A Geek's Search For Meaning

I'd do it if....

2008-12-25T22:28:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I'll think of an idea that will seem like an obvious good idea. I'll be afraid to do it though. It could be something as simple as a simple technological design change to a system I'm working on. What stands in the way of me and that change is fear of humiliation. I have thought what I am going to do out, I just can't get over that perception of risk. Usually the best thing I've found for fixing that risk perception is to write what I am going to do down in a series of steps and mull it over for a little bit. Then, if I can't find anything reasonable wrong with it, I'll do it. That's about the best I've been able to do in these situations.

Rediscovering bands I liked in the late 80s.

2007-06-19T21:45:00.000-07:00

I've been watching a lot of youtube videos of one of my favorite bands of the late 80s:

Tackhead

They are a very samply / funky / industrial act that really captured the late 80s early 90s essence of what could be done with music given the technology that was rapidly appearing at the time. This sound died though after people had to start paying for samples.

What's New In American Culture Probably Isn't Going On In America

2007-04-23T23:12:00.000-07:00

I was reading Blood, Bullets and Bandwidth , about the exploits of some ex-Californians running a bandwidth distributing operation in Baghdad and thought that some of the most interesting cultural developments in American culture are really going on in the expat community.

Another interesting example of this new expat culture is The Exile is a wild and bawdy romp of a magazine written by a bunch of guys living in Russia who are from California. They like their sex, drugs, and rock and roll and revel in the strangeness and differentness of post-soviet Russia.

American culture has stagnated to some degree. Popular music hasn't changed much since the early 1990s. In general I see a lot of dissatisfaction and boredom in the lives of the people I know and meet at parties. Expats have broken out of this and have connected with the vibrant modernizing and optimistic cultures of the rest of the world while those in the U.S work harder for less in an environment that could best be described as a very complicated game that is no longer enjoyable.

Thrown out of wack

2007-02-25T20:09:00.000-08:00

I'm back! My whole late December and January were a wash -- as far as home projects go -- for various reasons. I'm more or less back to were I was productivity wise in mid-December. What is the lesson here? That stressful events can really screw things up. The important thing is to have an activity that one can indulge in that reaffirms one's self. Be it a favorite hobby, writing, etc. or a group activity with a group that is familiar and comfortable. It also helps to have a list of stuff that one was working on previous to the stressful event. By executing and continuing with this list it can help steer ones mind back to its optimal path.

Doing and Being

2006-12-18T23:03:00.000-08:00

I have been keeping pretty good track of my daily activities, as a pedantic experiment lately. I haven't come across anything startling lately, except for the fact that I do a lot of the same thing over and over again. Mostly involving sleeping, driving, keeping up with hygiene, reading blogs, eating, working and exercising with the random entertainment thrown in the middle of it. One thing that comes from cataloging my time is that I really start to appreciate how much time I spend at work. So am I my routine? Is that all the world has to show for my existence? My consumer transactions, my web hits, the work I release, the relatively small amount of social interaction that occurs between myself, my co-workers, my friends and loved ones. I guess its an important part of modesty to accept that that's all one is is the sum of one's actions and effects on the external environment. While dreaming I'm very important but reality is a lot simpler. Nothing happens unless you do something to it.

All hail the glorious R.U Sirius !

2006-12-10T23:28:00.000-08:00

Nobody embodies the fusion of geek, hippie, extropian and cyberpunk cultures like the legendary R.U Sirius. He has a radio show which I'm a regular listener of over at Modo Globo.net. It covers such topics as interviews with cyberpunk novelists, the erotic world of 1920s Weimar Germany, The legacy of Charles Manson and anything weird fun and crazy you can think of.

What's different about being older?

2006-12-06T23:36:00.000-08:00

Having been to a few birthdays recently I wanted to think about what it means to get older. How am I different than I was ten years ago. I think the biggest difference is I've settled into a routine. I like where I am and I don't really want to travel that much anymore. I find my career enjoyable, I don't want anything to change. Maybe it's just that I have more to lose psychologically from leaving my comfort zone. Then again I'm pretty spoiled. I find more and more that just collecting and cultivating the bits of creative youth still in me is very important.

The Book Of Laughter and Forgetting

2006-12-01T20:32:00.000-08:00

Started reading The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting by Milan Kundera. It's a great book. I originally found out about it by reading a forum and somebody had a quote of his in the footer of their post : "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting". Used in context, a Czech dissident is explaining why he keeps a diary of the meetings between him and fellow dissidents.

Tooth extraction nightmare

2006-09-17T06:46:00.000-07:00

I had a tooth extracted last week Tuesday, it didn't go that great, I think my roots were all twisted up. I was violently ill for about 5 days afterwards. I missed two days of work and went to the emergency room. I was so out of it with a102 fever that I didn't even look at my computer for 2 days. I completely forgot my whole life during that period and what I was doing and thinking about. It was like a mini life-reboot. Anyway, I'm better now and more or less back on track but it's as if a whole week of my life just disappeared. I don't know why but my life seems to be going faster lately. It’s probably because my life is just too much of the same right now.

I am never buying condoms at the drugstore again....

2006-09-02T22:32:00.000-07:00

So a few days ago I went down to my local drugstore which is near a low-income housing project. They have a security guard and the camera and all that jazz. I wanted to buy some condoms since I had run out. Turns out the condoms all have these cute little plastic locks on them. Sure you could tear the paper on the box and get the condoms out but noooo they have to lock them on the shelf anyway so that law abiding citizens have to call the security guard and tell them what size you want. So I ask the pharmicist to call the security guard to unlock the condoms for me. Oddly enough the locked condoms are next to the locked vizine. What the heck can you do with vizine that makes it so carefully protected? Anyway there is only one box of the kind I want. The security guy says there's one in the back. There isn't so he tells everyone in the store over the intercom. Everyone knows my size now, wonderful. A guy walks in and does a bit of mentally ill babbling at the security guard and walks off with a screwed up expression. I take my purchase and leave. I went online and bought a six pack for cheap and it arrived in 3 days. So that's it. I'm never buying condoms at the drugstore again.

Project didn't work out.

2006-08-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

I did one night of weight lifting, upper body only, and my back was screwed up for a week. If I even tense those muscles they freak out. So as an alternative plan I'll do 3 simple back excercises once a day.

Scaled back focusing project.

2006-08-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

Ok I am going to try and focus on one non work related thing. The reason I'm doing this is because mostly my weekends and free time involve reading economic and political blogs, driving around, sleeping, eating junk food, going on random short hikes and watching movies. My mail pile fills up and then I clean it out every once and a while (like once a month), i take garbage out and do the laundry. My non work life is enjoyable but stagnant and pointless.

So I guess I'll try getting back into my home gym. Yes everybody.. It's one of those dumb excercising resolutions. Very exciting isn't it? Let's see if I get anywhere with it. My first goal is to workout everyday other day for 15 minutes. This equals about 3 1/2 * 15 minutes or 52 1/2 minutes a week. I think I can do that. I'll be back to tell you how humilitating it all was in a few weeks or whether I have something to be proud of.

The passing of time

2006-04-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

Whenever birthdays, the new year, or anniversaries role around I start thinking about the passing of time. Especially as I get older, times seems to slowly start going faster. Maybe it's because I have fewer novel life experiences as I get older or that I am not particularly looking forward to getting older as much as I used to. It seems when every month and year roles around it seems to suprise me. One thing that really changed my perception of time was graduating college. All of a sudden it's just one big endless summer and the year just all blends together.

How much of our lives do we really control?

2006-04-07T23:15:00.000-07:00

I was navel gazing today and thinking about how much of our lives do we really control. My current job, living situation, health, etc is somewhat predictable given my location of geographic birth, early interests, economic circumstances, etc.

I then thought what would have made it different? If I had been raised in a hunting and gathering tribe in Papua New Guinea and then let off the bus, in the same place, with the same money and posessions on the particular day that I finished college I doubt I would have wound up in nearly the same place as I am now.

Which brings me to my point. That is the information you have access to is everything. Just look at people in North Korea, they get controlled media, they live with the knowledge that any act of disobidience will lead to a horrible death, etc. If I knew how to build a spaceship or what the price of some stocks would be in ten years the outcome of my life might be far different.

I think what overall this means is that it is important to control the information one pays attention to and chooses to believe. I therefore thank the dear reader of this blog for allowing me to add to your understanding.

Are friends too much work these days?

2006-04-06T01:47:00.000-07:00

Lately I've discovered that friends are too much work. Being married, I can just hang out with my wife and have a great time. It's tough to be bothered by people who only care about you a little. So much so that you have to work to get on their schedule and even if you do they just wind up flaking most of the time. Why even bother. I am not a drinker which makes it even more difficult. When you get together, what do you do? No drinking? It must be serious or something. Athletics seems to be a common shared passion but usually the people who I'd go hiking with are way way more in shape than I am. Some people tried kickball but that's just too much dedication.

One of the things I have tried is joining clubs and interest groups. It bores me though. That and I meet people, get to like them a little and then never see them again. That happens all the time.

When I was younger and single I built up a huge list of "friends". There was always something to do with them, which usually involved dating or trying to meet ladies in one way or another. Now with the meeting women angle gone I just couldn't care less. I still go out but only for the music and to say hi to people I've known for a long time.

I ocassionaly get invited to parties but I always go home feeling empty. I have a lot of shallow conversations and don't really like anybody enough or share enough interests to really make a connection. It would be a lot of fun to get in a conversation about high-energy physics, biological systems, economics or whatever but nobody cares.

I even tried MMORPGs and found myself, totally, completely, utterly bored. I couldn't belive in it enough to waste the amount of time that it seems they want you to waste in the game. Probably a good thing.

I have tried some online community sites that meet in real life and have had mixed results. It's better than nothing and it's probably about the best thing I've found. Work, family and the dearly beloved wife seem to be about it. This problem bothers me less than it used to because the company I work for is growing and I'm enjoying time spent with those I work with.

Throwing out old computers...

2006-02-19T00:08:00.000-08:00

In the interest of trying to stop myself from keeping too much stuff, I am trying to put together a rule of thumb for throwing out old computers. I used to keep a lot of em' around for spare parts and what not but I've got to keep things a bit more tidy now. I figure that if a computer is worth less than 30 bucks on ebay it's time to get rid of it. $30 ain't a lot of money out here in San Francisco. It's about a tank of gas or two large pizzas. Then there's the expense of listing, shipping, etc and so I just throw it out.... In fact other people seem to have the same idea. I am starting to see a lot of old mac IIs and so forth sitting on the sidewalk on my way to work. Funny that people can't even give em' away these days. Once, long ago, I drooled over these machines but now they're just worthless garbage. About a year ago I made a point of throwing out all the 10bt network cards I had since 100bt cards were $5 and 10x faster. Maybe soon I'll start doing that with the 100bt cards.

Tips for walking to work

2006-01-29T23:24:00.000-08:00

I walked to work today. It took me 57 minutes. It was about 3 miles. I dropped about 250 feet in elevation. This was a test run, but it looks like it's doable.

Here are some tips:

1. Walk downhill. In order to do this get out Google Earth, exaggerate the elevations via the Google Earth preferences, and look for the most downhill path between your house and work. If going to work is more downhill the other way, take the bus to work and walk the other way.

2. Avoid rif-raffy and industrial areas. Sorry to say -- many parts of your city may be filled with homeless people or garbage -- not to mention, number 1s and 2s from the local inhabitants scattered randomly. Industrial areas are no fun either because of all the funny and otherwise revolting solvent smells emanating from plants, etc. Better to walk around these areas or take the bus through them.

3. Listen to your ipod. Books on tape are nice or just music. The time will pass quickly.

4. Use a heart rate monitor watch. Make sure you don't go over 70% of your maximum heart rate. Doing so will wear you out and make you loath walking. Being at less than 70% of your heart rate will make walking far more pleasant and even easy. When your beats get over 70% slow your self down.

5. Plan your walk via Placemarks with google earth. Update your walk slightly when your planned route takes you through some place that you didn't enjoy.

6. Watch for left and right turners! Never play chicken with distracted drivers!

7. Do it everyday. Make it part of your routine!

What was the meaning of life again? Oh yeah now I remember.

2005-12-18T02:25:00.000-08:00

A little incident tonight led me to think about the meaning of life, once again and to remember all the various conversations I have had with myself over the years about the meaning of life and where I wound up on this topic. So here's the story: I was at a nightclub tonight. I really couldn't figure out what I had liked about it so much the previous times I had been there. The conversation was dull. The music was good but predictable and too loud so that it got drowned out mostly.

I began thinking to myself, what had made this all so interesting before? Then I remembered how trying to meet women at nightclubs, just for the challenge of it, had been fun in its own way. Of course now being very happily married all that was left was the music which was ok and sounded better on my ipod and the dull small talk.

I then remembered why the lady chasing had been so much fun previously. That's because it was all the Nichomachean Ethics. That is the book Aristotle wrote 2000 years ago where he mused on the meaning of life. The idea that he had was that we should seek excellence in all things as the meaning of life. I think this is something that throughout my life has always been a rewarding source of longterm enjoyment. So I liked being excellent at lady chasing in my youth. Now I seek pleasure in excellence at my job and in writing, health, etc. Seeking excellence puts me in a direction and sets me on a course to somewhere that is worthwhile to arrive at. It's good to have someplace to arrive instead of one short vacation after another, interspersed with drudgery, as people often view the work week.

Empathy is a difficult skill - Part II

2005-12-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

A lot of what empathy is about is actually listening to the person you are trying to empathize with. Often times there will be ones own interests that are predominant in one's mind. It's easy to have these interests guide your thoughts, like an ice breaker plowing through the conversation. In order to be empathetic one has to set up the other person's thoughts as actual barriers to the direction of the conversation. This isn't done by oneself automatically. One has to make a concious effort to listen to what the other person is saying and place obstacles in the way of the thrust of one's conversation, like orange road workers cones, to be avoided out of considerationl, not necessity.

An example of this is a married couple talking to each other.

Spouse 1: Dear, we ran out of milk. Can you go to the store to get some?
Spouse 2: I have to go to work. I have an important meeting today at 9.
(Spouse 1 places imagery of her important meeting this morning in his/her head)
Spouse 1: Could you do it for me after work? I have to stay late working on the overdue project?
(Spouse 2 places imagery of her spouse busy later in the day, stressing about a deadline)
Spouse 2: Ok, but you owe me for next time.
(Spouse 1 takes mental note of gratitude that he keeps to be present in his mind during the next communication with his spouse)

Bad short term memory can get in the way of empathy sometimes because one can easily become obsessed with an idea and not take the time to remember or keep track of what the other person is thinking. Sort of like driving the icebreaker without looking out the window. It often takes some discipline to remember everything. This obsession is why political arguments tend to go in circles because they are just a bunch of word games, almost like song patterns being sung back and forth like remebered spells being cast instead of actual empathic conversation.

Empathy is a difficult skill - Part 1

2005-11-27T19:54:00.000-08:00

Being like a lot of geeks, I interact better with machines than with people. However, Over the last couple of years I've made some good progress in the social skills and empathy department. What made me think about this was watching an engineer I know get frustrated about not being able to sell one of his products. He said, "Why can't they see the benefits of my product? It's better than the alternative they're considering! They must be stupid!". This of course was all his opinion, right or wrong. Being an engineer, I also tend to revel in things "working". When they work, no anxiety or person's opinions, fears, or doubts can keep them from working.

However, when it comes to interacting with other people there is often a lot that people won't say, either out of fear of embarrassment or of a time wasting fruitless confrontation. For the un-empathetic, there is nothing to be learned by interacting with people. The only reason to interact is to convince, scold, or browbeat to one's point of view. This tends to repulse people and achieve the opposite of what was intended. To be empathetic however one has to accept and value other people. A lack of empathy often comes from despising other people or desperately needing their acceptance.

To be continued...

Excercising. It's not that bad

2005-11-15T22:16:00.000-08:00

I worried about my back today, so I did some excercising. It's amazing what kind of silly little thoughts I get when I think about excercising. I think, oh I'm gonna smell afterwords. I'll get hot. I'll get bored. I then though about back pain and the choice between back pain and being hot sweaty, and bored and choose excercise.

How driven can one be?

2005-10-31T22:58:00.000-08:00

I have memories of being involved in youth sports and feeling really competitive at the particular time. Doing my best to catch ever fly ball, to never strike out, etc.

I think about what it would be like to apply that competitiveness instinct in a benign beneficial way to everyday life. To work hard to achieve day to day goals like paying bills, studying, having an active social life.

Maybe this kind of thing comes naturally to people who deal very well with stress?

Dreams are easy to forget.

2005-10-29T01:49:00.000-07:00

I thought today about doing something entreprenurial.
I remembered how at one point I had wanted to start a business.
I read some articles on entreprenurialism.
I thought about my job and how easy it was to just enjoy it.
I thought about how I'll be doing the same thing 5 years from now.
I felt envious of all those "got rich quick" Internet bozos out there.
I secretly wanted to be one.
I thought about what do I have to do to prove to myself that I could make it?
I thought about what I actually needed to make it as an entreprenuer?
I went back to my obsession with getting organizing.
I remembered my hatred of being organized.
I decided to sleep on it.

Making Permanent Things

2005-10-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

I was recently going through some drives from old machines looking for stuff to save. There wasn't much. A lot of half-done projects that I did just to learn new programming technologies. I thought to myself that I want to contribute to things that become permanent. I guess this is the great thing about contributing to open source is that when your program gets out there, and gets archived it never dies and it's as if in a way, a part of you gains immortality. That's sort of the way I look at kids too. I think to myself, 1000 years from now, what is still going to be around that I had a part in creating? I don't think I'll ever be so famous that I'll have historical movies made about me so the least that I can do is have some descendants around in 1000 years.

If moods were tastes

2005-10-18T18:08:00.000-07:00

I just had a totally random thought come to my head. I was thinking about various moods I get in. Sometimes I feel really creative and thoughtful and thinking tastes like a really strong smelling grainy fresh whole wheat bread. Other times I am tired and exhausted and thinking tastes like lemon juice. Perhaps this is a kind of Synesthasia.

Netflix is good.

2005-10-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

I have been in a less introspective mode lately so I'm going to talk about more practical domestic stuff. One important domestic issue is entertainment! If you and/or significant others are not entertained your significant others will probably start thinking up all kinds of expensive ways to satisfy their need for being something besides a good employee and food and oxygen consumer. So in my ever ongoing struggle to solve this problem without spending to much money I've wound up at Netflix. More movie entertainment than I know what to do with! The best way to watch Netflix is in bed with a laptop. You don't have to buy a TV and the quality is good. Go for a full blown multimedia system. It will be good for games too.

The sad sad world of the intelligent teenager.

2005-10-01T02:31:00.000-07:00

Back when I was a teenager I used to watch Daria. It was this animated series that was done by the same guy who did Beavis and Butthead and Family Guy, Mike Judge. It's about this gothy, depressed, cynical, bookish, condesending, arrogant, insecure and somewhat stuck up girl name Daria. It's really not her fault that she's such an unpleasant character. It's more that she is both somewhat introverted and too smart to fit in at average grade public school.

Now I'm a bit older than the target audience. However my Signficant Other, who also used to be a huge fan, much more so than I, so much so that it was practically her favorite tv show of all time, wanted to rent it from netflix. So we rented it. We watched about 1/2 hour and turned it off? Why? I found myself sympathizing with Daria's parents and thinking that Daria was just a dumb teenager who was obsessed with dumb teenager issues that all I could do was just smirk at what Daria felt real distress about. Teenagers! Let me give you a list of things that will not matter to you once you grow up.

1. Why are the cool kids so popular? They are all so stupid and the only thing they do is just act mean to me the smart kid and pretend like they are so much better than everbody else.

RELAX! You'll never see the cool kids again once you get out of high school. Once you get to college you'll find your little niche being a scientist or whatever and you'll never have to talk to these people again. Besides, when you get out of high school there's only one thing that really divides people up and that's money. You'll either end up poor and in public housing which is like high school but far worse and more dangerous. You'll end up middle class where most people are friendly but will ignore you for the most part unless you try REALLY hard to maintain friendships. Or you'll end up rich and all your rich friends, who are likely to be somewhat intelligent, will be happy that you're around so they don't have to hang out with the lower classes.

2. Oh my god! I am so BORED!

RELAX! Your parents are lazy and paranoid. Too lazy to find fun stuff for you to do. To paranoid to let you out of the house without adult supervision. When you move out of your parents house and are past the age of consent there will be suddenly far more entertainment and trouble to get into then you'll know what to do with. The teen years are a religion in American culture where the culture's primary focus is to mold you into an upstanding citizen by indoctrinating you in public school and attempting to keep you focused and away from any and all kinds of corruption. Suddenly, when you're 18 all that changes and you can get into all kinds of trouble. When you're in high school don't worry about being too popular, or to bored, there's nothing you can do about it that you won't regret later, just try hard to find your passion and what you like so you can have a direction to go in and not waste a good part of your life spinning your wheels. As chef from South Park says, there's a time and place for everything and it's called college.

3. I don't fit in! I don't like anybody at school. I'm weird! Boo Hoo!

RELAX! This is related to #1. High school is the last time you'll have to spend more than a short amount of time with people you have absolutely nothing in common with. If you go to a small school this problem is often magnified because if you are a little odd. As in you'd probably get along with less than 5% of the population. This means that you are going to have trouble finding people you naturally get along with. At a small school this means you will have to find that 5% and that 5% is likely to be in the bottom 50% of quality people which means you'll have to hang out with really pathetic people. This happened to me in high school and it was awful. I had to hange out with some really pathetic people who I wouldn't spend two minutes with nowaday's. Going to a larger school usually helps just because the laws of probability even things out.

4. The world doesn't make any sense! Why is Brittany Spears so popular when her songs are sooo lame!

When you get older than 18 and are allowed to leave your house and explore the real world outside of the confines of your basic cable subscription you'll find that there's a lot of culture out there that caters to each and every taste. It may take a while but eventually you'll find the culture you really like, seek it out and become comfortable with it and then start ignoring everything else. You'll even stop watching MTV completely in your early 20s.

5. I get all these crazy mood swings, I get depressed, I get paranoid, I cry for no reason. Did my parents do this to me?

If someone is abusing you currently, you need to deal with it if you can. I'm not going to address how to do that here. If however, after you move out of your parents house and you're living on your own or with reasonable roommates and you're still a wreck then you need to see a shrink and get some medication. I have seen too many very intelligent friends and relatives lives either totally wrecked or limited by their lousy brain chemistry. Whether it be Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Severe Depression, or Manic Depression or another mental illness , or just long lasting depression or anxiety for no reason other than one you had to make up to convince yourself you weren't crazy. If your brain chemistry is broken, the first step is to admit it to yourself and get treatment, usually with drugs. There's a limit to how much Freud can do. I've seen a couple examples out there where the best thing that people did for themselves, that totally turned their lives around was fixing their brain chemistry. Go read Prozac Nation if you don't believe me. I'm not saying medication is the answer for everyone, but from what I've seen and read it is my opinion that psychiatric medicine prescribed by a doctor can fix all sorts of mental health issues that there's no way even some of the smartest people could get themselves out of by thoughts alone.

Finally, if you are in high school and not having any fun, SKIP OR SWITCH YOUR HIGH SCHOOL, or get your GED and just go to college. If you go to college early, you'll get a few years of your life back, assuming you finish college on a normal schedule, to do with as you please in your early 20s when you are still young and beautiful.

I went to a small tough high school, had no friends, was depressed all the time, and stressed out beyond belief. I then went to an easy high school. When I went to the easy high school I had a lot of fun, got straight As, and was baby sat for 2 years and made some great friends.

Lastly, I wish I could send this entry to myself as a freshman in high school.

Rediscovering The Art Of Doing Nothing

2005-09-18T16:54:00.000-07:00

For the last 10 days I have been recovering from back surgery. I know you want to read all about it. I posted the gory details on a back problems bulletin board. It's a little gross and is mostly about me fighting with my body and the aftermath of the surgery. Now things have settled down a little bit and I am really starting to recover.

This has all made for an interesting pause in my life. I am on vacation but have no real obligations to be anywhere. All I have to do is to get better, do excercises twice a day, eat and don't break anything. So this leaves me, my laptop and my ipod together for long stretches of time. There is no constant getting in and out of cars. There isn't even a lot of leaving the house. There is just a lot of sitting in bed in front of the window watching the breeze blow by as I respond to emails and entertain myself on the internet.

The first couple of days was full of the usual catchup. I had to read all my favorite message boards that had been piling up goodies while I had been out. Then I had to respond to emails, clean out inboxes, and write some followup memos to friends and co-workers about things I was thinking about for work and otherwise. Then after a few days everything leveled out. The weekend rolled along and now there weren't even co-workers to bug me. I was not on my usual vacation spree running from place to place, constantly having to re-assemble the things I needed on a daily basis to live comfortably. Instead I was at home, with all my posessions around me and accounted for and not having to do much.

At this point, in any other condition I would have started looking around for projects to do, things to file, places to go, long expansive wastes of energy chasing around something to some location. I could not do these things though. I had a back that now more than ever needed taking care of. I was imprisoned but rather pleasantly between my bed, bedside table, laptop and bathroom.

Honestly I've never felt so relaxed. I've been on a lot of vacations but I'll never forget this one. It was cheap, relaxing, easy on the body and very introspective.

You and your Hypothalamus!

2005-09-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

I am not a doctor or a neurologist. Never the less I was googling around and stumbled upon this article

Hypothalamus

After reading it, it seems that basically your brain is a big rube goldberg machine. The Hypothalmus is the oldest reptilian part and it's got all these other low level body systems attached to it that connect to your body and it is responsible for the emotions that you and a lizard have in common : pleasure, unpleasure, aversion, rage, hunger, thirst. It does some really screwy things

Here are some quotes from the above article.

Pathological laughter has frequently been reported to occur with hypophyseal and midline tumors involving the hypothalamus, aneurysm in this vicinity, hemorrhage, astrocytoma or pappiloma of the 3rd ventricle (resulting in hypothalamic compression), as well as surgical manipulation of this nucleus (Davison & Kelman, 1939; Dott, 1938; Foerster & Gabel, 1933; Martin, 1950; Money & Hosta, 1967; Ironside, 1956; List, Dowman, & Bagheiv, 1958).

For example, Martin (1950, p.455) describes a man who while "attending his mother's funeral was seized at the graveside with an attack of uncontrollable laughter which embarrassed and distressed him considerably." Although this particular attack dissipated, it was soon accompanied by several further fits of laughter and he died soon thereafter. Post-mortem a large ruptured aneurysm was found, compressing the mammillary bodies and hypothalamus.

...

Emotions elicited by the hypothalamus are largely undirected, short-lived, being triggered reflexively and without concern or understanding regarding consequences; that is, unless chronically stressed or aroused. Nevertheless, direct contact with the real world is quite limited and almost entirely indirect as the hypothalamus is largely concerned with the internal environment of the organism. Although it receives and responds to light, it cannot "see." It has no sense of morals, danger, values, logic, etc., and cannot feel or express love or hate. Although quite powerful, hypothalamic emotions are largely undifferentiated, consisting of feelings such as pleasure, unpleasure, aversion, rage, hunger, thirst, etc.

As the hypothalamus is concerned with the internal enviornment much of it's activity occurs outside conscious-awareness. Moreover, being involved in maintaining internal homeostasis, via, for example, it's ability to reward or punish the organism with feelings of pleasure or aversion, it tends to serve what Freud (1911) has described as the pleasure principle.

How bad can pain get? (part II)

2005-09-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

well I found out how bad pain can get. I was in the hospital after surgery and a physical therapist tried to move my leg around. She forced my leg the wrong way and did something because suddenly the pain got so bad that I started screaming and went into shock. I was sobbing uncontrollably for about 10 minutes. That's the kind of pain you normally can only get with badly trained medical personnel during a hospital stay. There is probably worse pain than that but I hope to never encounter it.

Being acutely aware of time

2005-09-08T22:35:00.000-07:00

I've been very acutely aware of time lately. With my current back condition my day has been divided up into 6 hour intervals between pain medication. It has also been divided up into very distinct periods based on intervals between medical appointments which I count the time till. I think a lot more about and count time much more regularly now. It is a strange experience. I see things that are two weeks away become closer and closer. It happens very smoothly and constantly, like my hand moving through dry hot beach sand. Before time would arrive suddenly, with an alarm or reminder reminding me of an upcoming appointment. Now time approaches, constantly, unstoppably, almost menacingly like the ground to meet a skydiver. A missed appointment seems like yelling out a window to a pedestrian by the side of the road as the car one is riding in speeds by. More importantly I wonder where all the time goes. Then I think of the repetition in my life that fills those hours. Getting up, going to work, commuting, trying to relax after the day is over.

Mentally escaping to reduce stress

2005-09-07T05:37:00.000-07:00

I have had a lot of stress lately due to pain caused by back problems. I started using an anti-stress technique that I haven't used in a while to deal with this. That technique, for lack of a better way of describing it, is "positive remembering". What it involves is taking a memory of a time when I was the least stressed I've ever been and trying to invison myself there again. The time I like to remember is being in Santiago, Chile in my early 20s and being alone as a traveler. For several days I stayed at the youth hostel and during the day, which was quite warm but not humid or excessivly hot, I would get on busses that went around the city and ride them to wherever they went and then get off and ride other buses. Santiago is a big city and a very safe one at that. The whole time I was listening to great relaxing techno music. I spoke Spanish passibly but I could tune out to the messages on billboards, signs, and the voices around me if I wanted to. I did this for 8 hours a day, spoke to noone, and it was the most relaxed I've ever been.

How bad can pain get?

2005-09-05T03:17:00.000-07:00

As readers know I've been dealing with Sciatic pain from a bulging disc. Luckily I am getting something done about it soon by a talented surgeon. When I don't take my pain medication my sciatic pain is so bad it feels like my leg is broken. I really hope none of my audience ever has to go through something like this. It really makes me feel like a big piece of flesh, not a human being.

What will effect my life next? (Part II)

2005-08-07T23:05:00.000-07:00

I have read a lot of self help books over the years. Some were good, some half-way decent, most very repetitive and filled with cookie-cutter anecdotes and case histories. Most could have been summarized in a few paragraphs. I am currently reading one though that is really really good. Psycho Cybernetics is that book. It's a classic in the field, written in 1960 and still in print. I'm a couple of chapters into it and so far it's quite readable and not to fluff filled. Quite pleasantly my B.S meter has only gone off 1 or 2 times. For me, with most self help books it goes off every other page. It focuses on the power of imagining and visualizing to improve one's self image. I feel that the power of this technique comes from the same source that the power of religion comes from. When one reads a religious creed, from an academic viewpoint, it just seems like a curious set of stories. When one takes it to heart and truly believes the stories then the religion can have a deep emotional impact. Similarly, Psycho-Cybernetics is about creating those images and believing them so they can have that kind of personality changing transformative impact. Previously, I had read a number of cognitive behavioral books, which talks about interrupting negative thought patterns. They were disappointing in that they seemed like a bunch of words games and didn't really offer a bigger picture. Psycho Cybernetics seems to fulfill that promise.

Spinal Discs...

2005-08-02T23:48:00.000-07:00

Well my doc said that my back needs surgery and I should go and get it when I get sick of the pain. Bleah! Being in enough pain really brings me back down to earth. I stop thinking about myself as a software developer, an american, a guy, whatever and I start thinking of myself as being an organism that has a body that has a problem and that's it. No way to ignore it, the pain is always bugging you every minute, telling you you gotta think about it. After this goes on for a while, the idea of somebody cutting you open to fix it starts to seem somewhat appealing. On the other hand, I'm doing pretty well for myself though, at least I'm in a modern country with access to good medical care and have insurance so don't feel too sorry for me :) .

What will effect my life next?

2005-07-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

I want to just go along sometimes from day to day ignoring everything. I learn about a lot of things, but I cannot act on them. For instance, I know all about the politics of the middle east but I have no reason to ever go there. I have not been the victim of a terrorist attack nor do I know anyone who has. My life continues as normal. I could have been a complete airhead and never picked up a newspaper or paid attention to any non technical/job-related news for the last 5 years and nothing in my life would have been significantly changed except for longer waits at the airport. Learning about things does one thing, however, it teaches me to be afraid of things.

To combat this, I sometimes try to focus on information that will benefit me directly. To some degree in my professional career I can do this. In the rest of my life though information does not have the same amount of value for the effort spent aquiring it. It's more for entertainment purposes only. Maybe using all this information I have aquired may have some lasting impact or perhaps I am just an echo chamber reverberating memes generated by others as opposed to speaking from personal experience.

Nobody Cares. Really, Nobody Cares...

2005-07-17T02:32:00.000-07:00

I have been watching Foamy the Squirrel lately, along with reading a lot of Cat and Girl and have come to the stunning conclusion that really, nobody cares about my problems, my philosophizing, etc. If people cared about that kind of stuff Dice.com would be overflowing with jobs for philosophy majors. Sorry, it's all mental masturbation. Maybe good for inside of one's own head but for the most part of little value. People want to find information on digital photography, off-road racing, the latest sports scores, etc. They don't want to hear the musings, and random though bubbles of your's truly. But that's ok, I'll indulge anyway, for now, and be left to my little corner of Internet obscurity, along with the millions of other bloggers and bored teenagers writing about things like how much they hate or love some person in their lives.

The escapism of living in the present.

2005-07-11T21:01:00.000-07:00

I discovered something today about this little blogging journey of mine.

What I found out was that I thought I was going to want to read my old blog entries, even derive pleasure from them, but I didn't want to read them.

It seems like a lot of them are me grasping toward meaning and then becoming discouraged over and over again.

I need other people to come up with the meaning for me. I can process information all kinds of different ways over and over again but it is never worth much to me.

I fear that no matter how far I "get" I'll be unhappy with what I've gotten.

The best way to get started on something

2005-07-11T01:53:00.000-07:00

I am a big slacker so I have to find all kinds of screwy ways to get started on things. One of the better ways I have found is when I am procrastinating is to do the following:

Open up my sticky notes program

Write the first 10 steps I can think of to move forward on a project

Go back and fill in the details a little more

Keep doing that until the steps get small enough that the procrastination feeling eases.

The hardest part is opening up the sticky note program. It's a bit like overcoming the fear of rejection while dating. You just have to DO IT!!

Here comes the clever part, convincing yourself to write the first step. Sing a little song to yourself (not out loud if you're around others), distract yourself. Move the mouse back and forth with the beat of the song until it winds up on the open the sticky note icon. Then double click it to the beat. Ok keep singing this little song in your head and write the title of what you want to do. Then write the first line. After that it should go ok, if not at least you got a line down.

Fighting the need to analyze

2005-06-23T05:07:00.000-07:00

I spend all day thinking analytically at my job. I think
"What's the best way to do things?"
"How are we supposed to do it?".
"Are we doing it the right way?"
"What category of problem is this?"

All day long is spent judging ideas , methods , techniques, etc.

Sometimes I like to relax. I really like to snap myself out of it. It's hard though as this mode of thinking has become somewhat of a habit that carries over into my non working hours. So I go play MMORPGs and refuse to use the analytical part of my brain. I refuse to go "Meta". For instance I never say things like

"This game is so much like a bruce sterling novel"
"I am so overwhelmed at all this"
"I wonder how they designed all this"
"Do you think this is a java message based architecture that they used to implemenet this?"
"a/s/l"

Instead I say things like

"Hi"
"Nice avatar"'
"Let's go on a walk"
"How do I use this game object?"
"Is this your house?"
"How do I play this game?"
"I Like psy trance music"

It's such a nice change of pace but it takes discipline and one needs to be in an environment like an MMORPG to really have that level of innocence.

More worldly stuff over here

2005-06-16T13:06:00.000-07:00

I've got a new blog about my other hobby, the big credit bubble and global trade and economic transformation. I will still post to this blog about more mundane things however.

The lives of boring people

2005-06-16T05:26:00.000-07:00

Somebody should write a book documenting the lives of boring people. This would be hard to do because REALLY boring people tend to be unmotivated and lazy. You might put an audio recording camera on a necklace around their neck that they would wear all the time.

I'm sure you'd see a lot of:

TV watching

Sleeping

Commuting

Eating

Lots of little failures

Lots of laziness

Talking about uninteresting personal matters (kind of like this blog)

Having repetitive discussions about boring interests such as sports, low-brow political discourse, what to do with one's IRA.

Obsessions with celebrities, collectibles, psychics, etc

It would be good then to compare their lives with the day to day lives of interesting and highly successful people.

RANT- Another lousy week

2005-06-11T00:57:00.000-07:00

I had another lame week at work. Everything is so make or break for us.

It seems that no matter how well we do we're always just skating near the edge.

Where is the promised land? Why do I feel angry about it all when I go home at night? Sometimes I feel like an ant stuck in a porcelain cup, unable to climb the sides.

(Shrugs shoulders, Puts nose back to the grindstone.)

Sometimes I feel like the guy trapped on the Island in the 1850s sailor story I posted earlier. Like I have a hard time believing I'm going to get where I'm going but I can't think of an altenative to the current course.

Making quality that lasts.

2005-06-03T19:24:00.000-07:00

The most important kinds of things I do in my job are not meeting deadlines. What's a lot better than that is focusing on the deadline for a given feature set. Then an idea for a feature or improvement will come along that will turn the capability of the project from decent to excellent. That's when I put in that extra 25% in that ties up all the loose ends and makes the feature set so good that I never have to go back to the project. Reaching that kind of perfection is hard and it's often annoying because it takes longer than normal, but in the end it often pays for itself many times over.

The embarrassment of change

2005-06-02T22:01:00.000-07:00

I changed my hair around lately, and it was a pretty big change. My old hairstyle was "different". My new one is much more conventional. Every person I meet, even if they haven't seen me for 2 or 3 years is saying, "Wow! You cut your hair! Looks so much more sophisticated!" This is kind of embarrassing to me. I think this was the reason I didn't cut my hair for a while. I was scared of all the attention I would get and having to repeatedly explain why I did it, etc.

Of course me being embarrassed by all this is stupid. I guess it's because I knew that my hair was previously sub-optimal, and I had a big psychological investment in that I had had it that way for so long. There is a lot of that going around and I guess there always has been. I think it's part of being human but I am going to try and be more aware of it from now on.

Being successful ?

2005-06-01T19:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when things go really well a problem arises for me. I think ok, now that things are going well I should be done with my struggling, right? Yet I'm not because even though I've got a few more toys everything is still the same and I have different problems, like maintaining my winning streak. I can be happy or sad with or without "success". It's really confusing, especially with all the cultural influence and what not that says sucess is supposed to be the end all, be all. I guess success is something, but it's not everything. Maybe that's what drives wealthy people to put themselves through all kinds of needless torture and risk in say, climbing Mt. Everest. I think the important point is to be involved in something you enjoy with hope for the future.

Why smart people defend bad ideas.

2005-05-29T04:28:00.000-07:00

Scott Berkun has actually come up with something useful in his essay Why smart people defend bad ideas. I've had plenty of "bad ideas" over the years, especially during college. I expended a lot of effort defending them. I got really good at arguing but sometimes , as this essay says, being good at arguing is either A. a waste of time and B. not the best way to interact with others productively.

That staring out into confusion/apathy feeling

2005-05-25T23:04:00.000-07:00

Yep... I get it a lot. Where I have no energy to do anything except stare at the screen and read blog after blog. It's that kind of lowest common denominator entertainment mode I get in. Where my brain shuts down and all that I'll respond to are caffiene, sleep and anything that will produce a cheap giggle. Is this some kind of medical condition? I drink enough caffeine as it is. This kind of mood also has its energy but it's fake energy that leads me to analyze and criticize and think over and over again about politics or philosophy or some kind of very abstract inconsequential garbage.

Let's contrast this with the "I can clean out my whole inbox feeling"... Which seems to come randomly every two weeks or so and in a rush catches me up with the things that directly affect my life and actually matter.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to provide a means to concentrate like a laser on actual stuff that matters to me on a day to day basis. Narrowcasting if you will. It's the total opposite of other blogs which talk about all kinds of worldly 'meta' big stuff.

I'd really like to know how to get from the confusion/apathy/meta feeling to the doing feeling, as I bet a lot of people would.

Going to bed early? Is it worth it?

2005-05-25T00:27:00.000-07:00

I am becoming convinced that going to bed early is only worth it if you get to work early. Let's face it, that quality time in the morning is lame because nothing is open yet if it's before 9 and all you can really do is read last night's articles you read the night before. There usually isn't enough quiet time to do anything enjoyable as all your neighbors are waking up and stomping around the apartment building getting ready for their days. My advice. Get up as late as you can to get to work on time. Have quality time after work.

Shipwrecked in the South Pacific in the 1850s

2005-05-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

While using google to look up remote places on my world map I came across this very interesting diary of a captain of a sailing ship from San Francisco that was shipwrecked in the South Pacific. It's a very entertaining 1 hour read. It's amazing how many practical skills these sailors had, such as being able to build ocean going boats by hand.

Real Estate: Got that Weightless Feeling Yet?

2005-05-13T00:26:00.000-07:00

I am a renter and among my guilty pleasures is being a real estate bubble news junkie. I am so waiting for the bubble to burst. Yeah I know I could have made millions if I had rode it but but it seems like it's now about spent and the Willie Coyote real estate market is about to realize that its fannie and freddie mac rocket powered roller skates have run out of gas and run the economy off a cliff.

Here's a good place to keep up with the latest: The Housing Bubble

Resistance to Doing Things

2005-05-05T04:17:00.000-07:00

In my never ending attempts at self-psychoanalize myself out of procrastination I've noticed a pattern of internal resistance against doing things. If there's something I always wanted to do, like write a book about social networks or something like that I will not want to read a book written by someone else about social networks even though I think it might be useful. It's dumb but I have a lot of dumb things going on.

Back is screwy again.

2005-05-04T00:18:00.000-07:00

Got some lower back problems lately. I sure hope they get better. :/. Anybody got any good tips. "Backaches: What Excercises Work" is my current guide.

See what other people are thinking, even if you don't like it

2005-04-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

I went to a speaker's panel recently discussing futurism. With one exception I thought the speakers were all to some degree uninformative or just plain wrong. It made me feel closers to those friends of mine that I know I am more in tune with regarding the evolution and future of our society.

What does it mean when a Madonna song is in your dream?

2005-04-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

Ok blog audience [crickets chirp], what does it mean when you are dreaming that you are standing by a disco in a mall and you hear the Madonna song "Open Your Heart" playing (in your dream) and it sounds really really good. It sounds like the best song you've ever heard in fact and you go running over to some people (in your dream) and start babbling about how it's so great. Heck I don't even like Madonna that much..

Imagining

2005-04-19T19:58:00.000-07:00

When I see someone else doing something I want to do sometimes I get a feeling of confusion and envy. Confusion at how they got to do what they're doing and envy at their success. Thinking it over, perhaps imagining what I have to do to get there is a more constructive strategy.

Are relationships good or bad for us

2005-04-18T02:20:00.000-07:00

A bad relationship is one where, after one is finished spending time with that person, one has less energy. A good relationship is one where one has more energy after spending time with another. Make sure that the good and the bad are not mixed together before making judgements though.

It's not how hard you work, its what you work on.

2005-04-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

There are two popular misconception about what creates value in life. Now when I talk about value I'm not talking about what god wants or less or more expensive or any of that. What I'm talking about is more abstract, mainly, if I value one thing more than another it means that I prefer it to that other thing. I value eating sushi more than I value eating at McDonalds. I value getting a raise more than I value getting fired or going home early, etc. So how do you get outcomes that are more valuable? There are some popular misconceptions of this.

The first is "The Spanish Theory Of Value" which comes from what the Spanish where after during their periods of conquest, etc. The Spanish though that all the value in the world was contained in gold and slaves and the more you accumulated of these, the better off you were. Well all the gold returned back from the new world and arrived in Spain and caused lots of inflation and wrecked the economy. Slavery we found out in the 19th century, was very inefficient as freed slaves could be involved in more productive jobs and a lot of effort went into guarding slaves. Both slaves and slave guards could have been boat builders, or blacksmiths, or sailors, or tailors but where instead confined to a short life of brutal agricultural manual labor and repetitive sadism. The modern analogy of this is people who try and dominate other people, even destroying the companies they work for, and doing anything they can to pillage and strip any thing of value that they can gain control of. If they weren't such pricks and didn't try to actively destroy and dominate they'd do a lot better but instead they spend their years fighting and sueing and swindling people.

The second misconception is "The Labor Theory of Value". Ok I know I just offended everyone out there who is to the left of Ronald Reagan, and Marx said a lot of good things but the labor theory of value was incorrect and is a subtle fallacy that a lot of people live by and I think it leads to lack of happiness (value) for the amount of time put into one's efforts. The problem with the labor theory of value is that labor is not the source of all value but is the source of all costs. The difference between cost and value is that cost is how much effort you put into something and value is what you get out. So if you work really really hard digging a hole in your backyard for years you can't just add up the amount of hours you spent digging it and expect to be as happy with the result as if you had spent the same amount of time planting and harvesting a vegetable garden. Nevertheless, people still engage in the labor theory of value. They spend a lot of time working very very hard on THE WRONG PROBLEM. Often this takes the form of working to patch up and maintain a dodgy software program, business model, relationship when they should really just throw the whole thing out and start over, learn from their mistakes and meticulously stear the venture in the right direction. Sometimes it's not throwing things out that can increase value but merely figuring out what is the source of the problems in the current system or analyzing how it can it be radically improved.

Saying No At Work

2005-03-31T06:25:00.000-08:00

Working as a W2 employee at a demanding job is a pain in the ass, especially when there's no one to offload the work to when it piles up. The best way to deal with this phenomenon is to have a list of things that you're working on, keep track of how long everything takes you and tell your boss: I'm working from the top of the list down. If something is more important tell your boss to put it at the top of the list and you'll switch to doing that but the list is the list and if your boss wants to pile things on at the last minute you can tell him to put it at the top of the list but the list is what you're working on and you're going to ignore everything else. It's a bit like how job scheduling in a computer works. There are 100 things to do every once and a while a scheduler figures out the order they should be attended to and they are given their particular time slice. Of course switching projects constantly doesn't help productivity so the analogy isn't perfect.

Skype is cool

2005-03-25T22:40:00.000-08:00

I just tried Skype today. Very cool. The next big revolution on the Internet, as big as Google, Napster, Email, Usenet. skype me! username is: abelardlindsay

How to Specialize and Be Excellent

2005-03-21T23:43:00.000-08:00

Specializing, finding your nitch and being good at what you do is a hard thing for most people. For others, due to chance, or talent, it's easy. If it was easy to enter a field that anybody could be good at and make a lot of money 1000 people would have been there yesterday, just like during the dot com bubble when everybody who could hack html was making great money. Today's real estate bubble is the same. Anyone who can calculate amortization and take ridiculous risks is making great money. Of course, when the washout happens the posers get wiped out and the professionals remain.

To find out where you are a professional at, to get to the right place, to fit in and be productive you have to experiment with a lot of different things. Try this, that, etc. Some of it might be hard but don't give up. Hard things are what keep everybody but the motivated out. Just follow Aristotle's famous dictum "Excellence in all things" and it will eventually work out. If you can't be excellent in something find something that you can be excellent in. Keep searching till you find it.

Hack Yourself

2005-03-15T00:23:00.000-08:00

This is as good of a self-improvment manifesto as I've read in a while Hack Yourself. I like the "Imagine the person you want to be and become that person" part. I think that's what most psych books lack. They tell you how to tread water but not to figure out which direction to swim.

Mark Cuban on Doing...

2005-03-14T23:50:00.000-08:00

The Sport Of Business, is an interesting blog entry by Mark Cuban.
some excerpts:

The edge is knowing that while everyone else is talking about nonsense like the will to win, and how they know they can be successful, you are preparing yourself to compete so that you will be successful.

I’m not going to go to dinner with you just to chat. I’m not going to give you a call to see how you are. Unless you want to talk business. Other guys play fantasy sports. I fire the synapses to get an edge.

The edge is knowing that people think your crazy, and they are right, but you don’t care what they think.

That final one is really resonant with me. It's the one thing that I've learned from business people I've met who were very sucessful. They say they are successful because they were crazy. They took big risks and implemented their dreams.

Conflicts and Too Much Thinking

2005-03-12T19:48:00.000-08:00

The more energy one devotes to a conflict, the more energy is taken away from other areas of effort. For instance, if one spends too much time focusing in on an anxiety causing situation the amount of time being spent thinking about other more productive things is going to be lessened. Sometimes its important to focus in on a problem and fix it but often times too much thinking leads to little productive and ultimately despair. The challenge is finding the right balance between paying too much attention and not paying enough.

Connecting with people

2005-03-11T23:29:00.000-08:00

I've found that through the years I've spent a lot of time getting to know lots of different people. The best I can say for my efforts is that I think I'm missing something on some level with regards to how I communicate with and understand people. I usually have nice conversations, maybe even see the person multiple times just going to and fro. I rarely however want to make the effort to keep up the relationship. Somehow it just doesn't seem important to me to maintain ongoing relationships with more than a small circle of friends. I guess I might benefit from developing better relationships but I can't figure out what the missing element is. Perhaps its because I'm introverted, however I like chatting, and find it easy to talk to people at parties.

Doing something different

2005-03-09T22:30:00.000-08:00

The good thing about doing different things is that life feels longer. That's because, when one does different things, one's memories of the previous days don't all blend together. I find the best way to do this is by keeping a mind map of all the things I like to do using Freemind and every once and a while I'll role some dice using a dice roller to pick something to do. If I roll something I really don't want to do then I force myself to make something new to do. For me, at least it's better than getting stuck in the same old routine. Note: Make sure the die you roll has as many sides as you have things you'd like to do so the result doesn't skew toward the middle.

Geocaching: Good, Clean, Cheap Fun

2005-03-07T22:55:00.000-08:00

For $100 one can buy a discount GPS and start GeoCaching. What's Geocaching? I'll explain it by telling you how to do it. To get started, go to the website GeoCaching.Com and put in the coordinates read from a GPS. The website will present a list of "caches" and their coordinates. These are usually tupperware containers or altoids tins full of largely worthless trinkets. You then follow your GPS to the coordinates of the cache and look for it till you've found it. You then sign the logbook and put the cache back where you've found it.

That's not the main attraction of it though. The fun of geocaching is that in the quest to find these caches, one will visit places in the local neighborhood that are very interesting. These places are ones that most people who live near them probably don't even know exist. I went to an interesting cemetery, a hard to get to point at the end of an artificial harbor, a haunted hospital, a lake I didn't know about and a whole lot of great views. I also bumped into other geocachers looking for the same caches. The best thing about Geocaching is that, after the initial GPS investment, it's pretty cheap. It also gets you outside and to interesting places. For those who've forgotten: Outside is that place that you go in between Work, Home and Costco.

Why keeping a diary is important.

2005-02-28T22:33:00.000-08:00

I've kept a diary for quite a long time. I usually write in it once or twice a month. I find the most important part of keeping a diary is to record the changes in myself over time. It's comforting to see my worries expressed and have them not come true. I often feel rushes of pleasant nostalgia when I read what I wrote in different years. I try not to put to much detail on what happened, just little sign posts that allow me to better remember what happened. Instead I focus on my thoughts and feelings about a particular event. I figure that way I can understand myself better and my natural responses the next time the same situation comes around. I can also evaluate what worked well and what didn't. This helps me understand how to approach problems and explore lifes choices.

Annoying Questions and Being direct

2005-02-28T22:21:00.000-08:00

I have been reading a book about communication.
I really like this book. One part that I found very interesting was regarding asking stupid questions. Usually we want to say something and we phrase it in the form of a question, such as : "Wouldn't it be a good idea if we went to the movies?" What you should really say is "I'd like to go to the movies tonight". The former way is very common but somewhat annoying. I find that my style of communication "feels" better when I get rid of those annoying questions and use the latter style.

Picking up and moving to another state?

2005-02-25T21:42:00.000-08:00

I talked with a friend today who was moving to Arizona. The company she worked for had moved there. She said she picks up and moves to a new location every couple of years. She says she even likes it. Besides, she says, it's much easier if the place you're going will have a job waiting for you when you get there. I've moved, only for a few months though. Then I moved back to where I've always lived. There's something about home that's so nice.

Why don't you just snap out of it?

2005-02-25T00:04:00.000-08:00

One thing that I find is difficult with the human condition is that we often have little empathy for others. It's not that people should be altruistic toward others it just menas that people fail to understand others mindsets. Have you ever said to somebody "Snap out of it!", because they were complaining or stressing out about something that happened that you didn't think was very significant? Have you ever walked by two people having an angry discussion and thought, why are they so angry it's such a nice day out? Have you ever looked in annoyance at people having a nice day out at a restaurant and laughing when you were feeling miserable?

These are all examples of the contrast of mindsets and moods. The same thing can be seen in people even from day to day. One day they are sad and the next they couldn't understand how they could have felt that way. The truth is is that a lot of people can think they can sway other's moods or change their personality just through words. Prozac might work but words don't do much. Mental states are set in stone only subject to the whims of neurochemistry.

Blog Types

2005-02-23T23:14:00.000-08:00

The vast majority of popular blogs are blogs that comment on current events. To name a few: Gizmodo, Slashdot, News Sites, Political Punditry Sites. I call these "news blogs".

There are also many thousands of blogs that comment on self-absorbed trivialities. These blogs are lost in the shuffle and mostly ignored , except by ones friends. I call these "own blogs" (from 'ownlife' from 1984's newspeak).

There are blogs that focus on topics that do well. They do well mainly because they achieve high search engine relavency for that particular topic. I call these "focus blogs".

There are also blogs, like this one that are trying to be in the middle. Gathering our own personal insights from things that happen to us day by day. I call them "thought blogs". Another good example of a "thought blog" would be www.fredoneverything.net.

Finally there are "meta blogs" which link to other blogs, usually with a one liner attached such as fark.com or boingboing.net. These are popular, however, "meta blogs" create a bizarre Internet phenomenon where there is such a dearth of content to link to that certain memes can explode into worldwide phenomenons in a few days. From the "Star Wars Kid" to "All Your Base Are Belong To Us".

Please leave a comment if you think of another kind?

The three dimensions of politics: Entertainment, Obsession, Practicality

2005-02-22T21:38:00.000-08:00

What was the last thing politically that really really affected your life?

Chances are it wasn't 9/11, the Tsunami in South East Asia or the Iraq War. You still get up in the morning and go to work everyday right? Sure you have to wait in line at the airport longer but has anything else changed for most people? No. Just in case you were wondering, yes I vote. I used to be ridiculously politically active but now I concentrate on things that are more real to me. It's not that politics isn't important it's just kind of a waste of time to spend a lot of time on it. The one redeeming factor is it is a half-way decent outlet for those that need a hobby. At least it's somewhat educational, though one tends to bore one's friends with repetitive banter and offend new aquaintances if one's involvment tends toward obsession.

The practical nature of politics is to make sure you vote and make sure you trust the person you're voting for. Ignore all the political rhetoric and look at their simple voting record on issues, giving the most weight to those that directly affect you. This should take you a day or two during the week before the election.

Meet all the random people you ever wanted to meet in your entire life...

2005-02-21T09:23:00.000-08:00

I like meeting random people, just finding out what they're about. It's entertainment. I have realized that 95% of people are pretty much the same. As they get older they get more different. There's much more conformity in youth. I've found a way to meet random people without leaving the house and that's via Live Journal's Latest Posts. The big problem is that live journal users are mostly teenagers, as you can see from their stats. You can search by other attributes here but you have to be logged in.

Ipod's back

2005-02-20T21:31:00.000-08:00

Ok the iPod is back. I have an iLife again. Good Resource for fixing ipod problems

My IPod Broke today...

2005-02-20T21:06:00.000-08:00

My Ipod broke today. The thing wouldn't turn on even when I plugged it in and did the reset thingy described over here. I never realized how important it was to me till it broke.

First hand experiences are better

2005-02-19T00:07:00.000-08:00

I find that often I'll avoid taking risks or working to experience things in real life. It's too easy to sit back and read the news, watch tv, or read the internet. Going out and actually experiencing things or working to build things from one's own hands and thoughts creates a different kind of experience.

The thing about the experience that is novel is ambiguity. News is not ambigouous, entertainment is not ambiguous for the most part. It's fed to us in 320x240 NTSC via the boob tube and our perception is limited to what's in focus severely reducing ambiguity. Some people like that. It's like Mc'ds where you can choose meals by the numbers. Religous faiths and creeds, like TV, remove ambiguity in daily life. Some of us can live with ambiguity and even enjoy it like the characters in a Camus story.

I bought a GPS today

2005-02-17T08:58:00.000-08:00

I bought a GPS today. I figure I got an Ipod and a Sidekick II I better get the trifecta of gadgets so I am totally converged. I bought a Magellan Explorist 100 but I probably should have got a 200 cause that has the map. Ahh well it was only $100. Now I can go Geocaching..Weeeee! Update: I upgraded to a 200 before they shipped!

People who work too hard

2005-02-16T05:14:00.000-08:00

Lately I've run into way too many people who work 12 hour days. Why? Because their bosses tell them to? This makes me feel really lucky as I only work 8 hour days. The question I always wonder is why do they put up with this? I worked longer when I felt my business was struggling or I felt I wasn't very productive. Now I try to work smarter not harder. I also have a significant other which helps me put my foot down a little harder on these kinds of things.

Why take risks?

2005-02-14T22:03:00.000-08:00

It's often difficult to take risks. Especially for people like me who are prone to worrying. Besides, why not just live a boring life, grow old, have a few laughs and die without too much stress? On the other hand I often think about the tens of millions who have perished in natural disasters or wars and the countless billions who have died of natural causes, and slipped into the unknown in obscurity. I think to myself about their obscurity, how they're all "nobodies". They might have mattered to somebody at some point but only a few had obituaries written about them, only a few had long ones, fewer still got an encyclopedia entry, fewer still are remembered by anyone if they died more than 50 years ago. I think about this often and about these endless oceans of "nobodies". I don't want to be part of that. I don't want to be too famous but I want to "make my mark".

Blogs.. You too can learn from business geniuses

2005-02-12T22:36:00.000-08:00

I am a frequent reader of Blog Maverick. This is the blog of Mark Cuban, billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner. It's great to see what such a talented business guy thinks about on a day to day basis. Really worth the read.

First hand reports from nobodyville!

2005-02-11T22:41:00.000-08:00

Here's what I read everyday:

Slashdot
Free Republic
Drudge Report

and I check stats on the work servers. Pretty boring existence.
I think the most exciting thing in my life must be getting 3 Slashdot
posts moderated up to 5 in a row.

I haven't had a lot of energy lately. I finally finished cleaning my
house. I have no more significant goals in my life.

I got back from a pleasant but dull vacation a few days ago so don't tell
me I need a vacation.

I have been reading Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix Plus. That has actually put a little bit of interest in my life. It's a great escape.

I read a message on Usenet today... All I can say is that at least I'm less ennui filled than some.