digital projection) screen and I like digital better than film projection. Not only was the picture quality better, but the 12:15 showing had another benefit over the other early showings. What was it? The people waiting for the other early showings had to wait in lines. We just went right in and waited in the theater! It was really fun just hanging out, sneaking in food, dancing in the aisles, and the movie was good too.
So go see it! The movie was awesome. Yes, they added a lot to the movie that wasn’t in the book, but I still liked it. Just don’t go see it expecting it to be exactly like the book and you’ll enjoy it.
So one of my friends was over here today (yesterday, technically) and we both thought “a shake sounds really good right now. so does food.” So we got in my truck and made the very long drive to the restaurant about half a block down the street. After eating, we drove back. Half a block.
Yes, we should have walked. I do spend most of my time in front of a computer, but I still think I could have managed walking half a block. Granted, we didn’t know where we were going to eat when we got in the car, but still… I would like to think I’m not that lazy.
In my constant struggle to have a balance life, I usually don’t have a balanced life. It usually goes something like this: read the books I want to read, read all the blog feeds I want to read, post on my blog a few times, realize that I haven’t worked in a few weeks days. Work. Repeat. After I’ve repeated that a few times I stop reading just about everything (I can never completely stop) and work a lot. After a few weeks I realize that I’m really far behind on everything I want to read so I catch up and it starts all over. And that’s why I haven’t blogged much recently (and you know I usually blog so much).
I do, for the record (whatever that means… who’s record?), believe I have improved in the whole balanced life thing this year. At least it feels that way (so it’s probably true).
A few other things:
My iPod nano locked up (all I did was push the play button on an audiobook). Wouldn’t respond. Reset procedures did nothing. I took it to the Apple store and they gave me a brand new one. No more little dents in the side!
I went to Sacramento a few weeks ago for the Sacramento lindy exchange. For the past 4 years I’ve said “I’m not driving there again!” and every year I do it again. This time I mean it: I’m not driving there again next year! The dancing was fun though. Also, we went to the Sacramento Temple! That was sweet. The weather was beautiful.
Maybe I’ll post again tomorrow (don’t count on it, but you never really know).
I just had a really weird thought that will probably make everyone’s brains explode. You know how in math (and programming) you’re supposed to calculate the innermost parentheses first? Well, if a sentence were structured that way it’d be really hard to read: (I did, however, buy chips and salsa! (I haven’t bought shoes in a really long time. (except I didn’t really because (and bought some shoes (I went to the store (The other day)))))).
My birthday was last week. I’m now just a little bit older, though I don’t feel older. The day was a good day. My sister brought me breakfast and balloons, the guys I work with got me a shiny new black 8GB iPod nano, and I had a splendid dinner with my family.
In my classic new gadget fashion, I managed to have it drop out of my shirt pocket and chip it a bit, but no real harm done. Perhaps it’s because I drop small things a lot, or that I’m just not as picky as others, but a chip or two in it doesn’t bother me at all.
I’m feeling a bit too lazy to link to past posts right now, but if you’ve been reading this blog for a while then you know I really love to read. I especially like audiobooks because I spend a lot of time driving. My new favorite thing is audible. Have I mentioned audible before? I’m on their Gold plan at $14.95 a month, which gives me 1 credit per month. Most books are only 1 credit. Anyway, having all my audiobooks on the iPod nano is absolutely fantastic. I used to listen to them on my ancient iPod shuffle, but it didn’t quite work right. When I would pause the book and played it again later I’d have to rewind for a long time to get back to where I was. That was probably because I’d dropped it in water a few times. It was never the same since the first time it got soaked. heh. My goal is to keep the new nano out of water.
I kind of feel like rambling on and on, but since I have nothing more to say it’d be pretty boring. So instead I’m going to bed.
Oh P.S. My parents got me the collected letters of C.S. Lewis books. I’m in heaven! Books books books. Now if I could only be paid to read.
My mother is amazing. I was home last night and I watched her cook eggs, bacon, waffles, oatmeal, toast, and set the table. All in 15 minutes. I did help with the toast and bacon, but still… it might have taken her 18 minutes without my help.
Today, a coworker got up off his computer, proclaiming “I’m going to go make toast.” He returned 30 minutes later, having made toast and eating it. 30 minutes. He was nice enough to make toast for me and another guy, but still… 30 minutes.
If I could somehow package and sell my mother’s super powers (without depriving her of them, of course) I’d become a billionaire in no time at all.
Doesn’t the title of this post sound thrilling? Sorry, but the actual post isn’t nearly as thrilling as the title. No matter, the important thing here is that it’s snowing in Eagle Mountain, Utah. The snowflakes are huge.
Yes, of course I know that that snowflake is really hundreds of snowflakes clumped together. That’s not the point. The point is that it’s huge! That’s my camera case, by the way.
I love snow. Driving in it isn’t always fun, but it sure is pretty.
Over 200 New Yorkers recently walked into one of the busiest train stations in the world, New York’s Grand Central Station, and at exactly 2:30 pm, all froze in place. There’s one guy in the video who froze just as he was stooping down to pick up some scattered papers. Talk about commitment.
Approximately 57 thousand minutes ago (6 years, 6 months) I was laying in a reclining chair, watching blood in a tube. No, I’m not describing a dream. I didn’t get to watch very long. I fell fast into a drug-induced sleep, my eyes closing involuntarily. I remember trying to itch my nose, but for some reason my arm kept getting pushed back down. I was having my wisdom teeth out. Thankfully, I don’t remember much about the surgery.
The next thing I knew I was being led down the hall by a nurse. I could barely walk. I was laid down on a little recovery bed, I have no idea how long I was there. I remember waking up, my hands and arms outstretched in the air, trying to find the mouse and keyboard to my computer.
Even though I was drugged up, I quickly remembered where I was. I sat up. There was a window, and I looked through it. I saw a nurse. I remember feeling stupid, thinking she was probably wondering what in blue blazes my arms were doing flailing in the air. I wonder if I’d been trying to type.
I’ve loved reading for as long as I can remember (I suppose I should ask my parents when I actually started to enjoy reading). When I got into computer programming (circa 1996) I kind of forgot that I liked books about other things. I remember reading a lot of non-computer books from 1996-2001, but the more entrenched I became in programming, the less I read other things.
I like to think that had I been reading some science fiction book at the time of the oral surgery that I might have woken up, sword and shield flying around defeating some horrible enemy instead of looking for the mouse and keyboard. Then again, perhaps I was the geek hero in the dream. Who knows.
In the year 2005 I had a realization: “hey, books are awesome.” Some people can manage 100 books in a year. I’m not there yet, but working on it. I’ve managed to finish 6 books so far this year (I think I read 12-14 books last year, 16 the year before that). At this rate I’ll only have read 36+ books by the end of this year. I really gotta make more time to read! My goal is 80 books this year. We’re in the 8th week of 2008, leaving just over 44 weeks left. That’s almost 2 books a week. Yikes! This is going to be fun!
For the record, I think it’s completely fair to count audio books as “read.” 2 of the books I’ve “read” so far this year were audio books.
Anyway, so about dreaming. Those 2 audio books were book 1 and book 2 of the Artemis Fowl series. Since I started listening to them I’ve noticed that I’ve remembered far more of my dreams. While I haven’t woken up wielding any imaginary weapons, the dreams I’ve remembered have been more interesting (though still weird). I wonder if it’s the specific genre of books (Science Fiction / Fantasy) or the fact that they were audio books? I read a fairly wide variety of books, from religion to history to fiction to self improvement; I don’t remember the science fiction books I actually read, or the history books I listened to as having an impact on my dreams. Perhaps I forgot or it’s the combo of audio book + science fiction/fantasy. Anyone else noticed anything similar?
P.S. A podcast I listen to, Windows Weekly, was offering an Audible promo for a free audio book. Anyone can use it. You just go to http://www.audible.com/windows/ and you get a free audio book. You have to sign up for a monthly subscription, but there’s nothing stopping anyone from getting the free audio book and then canceling before your card is charged the following month. I’m quite excited to have the subscription though, so I’m keeping it.
Several years ago (3? 4?) I wrote a tiny little Windows application that plays an MP3 file at a specified time of day. That’s all it does. Nothing fancy. You have to select an MP3 file, type the time of day precisely (eg. “6:00 AM”), and check a little checkbox. I’ve opened up to 50 instances of the little app at a time and set them all manually to play some MP3 file at different times to ensure I’ll wake up. It works.
There are many applications out there that do alarms much better than this little thing, but I recently got an email requesting it so I thought I’d share. Heck, notwithstanding all the fancy alarm apps out there I still use this excruciatingly simple thing. The simplest solution isn’t always the best solution, but is often the most used.
I was driving to a dance in Logan, Utah, listening to Artemis Fowl, book 2 in audio book format from audible.com on Friday night. I was in Sardine Canyon, in a section of the canyon containing signs that said “deer migration area next 3 miles.” I didn’t actually see those signs that night though. Speed limit was 60 MPH. Out of the corner of my eye I saw 2 deer. At least I think it was 2 deer. Maybe it was only 1. I slammed on the brakes, but it was too late.
The deer was lying in the middle of the road, not in traffic. It was very dead. I looked at the front of my truck, saw that the radiator was hissing from what looked like a dent. It didn’t seem to be gushing radiator fluid so I took off, hoping I’d get to Logan without the engine overheating. I kept my eye on the temperature indicator and it never moved at all. I got to the dance and got out and looked again in better light. The radiator was still hissing, but nothing was dripping on the ground. I parked and turned off the engine. It was then that all the radiator fluid decided to leak out. I guess something about the circulation in the radiator kept it from leaking while it was running? However it happened, I’m just glad it didn’t leak until I got to where I was going.
I spent all of Saturday morning and most of the afternoon on the phone with State Farm insurance. I have to pay a $100 deductible and get a paid for rental car to boot (time will tell if this will make my rates go up). Logan is a small city and all the auto repair shops were closed. I called the Toyota dealership in Logan and found out what repair shop they use and with the help of a friend’s dad I got it towed there. I just left it in their parking lot and worked everything out over the phone this morning. Finding a rental car was quite difficult. Everywhere was either closed or completely out of cars! I finally found a car at Avis. I drove home in a nice Hyundai Sonata. I took the pictures on Saturday.
Did the dancing make it worth all the trouble? Well, no, but I don’t think any amount of good dancing would make it worth hitting a deer. The dancing was fun.
I found my camera (der, it was a few weeks ago, but I’m still excited about it)! I thought I’d lost it several months ago. I’d given it up for gone. I even let a friend borrow the battery charger, telling her that she could just keep it since I would probably never find my camera. I think I found it two days later. I should have let someone take the battery charger sooner! In commemoration of the camera that was once lost, but is now found: a (fairly boring) photo.
This was taken over at a friend’s house, where I spend the majority of my time working.
I finished The Time Machine by H.G. Wells the other day. This is the second book I’ve read by him, the first being The War of the Worlds. I quite like his writing style. The Time Machine, as I understood it, is more of a political statement than a science fiction book about time travel. It’s a warning to humanity that this quest for the perfect world, the quest to remove all hardship will backfire if done in the way it’s currently being handled.
H.G. Wells wrote the book in the late 1800s and saw then this trend towards all play and no work. It’s worse now. Think about all our modern inventions: cars, planes, computers, microwave ovens, refrigerators, heating, air conditioning, TV, iPods, bread makers, etc. All these things can make life easier and can even allow us to spend more time on what matters most to us. But where does the luxury stop? If the current course follows it won’t be too long before everything is all taken care of for us. What happens when so much is done for us that we forget to do things any other way? What happens if it all goes away? With all the computerized advances cars are making, they’re getting harder to fix. I don’t even know how to fix a traditional car without any computers in it, let alone these new amazing pieces of machinery.
With all the technological and even biological advances we are making, we would be wise to learn how to live without it all. Life without all our present luxuries (for that is what they are) is not frightening if you’re prepared.
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
- Sun-Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter II. Waging War
… and endorsed Dr. Ron Paul. This time I’m mentioning Ron Paul again because that is what us Ron Paul supporters do (mention him a lot. have you read what he stands for yet?). I really didn’t quote it again to go on about that. If you spend any significant amount of time on the internet you already know all about him (but if you don’t, then you should probably find out). Okay really, I’m done with that.
So I was thinking about that quote from The Art of War and since I’m not exactly, and am certainly not planning to be, a general in a war it’s kind of useless to read the book only to learn about war. It’s far more useful a book to apply to work, education, dating (kidding! sort of!), and grocery shopping (why not?). Basically, just life in general. So let’s try it shall we?
There is no instance of a person having benefited from…
… prolonged decision making [when the outcome isn't that important anyway].
… prolonged TV watching.
… prolonged shoe shopping.
See how easy that is? Okay, maybe that last one only applies to shopping-haters such as myself, but you get the idea. Also, I’m sure someone could argue the other two, but I’m not here to do that. I’m really only saying that I need to stop prolonging all my decision making. Seriously, most of the things I have to decide aren’t that big of a deal, yet I take forever to make up my mind. I put off the decision until the last possible moment, sometimes even farther, causing much grief.
Okay, a sort of related question for anyone out there reading. What do you to organize your life? I tried a day planner type thing, but I refuse to carry them around so they’re utterly useless to me. I don’t like carrying stuff around with me. If it’s not my phone, wallet, keys, or iPod (an old shuffle! whoo!), then I don’t like carrying it. Currently, I try to remember everything. I put some reminders in my phone, but my phone is kind of crappy. I use Backpack and Remember The Milk (along with twitter) to send me text message reminders, but nothing has really clicked for me to the point where I can’t live without it.
I’m thinking a better phone would really help. Something with really good calendaring. iPhone? Treo? Blackberry? Something else? What do ya’ll think? Sorry for the rambling-ness of this post. Your suggestions/comments/jokes are appreciated.
I think I have some sort of disease: I can’t stop starting new books! I’m reading 9 books right now. Yes, reading multiple books at the same time means I finish them all at a slower rate, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s so much fun! Here’s my currently reading list:
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
The Art of War by Tzu Sun
The Alchemist by Ben Jonson
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
Gandhi An Autobiography by Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi
Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Positive Imaging: The Powerful Way to Change Your Life by Norman Vincent Peale
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
I started reading the first 4 on that list just yesterday. I’ve been reading A Tale of Two Cities and Positive Imaging for a very long time now, but I’m still plugging away. I have a feeling Gandhi’s autobiography is going to take me a really long time. It’s a big book.
Anyway, the main reason for this post is because of something I read today in The Art of War:
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
- Sun-Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter II. Waging War
No benefit from prolonged warfare? Sounds like the United States’ current situation in the middle east. Perhaps President Bush could learn a thing or two from this book. Then again, I think trying to win a war that can’t be won isn’t a very bright idea. We should be getting out of there instead. Too bad nobody really wants to do that.
Oh wait, except this one guy, I hear he’s running from President or something?
Both Jefferson and Washington warned us about entangling ourselves in the affairs of other nations. Today, we have troops in 130 countries. We are spread so thin that we have too few troops defending America.
- Ron Paul
I don’t think I’ve ever posted anything about balboa, the dance. I’ve never posted about it because I don’t ever do it, despite it being a very popular swing dance. People have tried pressuring me to learn it, but my interest in anything but watching it has been low. Balboa is typically danced to fast music and when the music is fast I don’t know how I could be happier than doing anything other than lindy hop and partner charleston. Balboa does look cool though.
Here’s a balboa clip from the Rhythmic Arts Festival I attended over New Years.
What’s funny is that I’ve seen a lot of balboa competitions, but the only ones I’ve had fun watching were at the Rhythmic Arts Festival this year and last.
Justin posted his twitter stats last week and I was insanely jealous. Okay, maybe not jealous, but insane? Totally. No really, I thought “hey, that’s cool.” The script he linked to was for OS X, which I don’t use so I waited. Today I found a site that did it online. The stats are far uglier than Justin’s so I’m still jealous (at least still insane), but they work.
In wondering what to write today I came across this quote, by myself:
I’ve mentioned before that I have had, at times (every single time), a hard time waking up in the morning. Actually, that’s a little misleading. It doesn’t matter what time of day I wake up. It’s always hard.
So yesterday I woke up early! It was a holiday, no work! Independence Day! Whoo hoo! My alarm went off at 7:45 AM, I jumped out of bed and got on the computer. Then, I had this overpowering urge to go back to bed. But it wasn’t really overpowering because I overpowered the overpowering feeling, thus causing the overpowering feeling to not be overpowering because I was overpowering it with overpowering thoughts.
I wrote that in July 2007 and saved it in a draft post. For all I know I changed it a bit and actually posted it, but I’m not gonna go look for it.
I’m posting it now because I read it and laughed at myself. I know, so very humble.
No really, I’m posting it because I’m going to bed earlier tonight (I’m actually going to bed when it’s nighttime) than I have for the past two or three weeks. I figure I need some pretty overpowering thoughts to overpower the overpowering feeling with which I’ll feel overpowered (but not really because I’ll overpower it) when my alarm goes off. In other words, this post is a reminder to myself of what I am capable of: waking up without pressing snooze 4 gajillion times.
Posted by Ryan
June 24, 2009 
According to the weather app on my phone, it’s currently snowing in the great outdoors. I actually noticed this by looking out the window before I looked at my phone.
So a few weeks ago I announced to a bunch of my friends that we should all go see Prince Caspian on opening night. So we did. We ended up with a group of about 19 people. We went to a 12:15 AM showing. I chose the 12:15 showing because it was a DLP (digital projection) screen and I like digital better than film projection. Not only was the picture quality better, but the 12:15 showing had another benefit over the other early showings. What was it? The people waiting for the other early showings had to wait in lines. We just went right in and waited in the theater! It was really fun just hanging out, sneaking in food, dancing in the aisles, and the movie was good too.
