Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

Hello 2009!

Random Thoughts

Welcome 2009.  I am really glad to see you, as long as you turn out to be better than 2008.  Sure, 2008 started off well enough, there were even several pleasant points, but then like the bitch that she is 2008 turned on me.  Fuck you 2008!  Fuck!  You!

So, 2009, since 2008 has left me unemployed and broke, I’m hoping you can help me out.  Speak sweat nothings to me, 2009.  Tell me that everything is going to be alright…

Anyway, looking back at the start of 2008, I did indeed write less checks, I did continue to play betas and not buy MMOs, I did play more console games, there were more superhero books, and business did look good right up until the train wreck that has been the last three months of the year.  Looking as my resolutions… well, I did rake the yard once and I bagged some leaves because Georgia didn’t lift its burn ban, but right now the back yard is nothing but leaves.  I did not build the bar, mostly because I never had the extra cash to buy counter tops.  But I did manage to buy a lot less crap this year than I have in previous years because Netflix is awesome.  With their streaming service and our media PC, and now using the Xbox 360, we’ve watched tons of movies without buying very many at all.  Essentially, for the price of one new DVD a month ($15), we get to watch unlimited streamed movies and rotate 2 physical discs through the mail.  We did buy more books this year than previous years, but we spent far less on books that we would have on DVDs.

Oh, and Fred Thompson did not become President, so I did not eat my hat.

Where do I see 2009 going?  Well… I’m still looking for work, so I’ll be spending all of January trying to find a good job.  If I make it to the end of January without finding a good one, I will find a bad one.  2009 looks like its going to be a rebuilding year, like 2001.  After a period of unemployment, I’ll wind up taking a job I don’t want that I’m far overqualified for and begin to slowly claw my way back up the wage ladder.  My first ladder climb lasted 4 years… this one lasted 8… so maybe my next climb will last 16 and I won’t be unemployed again until I’m 50.  Or maybe I’ll do something else… we’ll just have to wait and see…

100 Push-ups

Random Thoughts

As another year draws to a close, I again find myself still not in as good a shape as I’d like to be.  I mean, I’m not morbidly obese or facing serious health issues… and if the zombie apocalypse comes, I am confident that I could fight off the hordes of the undead and be able to outrun them when needed.  However, while sheer will and adrenaline can get you through many ordeals, it would be nice to be in better overall shape.

So, to that end I have (once again) decided to try to get more healthy.  Since many of my previous attempts has failed, I am going to use an approach that has worked in other areas of my life.  See… the problem is that my lack of good health can actually be chalked up to a large number of bad habits, and rather than to simply try to cram a new lifestyle on top of or around my current one, I need to identify my bad habits and break them one by one, and to instill new habits one by one.

About a year ago I broke my habit of drinking sodas.  I was literally drinking a half dozen cans of soda a day.  The first step was to cut out caffeine, so I switched from Coke to Sprite.  After I got used to that, I switched to water, and sometimes lemonade (Crystal Light to be exact).  Overall, dropping soda for water caused me to drop about ten pounds, maybe fifteen.

My next step is to add in a new habit.  My goal is to do 100 push-ups a day.  That is in a 24 hour period.  Right now, it takes nearly twelve hours for me to do my 100 push-ups.  I can do 10 at a time easily, and I can do 20 at a time alright, but beyond 20 in a row my arms get tired.  So I do 20 when I can, and 10 when I can’t, and take long rests in between.  My goal is to be able to do the 100 push-ups in a couple or three minutes.

That’s where I am… I’ll post updates as I feel inspired to.

Doing My Part

Random Thoughts

Today I loaded up the car with all the things I’ll never sell at my garage sales: 3 monitors, 2 printers, and 2 scanners.  They were all old.  The monitors were not LCD or Plasma, they are 15″ and 17″ tubes.  The printers were an old EPSON and an HP, both with printing speeds of about 1 page per minute, and requiring old ink cartridges that are getting harder and harder to find.  The scanners ran about a page a minute as well… or rather a page every two minutes since they don’t have feeders and you have to manually change pages.  They all functioned, however, and so I was loathe to just throw them away and have them wind up in a landfill.  Most places won’t take them for free, asking you to pay anywhere from five to twenty-five dollars per item to “recycle” electronics, though I suspect many places are just taking the money to offset the cost of landfilling the items and make a little profit to boot.

But today I took my treasure trove of unwanted goods to a local place that was running a one day collection of small electronics.  They were sorting them, palleting them and trundling them off for donation and auction.  In other words, asking for your old junk that someone else might want and trying to keep them out of the landfill if they can.

So, feeling pretty good about clearing out a good bit of storage space without dropping it into a dumpster, I decided that I should blog today and once again pimp out GreenDimes and urge people to do their part to eliminate waste.

Back when I lived in an apartment complex, they would keep trash cans next to the mailboxes specifically for people to dump their junk mail into.  It would be overflowing in a couple of days, often just after one.  So much unwanted crap gets mailed to people, and it just goes in the garbage.  When I bought my own house, in only took a month or two for the junk mailers to find me.  Soon I was bringing in an armload of mail each day, of which maybe one or two items a day were actually anything I wanted to see.  At first I decided to try to fight the glut myself.  I called the companies, who would direct me to other companies, who would promise me I was being removed.  For the first year, I fought the good fight, but I was losing.  The mail didn’t stop.

Then I found GreenDimes.  It was recommended to me by a friend, and I figured that twenty bucks was worth giving it a shot.  I am so supremely happy with the service, that I highly recommend it to everyone.  They have been far more successful at getting me (and the previous owners of my house) removed from mailing lists, and that combined with my switching to paying all of my bills online, I actually get no mail at all a few days each week now.  I still do get a few local mailers, and I even use them… see, when I get mailers or coupons once or twice a week, I actually read them, unlike when I was getting eight to ten a day and would put them straight into the recycle bin or trash can.

Sure, some people might argue that I am missing out on things by not getting junk mail… but seriously, we call it junk mail for a reason.  Arguing in favor of junk mail is like arguing in favor of email spam.  Does anyone actually think email spam is a good thing?

Anyway, overall cutting out the junk makes me feel good, and I would highly recommend it to everyone.

Times are Changing

Random Thoughts

There are two days out of the year that I hate.  One in the beginning of Daylight Saving Time and the other is the end of Daylight Saving Time.

I really wish the United States would do away with it.  Its rubbish.  The only thing is really does is confuse people, make them anxious and stressed, and throw off their sleep schedules.  Sure, the extra hour in the fall is great, but that lost hour in the spring is dreadful.

Anyway… don’t forget to check all your clocks.  Sync up with the Naval clock here.

October`s End

Random Thoughts

Halloween.

It is my favorite holiday, and it marks the end of my favorite month.  Tomorrow is November.  Tonight, I’ve got people coming over to the house, where we will hide in the basement watching scary movies.

This October has been a roller coaster for me.  My birthday, Halloween, and all the usual stuff has been good, but I also became unemployed, which sucked.  Tomorrow is November.  Thirty days of possible unemployment, and thirty days of participating in the NaNoWriMo.  The bad and the good.

Tonight is Halloween.  Tomorrow is November.

A Dream Deferred

Random Thoughts

Langston Hughes once posed the question in a poem, “What happens to a dream deferred?”

The search for a new job is never easy.  The hardest part of it is finding work you love to do in an industry you love working for.  Over the past four years I have learned that one thing I love to do is program, and more specifically, I love programming dynamic tools over programming static solutions.  You see, I’d rather give someone a tool they can use to get their own answers than to give them the answers.  When you give a person answers, later, if the specifications change, you have to give them new answers, but if you originally gave them a tool, then they can tweak the tool to the new specifications and get their own answers.

A couple of weeks ago I had a job interview.  It was literally, my dream job.  As best as I could understand it from the interview I had, they wanted tools integration between purchased applications that would allow them to pull customized reports to support job functions.  This is pretty much exactly what I have been doing for the last four years, and I loved doing it.  My only problem in my last position was that I didn’t like the industry: telecommunications.  But this new job, being as I said it was my dream job, was in the gaming industry.  A company developing an MMO was looking for someone to do tools integration, custom reporting and web design.  I nearly messed my pants.

So, I suppose you can imagine my disappointment when I learned that of the seven people who interviewed for the position, three were asked back for a second interview and I was not one of them.  Now I am faced with a couple of weeks of interviews for companies in industries at least as uninteresting to me as telecommunications, and all doing work I’m not particularly enthusiastic about doing.

What exactly does happen to a dream deferred?  I guess I’m about to find out…

Choose Your Own Zombie Adventure

Random Thoughts

The Outbreak is an interesting bit of work.  Essentially, its a short film about people during a zombie uprising.  But rather than write just one story and film it, they wrote “all” the stories and filmed them.  From their website:

The Outbreak is an interactive movie. At certain points of the movie, you will be prompted to make a choice — These choices will determine your survival.

As an example, the very first choice you must make is whether or not to interfere when one of the people in your group is going to shoot the injured member of your group for fear he might be infected.

Very cool.

Special thanks go to my older brother for sending me the link.