Everyone's a Superhero...

Freedom

2012-01-17T21:51:00.000-08:00

So, just as I was about to do some research for my language (seriously thinking about adding 3 new consonant and 4 new vowel sounds) I discovered that wikipedia is going into a 24 hour black out to protest SOPA, which I guess will be voted on in congress this month. Something about it tickled my memory and I found this quote from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a 1999 sci-fi turn-based strategy game:

"...free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

It's actually rather creepy how apt this quote seems to be to our current situation. So if you don't want to live in George Orwell's 1984, take action. I started at http://www.google.com/takeaction/ by signing the petition. Sometime this week, I am probably going to contact representatives or something.

New Design

2012-01-07T09:13:00.000-08:00

Barely... I moved some stuff around on the right side and got rid of some of the pictures that were just gathering dust. The addition that inspired this slight reformatting though is the banner right under the main picture. I was so happy when I copied the html code into the blogger html... box... thing... anyway...

In my planet related browsing ove the past 3 weeks, I found http://www.davidcolarusso.com/astro/ which has a really cool timelapse of the predicted locations of the planets and sun in the sky. Its actually what led me to the discovery of the optimal viewing arrangement that will happen in early march. Its a nice quick way to figure out what's where for tonight... of course you have to know what you are looking at.

Basically, the circle with the dot is the symbol of the sun. It moves to the left as the year goes on (and up and down a little). Any symbols left of the sun are planets visible in the evening. Symbols to the right are planets visible in the morning. I could go into much more detail about this, but I'm just going to stick with an explanation that makes sense.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T15:49:00.001-08:00

I was at a friend's house drinking and playing nerdy games for new years eve. We stopped playing at about 3ish and just hung out for a while. When we got to about 5ish, one guy and I decided that we wanted to watch the sunrise. I got really excited because guess what I had been doing all night long?

If you guessed "looked at stars and planets" you're correct, lol. So I got all five of the planets in one night, but this time, without sleeping. Such a perfect way to start the new year!

But it kinda sucks to have to wait 12 hours between sunset and sunrise. I mentioned the naked eye planets site in the previous post. I was browsing around with that and found an app that shows where the planets are located along the ecliptic. I was delighted to discover that on March 5, not only will Mercury be furthest from the sun again, but Jupiter and Venus will also be close to eachother in the evening sky. Additionally, Mars and Saturn will both be near opposition, which means they will be rising about the same time that the sun sets. So it will be possible to see all of them in a single evening.

So three planets (two of them, the third and forth brightest objects in the sky) close together after sunset? Decided that this will require going to the beach at sunset, and that going to the beach will require a beach date. Because whats more romantic than beaches, sunsets, planets and stars? I'm really not sure.

I also found an awesome site for generating starcharts for particular locations and moments

http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/

Evening sky on March 5, 2012 at 6:45 pm

Western horizon view on the same day

Night sky at midnight on March 6, 2012

Math is Sexy

2011-12-30T21:00:00.000-08:00

First Attempt at Photoastronomy

2011-12-22T15:40:00.000-08:00

As mentioned previously, the planets are positioned in such a manner that it is possible to see all 5 visible planets in one night (if you can manage to be awake at 6 pm and am). I don't have a telescope, so I had to make due with my camera by itself. The images are not spectacular, but they kinda get the image across. Here is a fun site that I just discovered http://www.nakedeyeplanets.com/

Jupiter between Aries and Pisces

Mars at Leo with Regulus

Moon and Mercury at Scorpius

Planets

2011-12-19T23:25:00.000-08:00

So the other night Leigh and I decided to get up at 5:30 to go see the lunar eclipse (which was awesome by the way). When I went outside, I looked around the sky a little, which was rather interesting since I've only been seeing the evening sky, which lately has been featuring Jupiter and Venus very fantastically. So its 5:30 and I'm looking around and there are a couple bright objects in the sky and I think to myself "I wonder if..." So I check the Google sky map app on my phone and it turns out that what I saw were in fact Mars and Saturn.

I was wondering whether or not I could catch a glimpse of Mercury too. Its a very elusive thing to try to find since it is so small and so close to the sun in the sky, the only times to catch it are either sunrise and sunset. We didn't catch it that night, too many obstructions, but it turns out that it has been showing up at morning.

So my last evening at USC before break, I casually looked up and managed to catch Venus and Jupiter while they were still up. My parent's house has a nice view of San Pedro harbor. Not the best thing for stargazing, but at least there are no tall structures blocking the view. So I decided that it would be a good idea to get up at 6 to see what I could see. Fortunately the light pollution over the harbor in the early morning isn't so bad. I got Mars and Saturn and a bunch of bright stars and amidst the glow on the horizon, there's another little light, right around where the sky map says it should be. Its too bright to be a star and after a while its pretty clear that its not a plane. The logical conclusion is that it must have been Mercury. So, not only did I catch the hardest planet to see, I caught all five of them in one night.

Here's some images that I picked up off of an astronomy site. Planets: they make me happy!

Awesomeness

2011-12-06T19:01:00.000-08:00

This kinda made my day... well, a lot of things made my day this aftenoon, but this seemed most bloggable and deals with space, so it will probs give me good luck on my finals tomorrow...

Via twitter:

jaxeraction: Is it possible that there is an object larger than Pluto in the Kuiper Belt that we haven't detected yet?

plutokiller: @jaxeraction I'd say ~30% chance. Beyond the Kuiper belt I'd say 100% chance of more things bigger than Pluto.

But really, its a question I've been wondering about for the past couple weeks. Pluto was basically discovered by accident. There are perturbations in Uranus's orbit which led to the discovery of Neptune in 1846. Imprecision in the measurements of these perturbations led people to believe that there was a large ninth planet. Of course, over time, the measurements were improved and this turned out not to be the case. In the mean time, the position of the non-existent planet was calculated and Pluto just happened to be near the predicted location when it was discovered in 1930.

So basically, it was just discovered by lucky coincidence. Which led me to wonder whether or not there were other comparatively large objects floating around out there and we just haven't seen them. Eris is certainly bigger, but it is not technically part of the Kuiper Belt. Makemake and Haumea are both KBOs, but neither is as large as Pluto. I would be delighted if they discovered a KBO larger than Pluto; it would basically be the last nail in the coffin as far as Pluto the planet is concerned. But really, over the past couple months, the Kuiper belt has started fascinating me. There's so much we don't know, the objects are so small and distant that even detecting them is extremely hard.

Bored

2011-11-30T19:44:00.000-08:00

Random convo I imagined:

Pluto: Hey guys! Guess what? I have 4 moons! Can I be a planet again?

Jupiter: Oh? I have 4 moons... THAT ARE BIGGER THAN YOU!

Earth, Saturn and Neptune: lol

Pluto: Fuck you guys!

Uranus: It's ok, I don't have any moons bigger than you

Pluto: Leave me alone...

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T08:25:00.000-08:00

I don't really feel like posting/ranting about it, but I absolutely HATE black friday. It kinda disgusts me a little that people wait in line outside of stores rather than spend time with their families/friends. I can't really like this time of year because of the whole orgy of materialism. blah blah blah, hate hate hate...

So anyway... Prop Crew thanksgiving is coming up on friday. Always a wonderful tradition, this year we are turning it into an actual meal that evening after practice. I was debating about apple pie, but then I remembered meatloaf. I am even more confident in my meatloaf than apple pie. A "family recipe" if you can even call it that... mostly just throw a bunch of stuff together in a bowl, make a loaf and bake it. But I can never remember how long to bake it and at what temperature. So I was browsing recipes online and found reuben meatloaf... basically, make meatloaf, but in the middle, you put corned beef, sauerkraut and swiss chesse. I kinda died on the inside and I REALLY wanna try it. I think I also wanna try blue cheese. I had a blue cheese burger once and it was awesome, so blue cheese meatloaf just sounds like a whole lot of win.

erosa

2011-11-16T18:33:00.000-08:00

Maybe not the most likely conversation, but an entertaining exercise:

"¿kue-eroseo telus?"

"ie, telus erose tiunes"

"telus erose zaneska"

"¿kueaven-eretien?"

"ie, vele tiunes eretir telur"

Meta Question

2011-11-14T12:42:00.000-08:00

What is the subject of this sentence?

Close Encounters

2011-11-08T18:50:00.000-08:00

Fun fact of the day: right now, there is an asteroid that is closer to the Earth than the moon. At 3:26 PST 2005 YU55 was about 0.85 lunar distances from the Earth. It might seem like there are suddenly a bajillion NEO's, but keep in mind that we have been getting better and better at finding them. Technically, they have always been there, we just didn't know. The solar system seems like a really dirty place.

On another note, I quizzed myself the other day and could name like 35ish large solar system bodies, I forgot the names of 2 of Saturn's moons (Dionne and Tethys). I always seem to have trouble with the large saturnian satellites, Jupiter has the 4 coolest moons in the solar system, Uranus has the 5 with the coolest names. Saturn is just kinda there and blah.

How did that happen??

2011-10-17T11:58:00.000-07:00

Realized that I hadn't posted since before thursday. It went well... it went VERY well. Its rather amazing how one thing can make such a huge difference in life outlook :)

Frist Translation

2011-10-11T22:45:00.001-07:00

This is the first official translation into New Sarensa. The gramatical structure has been in place for a while, but I haven't built up a sizable vocabulary until tonight. What follows is text in Aldornath script, a transliteration to Latin text, a literal translation and finally the original piece, the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

ton vonuemai morsal beniu farath zan erev menadhar zan farthar. eluedha sheieu ladenas zan ferdanas. far-tienean-el eltadhai parthara agapam

all person(pl-acc) human born(4th) free and equal dignity(inst) and freedoms(inst). They(dat) endow(4th) reason(acc) and conscience(acc). (should)act(3rd-pl-imp) eachother(dat) spirit(inst) compassion(gen)

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Notes: "dh" in the transliteration is pronounced as the "th" in "this". Parenthesis items in the literal translation indicate noun case or verb tense. The language is primarily based on English, Spanish and Latin with some very small influence from Finnish and Japanese.

I had forgotten...

2011-10-10T09:03:00.001-07:00

...about how incredible it feels just to have something to look forward to. Of course, we will have to wait til thursday to see how it goes. :)

Busy busy

2011-10-04T12:29:00.001-07:00

Well, I've been insanely busy so far this semester. I think I overscheduled my work hours, but I am making enough money to pay for rent all by myself... not quite sure what I am trying to prove, but yeah. So between school and work and band, I really don't have time or energy for anything. I get home and all I want to do is watch star trek and play minecraft, things that require very little energy or thought power.

As a result of all this, I haven't had any time to work on the portal gun. Its gotten to the point where there is no way that I can finish it by halloween. Basically, I'm going to spend winter and spring and summer working on it and just wait until next year for that costume. In the meantime, I think I am going to go with zombie Summer for this halloween. We decided on zombies for section theme on band halloween. Since halloween proper is on a monday, I might end up not doing anything... which is a terrible shame, wasted opportunity etc etc.

So yeah, no time for halloween. I also don't have time or energy to find love. Sad, lonely, blah blah blah... ugh

Portal Gun #1

2011-09-08T12:52:00.001-07:00

A little bit overdue, but fortunately I took a picture of the raw supplies shortly after I bought them 2 weeks ago. Got some 3" and 4" abs pipe and a few sizes of pvc couplers. Also got some bondo, which I still haven't touched, and some foam board to use as a spacer.

I don't have pictures at the momet, but cutting lines have been drawn on the tubes and I actually have barely enough pipe to try again if I fuck up, yay. I've done one cut with the dremmel, but it didn't turn out that great, so I had to wait to get a hacksaw and I haven't made any progress since Sunday.

I probably should scan and post my blueprints to post up here. There's a ways to go, and not a lot of time to do it. Good news is that the leds and decals are on the way. I found a sound module that has ashpd sounds preprogrammed, unfortunately its $50 and I don't know a whole lot about audio components. The electronics can wait though, first I need to figure out assembly and painting... and before that I need to figure out the bondo. We'll see how much I can get done this weekend.

Exploring the Dream Space

2011-08-31T15:52:00.001-07:00

I actually bought my first round of parts for the portal gun, but I haven't actually started work on it yet... also, I haven't scanned any of the plans or receipts for a good comprehensive first post on it. But I also have had some interesting dreams the past couple nights, and I kinda wanted to share some of it.

Actually, for a couple nights now, I've had dreams where I have inexplicably changed gender at some point, that is always fun. There is also the continuing epic quality of the dreams. Which I really think might just be a product of my brain stringing together a whole bunch of different dreams. Its kinda like going through a whole day with a lot of different activities and then telling the story of the entire day, even if the activities are unrelated. Its happened a couple times, but after a false awakening, I may recount a previous dream to a character in a new dream space. It's probably an effect of my ability to lucid dream. Like passive lucid dreaming or something.

Really interesting/disconcerting thing I discovered last night. You can feel pain in dreams. I don't know why I find this to be so weird. The dream space is capable of emulating other sensory experiences: sight, sound, taste, pleasure. I don't know if the dream space can create heat or cold though... those are probably tied too closely to the most primitive parts of the brain. Anyway, I felt pain, it felt real. I can point right to the part of my hand that was ripped open by my fingers when I clenched my fist too tight.

Its actually a really interesting cascade of dream sequences. In the first state, I was in conflict with someone. This conflict led to a false awakening in which I had subconsciously clenched my fists during the previous state when I was "unconscious". Then at a later point, there must have been another false awakening because the skin was unbroken, but I was aware of the previous dream space.

I've probably mentioned it before, but I don't really think its the same as a dream within a dream. I've never gone to sleep in a hotel room, had an adventure on a snowy mountain and then woken up in the same hotel. I don't think it is possible to be in multiple dream spaces at once. I think it is possible to create a dream space similar to a previous one, but when you're out, you're out. Of course, in Inception, the different layers are actually different people's dream spaces. So I guess that actually kind of explains that.

I've got a lot of empirical theories from personal experiences, but I actually don't know much about dream psychology... I assume it would best fit as a branch of psychology. My mom said that I should just audit a class in the spring since I only have 9 units planned and it is very probably my last semester ever in any kind of educational setting, so I should make the most of it. Talking about dreams just now made me think of psychology, but I don't think any of he classes would be that specific. Maybe linguistics, math(number theory) or some kind of art or possibly even music. It feels really weird to be out of time like this... I suppose I could take 2 if I really wanted to.

Pluto again

2011-08-09T07:55:00.001-07:00

Just read an interesting comment. They are trying to figure out what to name Pluto's newly discovered 4th moon. The leading names seem to be Cerberus and Persephone (I am in favor of the latter). I kinda feel like they should have bestowed those names on the 2nd ad 3rd moons. Nyx and Hydra? Of course they were discovered in 2005 shortly before the launch of New Horizons in 2006... NH? Coincidence? Probly not.

Also, people shouldn't post comments on an article like that if they don't have at least a basic understanding of mythology or photo astronomy. Well, really they shouldn't make wild claims about things they clearly know nothing about.

My Washington Adventure

2011-08-01T17:42:00.001-07:00

Holy crap, my legs/knees/right big toe are incredibly sore. I was limping pretty much all day today.

I figured that since I've only got 2 weeks left in the area that I would take my camera into DC and take some pics, I did bring the behemoth all the way from LA, so I wanted to use it at least once. Well, after 30 miles driving and 2 metro stops, I learned that I had forgotten an SD card. I had been taking some pictures of my shoulder so that I could do some tattoo conceptualizing... I guess I forgot to put the card back in. So, instead of waiting around Arlington for 2 hours for a Best Buy to open, I decided to just head into the city and wait a bit for a Radio Shack to open.

It being Sunday morning, nothing was open yet. The first store I checked was supposed to open at 10. So I walked several blocks to check another store: 1030... shit. So I got an iced chai latte, impulsively texted a number that was written on the table, and walked back to the first store. They opened a little late, but by about 1030, I was walking south on 7th towards the mall.

I had had a vague concept of what to do that day. I would start at Arlington Cemetary and work my way towards the capitol. Well, thanks to my technology mishap, my plan was reversed. In the long run, this was probably good. I got some interesting monument shots and some shots of some pieces at Hirshhorn, which I would not have had the energy for later if I had gone with my original plan.

So here's the itinerary: mini solar system, Hirshhorn garden, sculpture garden, archives. After the archives, I started heading to the capitol, but decided that it would take too long... I guess I'll have to see the supreme court building some other time. Then Washington monument, Jefferson memorial, lunch in the shade, Lincoln memorial.

Now, by this time, I was pretty sore. Unfortunately or fortunately, I had not yet been to the Iwo Jima memorial andi still needed to get pictures from the Cemetary.

So here I am on the Arlington Memorial Bridge. "Shit, this bridge is way longer than I expected... isn't this where Liberty Prime fought the enclave on the way towards project purity?" After the detour to the marine memorial I was pretty exhausted, but I still needed to get up the hills of Arlington Cemetary, which, for some reason has no shaded benches. I found a water fountain and pondered taking a tourmobile up the hill. Decided that it wasn't worth the cost.

Around that point I thought to myself: "you know, if your grandfather was able to keep ammo supply lines moving and drag several unconscious shipmates to safety while the ship was taking water and still being attacked by the Japanese... you can probably make it to the top of the hill and visit his gravesite". Luckily I had already located the site when I visited at the begining of summer, so I was able to find it pretty easily after paying respect at the Challenger and Columbia memorial sites.

My total mileage for the day was something like10.5+ miles. I don't know if I've ever walked that far in my life. Well maybe I have, I don't know, but it was 10 miles non-stop with flipflops. I haven't had a chance to look at the pics yet, and I won't be able to upload them until I get back to California, so stay tuned

Back to Language

2011-07-30T08:41:00.001-07:00

I don't realy remember exactly how it came about, but I'm getting back into language construction. I may have mentioned it before, but the interest waxes and wanes. I suppose that's good since I can do something, let it sit for a while and then come back later.

Oh, you know what it was? I was playing with my phone and found out that I could type: þ, ð, š, ž, ñ and ¿. So I could write stuff with a 1:1 character ratio without using latin letters that didn't match... although ñ isn't quite the "ng"... I figure it is a close enough match.

Anyway, when last I left off, I had just figured out subjunctive and imperative endings. Well, I came back and after some trial and error, decided that I might not want subjunctive after all. So I dropped it, but then I ran into a new stumbling block when considering the translation for "you shouldn't have done that". How do I conjugate "should"? How do I conjugate "do"? I accidetally dscovered modal verbs... which in some sense are germanic language's version of subjunctive. Basically same plot but with different characters.

So I'm stuck back at verb conjugation, the same problem that I've been grappling with forever. Nouns were easy, adjectives/adverds were easy (although, there may be some unforseen problems there), but verbs are hard. Basically, I'm trying to figure out how to juggle tense, tone and aspect. I almost feel like I might drift towards conjugation rules that are closer to english. I don't know, we will see.

I'm sure this post might be boring or not make sense. I tend to get really animated when talking about things I'm interested in. Wouldn't it be nice if there was someone I could talk to that would share my enthusiasm? Yeah, that's right, I tied this blog post back to the topic I'm always whining about.

Spaaaaaace! So much space! Gotta see it all!

2011-07-27T17:47:00.001-07:00

Turns out I goofed slightly on the last post. Ganymede and Titan are indeed physically larger than Mercry, but Mercury has a high enough density that its actually more massive than both of those moons combined... that's pretty interesting. Wikipedia's entry has them listed by radius instead of mass. It works for the planets, but when you get down to the smaller bodies there's a bit of discrepancy. Rock is denser than ice.

Also something else interesting that I've been thinking about. There are only two planetary systems in the solar system in which the mass of the satellite is significant: Pluto and Earth. Luna accounts for about 1.2% of the mass of the Terrestrial system. Charon is about 10.4% of the Plutonian system. By comparison, satellites comprise .02% of the Jovian system and... like... barely nothing of the Martian system. Anyway, long story short: the earth-moon system is pretty special, love your moon.

Also, speaking of Trojan asteroids, they just found the first one ever in Earth's orbit. Mars, Jupiter and Neptune were already known to have some.

Random facts, hooray!

Planets and Friends

2011-07-25T17:55:00.001-07:00

So they just discovered a new moon around Pluto, bringing its total count up to 4... if of course you don't count the Plutonian system as a binary system (the center of mass of the system is well above the surface of Pluto, Charon (the big moon) is pretty massive compared to Pluto). Of course people had to make comments like: "its got moons, how much more does it need to be a planet again?"

1. Planets Mercury and Venus do not have moons. Mars has two moons, but they are so tiny that a thrown baseball could escape their graitational field (no joke)

2. Pluto gets way too much attention as it is. Not only is it way smaller than all eight planets, it is also smaller than the seven largest moons in the solar system (two of them are larger than Mercury) and the dwarf planet Eris (the one that ruined it for Pluto and everybody), making Pluto only the 18th largest object in the solar system.

People like to whine about Pluto, but you know who doesn't get as much attention as they deserve? Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, Io, Luna, Europa and Triton. Whether or not these guys are planets will never be debated, they are firmly stuck with the classification of "natural satellite". That doesn't make them any less interesting. In fact, all of them are probably more interesting than Pluto. Not to say that Pluto isn't interesting, I am actually pretty interested in TNOs like Pluto, just not at the expense of everything that is inside the orbit of Neptune.

Just one last random side note, I wonder how many people can even name the 8 planets. I made a list recently and I can name about 35 solar system bodies off the top of my head. I'm just a nerd though... also, planetary exploration is my life ambition.

More on America and Space

2011-07-22T07:45:00.001-07:00

I've mentioned it before, but I have this nasty habit of going on to cnn.com just to read comments. There was one article about He-3 on the moon. Old news, they probably brought it up because our manned space program is now pretty much directionless. One comment that irked me went something along the lines of "will cost way too much money, we should just figure something else out"... well, it was a bit more ellaborate than that, this guy didn't seem to quite understand how investment works. You can't just say "I want a power plant" or "I want a better solar cell" and it just magically appears. Its going to cost money to develop technology and build infrastructure. In the case of He-3 mining, it would require a massive investment.

I imagine it would be about a decade before such a venture would return a profit... a decade AFTER we actually start mining the stuff. It would take another decade before that to construct a site. And even before that, we would need to develop cost effective means of getting to and from the moon. And even before that, we need to figure out if He-3 fusion is even a viable means of producing energy. And before that we need more He-3 to actually conduct the experiment. (That last part kinda sounds like "there's a hole in the bucket")

Doesn't sound like a very positive argument for space travel. Space is expensive and dangerous. It kinda pains me to say it, but maybe we need to keep it slow in the field of manned space flight. The argument that always seems to come around is that we have enough problems right here to worry about. Now, it would be shortsighted to abandon manned space flight altogether, but it is true that we have lots to worry about on earth. Manned spaceflight is an expensive proposition.

Unmanned spaceflight on the other hand is not quite as expensive. The price tag still comes pretty high, but we don't have to worry about lugging around life support, or worry about crew psychology, or, most importantly, worry about crew safety. Some people hate that so much money is going to the space program. In reality, its just a tiny portion. Unmanned spaceflight costs even less.

Somebody did bring up a really good point in a response to a particularly scathing comment. The Mars Science Laboratory, aka Curiosity, is scheduled to launch this winter for a late 2012 landing. Guess what. Curiosity was built in America, its parts were crafted in America by American companies. I am willing to bet that the average american spends less money on american made goods than their taxes that go to space related programs.

On my mind

2011-07-18T12:23:00.001-07:00

Oh hey, there is an android app for blogger.

Anyway, had an interesting weekend. I pretty much figured out where I want to go with Summer. Basically, I realized that I am going pretty much exactly the way I want to be going. Some sort of reconciliation between my masculine aspect and my feminine aspect. Well, that's one problem solved. Now if only I can figure out the other problem that's been plaguing me.

I've been having an on and off conversation with a girl on okcupid, the same "girl from the internet" from last spring. The last message she sent was pretty inviting to further conversation, not an unreasonable assumption. The topic of halloween had come up and in passing I mentioned my plan, casually addressing the crossplay aspect. Nothing about Summer, just a brief one line comment.

She still hasn't responded and its bugging me a little. The internet keeps telling me that she has been online since then, but maybe that's just some sort of automated thing? I really assumed (still assume) that she seems like the kind of person who would be ok with it. Maybe I set my expectations too high? Not that it really matters, I wouldn't have a chance to see her until after school starts anyway.

That's my emotional outpour of the day. I thought about tweeting, but decided that regular blogging was better than microblogging.

Does this seem right to you?

2011-07-17T08:20:00.000-07:00

I met a bunch of interesting people last night and had a fantastic time, but one conversation sticks out in particular. This girl is from South Africa, is here legally and is married to an American citizen. However, she is currently unable to go to South Africa to visit her widowed mother who just had heart bypass surgery, because in all likelihood, she would not be allowed back into the country.

She is a post-op transsexual and while her American passport, lists her as female, her South African passport is not up to date for some reason or another. She has been living as a woman for years and is a woman in almost every sense of the word. This already causes some interesting customs difficulty as can be imagined, but there's more.

Her wife is an American. I guess DC is one of those wonderful places, where anybody can get married to whomever they want. Unfortunately, since marriage is not regulated on a federal level and she is technically in a homosexual union, she is not guaranteed the same rights that a foreign national in a heterosexual union would have. What's more, apparently there was an internal memo in the CIA that was written under DOMA that basically makes it so that a union with a transgendered person does not need to be recognized. I'm not sure of the exact details, but I'm pretty sure that I got the gist of it.

She also spoke about how getting her green card has been taking forever. Some rant about illegal vs legal immigrants and how in some sense, it is easier for illegals to get citizenship than legals. I don't know, I start to get lost when political jargon comes into play.

Her wife is also starting to go to grad school full time, and will not have an income for the next couple years. So then there's also the wonderful quagmire of paying federal and local income taxes, which of course there are all sorts of issues that crop up with the status of marriage as recognized on a federal and state levels (DC isn't a state, but I think it functions like one for tax purposes).

This whole story struck me as such a good example of some of the things that should be changed in this country, mainly marriage reform, immigration reform, and obviously LGBT rights (Trans rights in particular)

(The conversation did briefly lapse into a familiar argument that marriage should be entirely civil and the religious portion is up to you but has no legal bearing. I'm totally on board with that)

Halloween

2011-07-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

So last Halloween was fun, but I wasn't really anything, it had kind of a thrown together feel, at least to me, which really isn't all that bad, being the first of my (hopefully many) crossdressed Halloweens. This weekend, I was sitting in my apartment, idly pondering what I should do this year. It is my favorite holiday, so advance thinking is a must. There were basically two criteria to shoot for: costume had to be sufficiently geeky and needed to be female. I had dressed up for a day of sitting around inside, nothing fancy, just boobs, tanktop and wig. At one point, I was playing with my hair in front of a mirror and suddenly realized that my appearance was vaguely reminiscent of Chell from Portal 2.

That solves one problem, but brings up another. I spent the entire rest of the weekend looking at portal gun replica instructions online. As fare as I can tell, nobody manufactures them, but even if they did, it would cost probably hundreds of dollars. But really, think of the satisfaction of having a hand made portal gun, how fantastic would that be? So I've got three and a half months to build one. I'm really glad i figured this out now, so that I have time to work on it. I don't even think I will put much effort into the rest of the costume, Aperture Science tanktop and orange jumpsuit, easy enough. Its gunna be hard, I imagine a lot of trial and error. I envision many cuts and scrapes and tears, but I am fairly confident that I can pull it off. The main obstacle right now is that I am so far from home that I don't have any tools or workspace to work on it.

I will totally document the entire process. I regret not having done that for my rubiks cube cleaning project. I may or may not have blog updates on this, but like I said, it might be a while before I get it off the ground.

America

2011-07-08T09:16:00.000-07:00

I was reading comments on cnn.com and finally decided that I couldn't take it any more. Every other comment was about how the launch today was a huge waste of money blah blah blah... Never mind that they made the decision to end the program years ago, and essentially, we had already paid for it. 0.6% of the budget is not that much. Everyone loves whining about how little we got back from space (GPS, a global communications network, all the hundreds of spinoffs). By that logic, we should shut down the national park service, it relies on taxpayer dollars too.

Anyway... on cnns live blog covering the event, there was one post about an old woman who commented that "the shuttle symbolizes patriotism". That is one thing that the space program is for sure, a symbol of what this country can accomplish. Meanwhile the country is slowly approaching default because our leadership has become so partisan that nothing can get accomplished at all. Republicans want to cut spending but refuse to increase taxes. Democrats want to increase taxes but refuse to cut spending. It makes we want to grab someone by the shoulders and shake them. Obviously, some kind of compromise needs to be reached.

The accomplishments of America in this century are things I believe we should be proud of, we made it through the Great Depression, we made it through World War 2, we put a man on the moon. But only because we were able to work together. All of this entitlement crap on both sides just makes me sick. Sure, nothing is seriously wrong yet, but if we keep going the way we've been going, it will be too late. If we want to get out of this economic slump we all need to make sacrifices and work together.

I was watching the news last night and there was a story about how a group of people went through a family's house and removed everything that wasn't made in America. Literally, all that was left was a single vase with flowers in it. Thinking about that this morning, I started looking at stuff in the office. Books, tea, a notebook and a National Instruments testing device were the only things I could find. Not even the clothes on my back came from America. (there is the beautiful irony that there are some clothes for Summer from American Apparel in my closet at home) It is rather depressing to realize that practically everything we own was made in China, Mexico, Taiwan or Thailand (these are just the ones I could find). The news program said that if every American were to spend like $3 extra dollars on american made goods, it would create tons of jobs. It also disturbs me how much we are reliant on foreign energy. Sure, we should pursue clean energy options, but in the meantime, we need to invest in American oil and gas.

America could be great, but we have to work for it.

Pieces and Thoughts

2011-07-06T09:09:00.000-07:00

Wonderful me decides to go on an existential journey right as I decide to sleep last night. Thats one of my great challenges in life, I often think too loudly after I go to bed, and I get this pseudo-insomnia...
Anyway, I was thinking about who I am and how I would define myself. Its something I think about a lot. This blog is pretty much the only outlet for all of that, but I often find myself just going crazy and writing super lengthy posts. So I was pondering actually writing it all down outside the blog. Something like an expression of my philosophy towards everything in life. I don't wanna kid myself but thinking about it almost feels like wanting to write a book. Basically, this might be my next big project, something to occupy my time when I'm not at work.

Summertime

2011-06-20T09:39:00.000-07:00

I have become slightly reluctant about posting about Summer. Mostly because I don't know who reads the blog. I did take the link off of my facebook page, so that might help... I don't know. Not like content control would matter all that much, there have been repeated posts about certain topics that might be a little iffy. Summer does still have a gmail account... If I cared enough, I COULD manage a second blog, but I feel like it would turn out to be me posting once or twice and then not post for a LONG time (see my real second blog that I made for majestic7... which I've actually stopped making also). I did have a diary on a forum... I actually haven't been to that site in a really long time. The whole fall 2010 depression saga kinda got in the way. And then for some reason, I never got back into it in the spring. I've been thinking about going back lately, but my current internet situation is somewhat detrimental. And this post is turning out to be me talking about talking, lol.

I also have a feeling that if I were to make a second blog, it would end up being all pink and lavender... totally cliche, lol.

I ended up making a significant purchase this weekend. Breastforms. Yep, I bought boobs. Fortunately they were on the cheaper side (relatively, I haven't seen them on any sites for less than $100). I had told myself a long time ago that I would need to have an income big enough that it wouldn't be a huge impact. Also at the time i assumed I would have to buy them online, which precluded me from getting them on the grounds that they would have to be shipped to my house or my apartment. Anyway, I was online and I found that place in Manassas that I mentioned. The 60 yr old widow who owns the sex shop is definitely CD friendly. She didn't have any in stock when I went there last weekend. I was a little on the fence about going back until I got drunk on friday night and realized that they would in fact make me happy.

They are actually pretty awesome. The look and feel is pretty good, provided that the neckline of my outfit is high enough to hide them. The grand irony in all of this is that because I left everything in California, I don't have a good bra. Let me tell you, there is nothing more nerve wracking than shopping for underwear. Clothing and make up are one thing... but underwear is another matter entirely. Eventually, either you get the "balls" to grab it. I think I've mentioned this before, but there is a nice little side victory when you realize that its just as awkward for the cashier. Even if its not, its not really their business to question you, at places like Target, they are just employees. Interesting side note, I found a package of men's... sports briefs, I think they were called. Definitely had a moment of "wait, this is men's underwear?" when I got home. Not complaining, I'm rather happy that I got to "cheat" like that.

I feel like I've drifted off topic... oh yeah. So ironically, I find myself with breasts but no bra (the irony itself is ironic...) The lady did have a generic unsized one that I got, but its really not that great. I really just need to suck it up and go in and buy one, who is gunna care? Problem is that I don't remember what size I am. Was it 34 or 36? I can never remember (pretty sure, I've lamented this previously). The lady said that these guys were a C or D (I doubt that they are D... I know what size the forms are, that can easily be translated to cupsize if I know the band...) All this size uncertainty leads back to the issue of purchase. How do I know what size to get? Obviously try them on... Nobody said this would be easy... actually nobody has said anything, this is pretty much all trial and error. Even if I could try on the bra, could I trust the cup size? One thing I'm for sure not ready for is bringing them in with me.

Anyway, they whole thing is pointless at this point. Like I mentioned earlier, I left everything in California. After putting on everything I looked in the mirror, and... Oh yeah, I don't have a wig. I've long since arrived at the conclusion that a wig is necessary for the feminine illusion. The challenge is going to be finding one that I like that isn't a clone of the one I already have. I'm thinking something straight if they have it. Of course, as I'm typing this, I'm sitting in a hot car, and wearing a wig doesn't exactly sound pleasant. Actually, the decent outfit that I bought yesterday is long sleeves and cotton leggings, not optimal for this weather at all. I did find a wig store online thats near the capitol. I've never been inside one... who do wig stores cater to anyway?

Of course I always arrive back at the fundamental question of what I plan to do once I've obtained everything that I've decided that I need. Where do I expect to wear any of this? I never even wore anything out when I was in California. If nothing else, I would like to go for a drive maybe. Never done that before. Or I could log back on to the previously mentioned forum and try to meet with someone. Truth is, I just don't know... I'm just riding a wave of impulses, just like I have been for the past forever when it comes to this sorta thing.

Of course, I've never been out (not counting Rocky Horror and Halloween if those even count at all) So I have no idea how my mannerisms and voice will pass. Apparently you are supposed to talk out of the throat rather than the chest and add some melody to your speech patterns. If I had internet, I would totally practice on chat roulette or something... maybe... I don't know...

Movie

2011-06-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

I just saw Super 8 this weekend and... I am wondering if I should put a spoiler alert in here or not. I'll avoid specific plot points, I mostly just want to talk about the broad picture.

So anyway, imagine if Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams and Bryan Burke decided to make a monster/alien movie. That pretty much sums it up... well, that is exactly what it is, and I suppose I was expecting as much. The characterization was pretty good and there was a little funny dialog, but as far as plot was concerned, I almost feel a little underwhelmed by it. It felt like a combination of a lot of scifi movies I've seen. Most notable was the ET/Starman like ending. I can't for the life of me figure out what other movie it reminds me of is... I guess just a typical monster movie. I haven't seen Cloverfield, but I imagine there would be some similarities.

I just realized what the problem was, there wasn't a lot of thematic originality. We've got strained family relations, young love, military cover-up, it just wants to go home, you don't see the monster up close until the last 40 or so minutes, etc. A lot of stuff you see all the time in scifi movies. Don't get me wrong, it was pretty good cinematically, mostly just thematic issues.

One of the aspects I did appreciate was that there was an explanation about why the monster was killing people. Wouldn't you be a little pissed off if the military captured you and performed scientific experiments on you?

I am pretty sure that I've mentioned this in a previous post. What I really want to see is a movie where the alien lands, gets captured, gets experimented on... and then a whole bunch of his buddies show up in orbit. I'm just going to throw out an analogy real quick, imagine if an American pilot crashes in... I don't know South America or something, and he is captured by natives and tortured and experimented on because they've never seen a white man before. Now... wouldn't we go looking for him? wouldn't we be REALLY pissed off when we found out what they did to him?

I don't know if it would make for a really great movie or not, but it would be a nice break from the ET, Bodysnatchers or War of the Worlds type alien movies that come out all the time. Something maybe along the lines of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

(I just realized that District 9 is a pretty good example of "none of the above")(also Independence Day is War of the Worlds... I can write a substantial essay about the parallels)

Edit: I realized just now that I should mention that the creature design was pretty good... not really anything cutting edge or anything... its hard in our world of cgi, but pretty good nonetheless

What am I doing here?

2011-06-11T07:30:00.000-07:00

I am in a Starbucks in Manassas. I drove 20ish miles in some mad pursuit, won't put the details here, I don't know who is reading this... basically its a Summer spirit mission, and now that I'm actually in Manassas, I have to follow through with it, or I wasted a trip. I was about ready to close down the computer and continue on my mad journey when I noticed that someone who actually messaged me back was online... does that mean that the 1.5 messages I sent this morning will be responded to? (apparently, as I type this, the answer is yes)

I'm in this weird manic money spending mode today. I got a paycheck and I want to use it. I've contemplated writing a post about Summer and "the itch", but I haven't gotten around to it... what I should probably do is write the post when I'm away from the computer. Anyway, she's been hammering away at my psyche all week, so I need to let her play. (apparently the term for her is "anima" via Carl Jung... thanks for that factoid, Cash Cab Chicago)

Once I satisfy her, I'm gunna try to get to a used bookstore and then I might explore Potomac Mills shopping center, maybe catch a movie depending on how the time works out... we will see...

Life

2011-06-03T17:42:00.000-07:00

Waiting for a thing to download and low on battery, so this is going to be pretty stream of consciousness...

Really, I think I'm just starved for human contact. Living alone is not terrible, but being alone is. Not even really on a romantic level, I feel lonely pretty much in general. This is a pretty small town, so I can still hope that if I live in the city, I would be able to meet people. My job is really fun, but there just isn't any human interaction.

I find myself spending a lot of my internet time on OkCupid, clicking on profiles and hoping somebody notices. I have sent a few messages; not counting the ones I sent today, my success rate is 33%. Really not that encouraging, they even visited my profile but never sent anything back. I keep trying to tell myself that if I'm not worth their time, then they shouldn't be worth mine. But its still disheartening because they seemed like interesting people. Such is life, i suppose.

actually realized that im coming up on the one year anniversary of the first time I recall being REALLY depressed. I was definitely sad before catalina, but that night, I was pretty inconsolable. I really mark that as the start of my really depressed phase. It sorta started lessennning around winter break. I don't think Ive really recovered all the way. Its certainly not as dark as it seemed at the time. Its one of those things where you keep telling yourself that if you had time, you could stop and sort it all out... but I never feel like I have the time. Still carrying around little pieces, trying to sort them all out one at a time if I can.

I've shifted my reading over to some more philosophical stuff. Not really a lot of metaphysics, the kind of philosophy that has practical value. There was one book I used to own, but before I left home I could not find it anywhere and I really want to read it. It was written by a Holocaust survivor (hoping for the off chance that it will be in the museum bookstore when i go tomorow, hopefully, it wont be too crowded) its sorta about the meaning of life. We read part of it in PHIL155, but I didn't get around to reading the whole thing. I might talk about books when I finish reading them. Im actually kind of surprised I haven't read more, with all the free time I feel like I'm having. Living alone is busy work, I guess...

I need to buy gas, Ridley is hungry

Washington

2011-05-30T05:22:00.000-07:00

I am still trying to figure out why I can't get the pictures off my phone via bluetooth ("The power to control things at a distance via radio waves -- its the future, Watson!") I might just have to send some of them to myself via email. For some reason, the wired connection won't show any pictures. Kinda sad, cuz the phone got along so well with the desktop..

Anyway... saturday and sunday were my big DC adventure days. Well, my mom did call me friday night to tell me that my rent check bounced, like $200 fewer dollars in checking than I needed and over $2000 in the savings account right next to it. So Saturday morning, I had to run over to the bank to get a cashiers check (actually from my other checking account). That was fun (no... not at all).

But around 10 or so, I was finally ready to go. Its about a 30-40 minuted drive up to the Huntington station which is the southernmost station on the yellowline, and as far as I know, the closest park-and-ride to where I live. Finally got my first glimpse of the city in like 8 years. Washington is pretty unique in that the skyline is pretty much empty, its got the monument and the capitol and thats it.

Figured I would go check out the monument. Apparently to get in, you need a free timed ticket. I overheard some lady say that they were all sold out (around 11ish) and that her husband got there at like 730 to line up for when they gave the tickets out at 8. I'm hoping its just because of the memorial day weekend, I would definitely like to do that sometime. After that, I stumbled into the WW2 memorial. I don't think I've actually been there since they finished it, pretty cool. Then the Korean and Vietnam memorials. I figured that since I might not be back on memorial day, I would pay respect then. Then the Lincoln memorial, insanely crowded, like I expected. It was really weird when I bought an ice cream sandwich right outside. I paid with a $5 and got pennies back with my change. Had to do a double take between the money and the memorial.

After that, I decided to try to find my way round the tidal basin to get to the Jefferson Memorial. On the way, I found the FDR memorial and the George Mason Memorial. After Jefferson, I was starting to get a little tired, my right knee was really starting to act up. Decided to pay a visit to Arlington Cemetery and find my grandparents.

Its a really sobering experience walking through there by yourself. Once you get away from the crowds, its just you and silence and rows and rows of gravestones. After a lot of trial and error, I managed to find them and get a picture. Really glad I made the effort to visit this weekend if not on Memorial Day proper.

I definitely need to get back to see the changing of the guard and to see the Challenger and Columbia gravesites. There were a bunch of bikers blocking it and they were doing some sort of ceremony. Oh yeah, speaking of bikers, there must be like a convention or something, there were A LOT of bikers in the city this weekend.

Then yesterday I spent HOURS inside museums. I watched two shows at the planetarium, its always really cool, even if Whoopi Goldberg's narration is a little over-dramatic. Then I pretty much just looked at the space exhibits. It was kinda funny to see a monitor with an STK display of the ISS current position. When I got to the book store, I found a TON of books that I had actually previously wanted, but I'm not sure if they could be found elsewhere. I ended up coming back later in the day and buying one about the Mercury 7 "written by the astronauts themselves" and one by Gene Kranz, he was one of the flight controllers for the Apollo missions.

Then off the the Natural History Museum. We never got a chance to visit during the 8th grade trip... so I hadn't been there in... something like 12 years. I loved the wonderful irony that I spent my sunday looking at exhibits about dinosaurs and the evolution of man. It was actually a really good special exhibit. There was one section with facial reconstructions placed at probably actual height. I hadn't realized how short Neandethals were. Like short, but pretty stocky, like head and face was pretty big. Also there was a display on the benefits and drawbacks of bipedalism. Among others, there was back pain and knee problems, oh so true.

The American History Museum turned out to be way too crowded, so I decided to just come back later. And this car is getting kinda hot, so Im gunna wrap up and head home. Things I still need to do:
Go up Washington Monument
Tour Capitol
American History Museum
Holocaust Museum
Archives
Supreme Court
Treasury
Aquarium
Art Galleries (all 5 or whatever of them)

More Rambles

2011-05-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

Now that I've rediscovered the internet, I've finally taken care of the little things that I should have handled a week ago.

Mypod has been registered to this comp, so now I can watch movies that I bought on itunes (read: now I can watch Dark Knight and Iron Man) and I definitely need them, its only a matter of time until I run out of movies and get so bored that my brain begins to melt.

Then I put my netflix account on hold (single tear). Kinda tough to do, but really, if I only get like an hour or so of internet a day, then its really not worth it to pay for netflix on a monthly basis.

Finally, I updated my OkCupid account to reflect my new locale. I'm just going to cling to the insane hope that I can meet someone and not sit around watching tv all evening. I don't really feel like surfing around on there and messaging people... mostly because I'm inside a starbucks and the universe can see my internet. I might just look at a few profiles and see if anything happens. At least that's the plan for today.

More important things though! I'm really excited about my job. Not sure how much I'm allowed to say about it, but basically it involves reducing the pointing error of a satellite communications antenna(s). My supervisor/mentor gave me a bunch of files today and it looks pretty fantastic. Basic astronomy concepts, orbital mechanics, numerical analysis with matlab and data acquisition via labview. Like the project is actually really similar to a mechop lab... which makes me wonder why mechop sucked so much awful. Really cool stuff, great experience.

Also, a couple hours ago I learned that pretty much all the museums in DC are open all memorial day weekend and they are all free! So I'm thinking all 3 days, I'll head out there. We'll see how much I get done, maybe I'll go on monday, maybe I won't need to. Also realized that it might be cheaper to drive to a metro than to take the train all the way to Union Station (its like a $50 round trip and so far, Ridley seems to get pretty good gas mileage).

And I guess that's all for now...

Good News!

2011-05-24T15:59:00.001-07:00

Well, after failing fantastically at trying to call Comcast several times, I finally sent them an email. I really don't understand why the automated system asks for a zip code if it is just going to put you through to a site based on the area code of the phone you are calling from. Whatever, hopefully somebody will tell me SOMETHING when/if they email me back.

The good news mentioned in the title is that I got fed up and drove to the local mini-starbucks-thats-technically-part-of-a-bigger-store to see if there was any wifi here. (for some reason, mcdonalds didnt have any signal that I could find) Anyway, I searched for networks and managed to find a Marine Corps Community Services wifi signal. I figure I can use it without too much guilt, afterall, in my pocket I do have a military dependent ID card from a retired marine. Its gotten me easy base access and groceries and various home supplies, so why not wifi?

In the meantime, I've started working! The place is really cool, the building has a giant sphere on top of it with a huge radio antenna dish inside. Its like working in the future. I spent pretty much all of today re-associating myself with labview and orbital mechanics and learning NI's CVI program and trying to learn C programming. Hopefully tomorow, my supervisor will be able to provide me with more materials to review to associate myself with the project. Probably got some more training/orientations coming up this week too.

I feel so grown up, I wake up, watch news, eat breakfast, make myself lunch, drive to work, do work, drive home, make or buy dinner, maybe get drunk, rinse, wash, repeat. Pretty good practice for the real world I guess.

For some reason, they only have one episode of the simpsons in the evenings and I'm missing it because I really needed the stupid internet. At least I can check my emails at work, so I don't really NEED the internet... but I kinda do. This spot is on the way home from work, so I think I'll be back tomorrow.

The Odyssey Continues

2011-05-22T07:14:00.000-07:00

I tried getting free wifi at the mcdonalds parking lot, but alas, there was no signal. Maybe if I decided it would be worth it to buy food, I would go in and buy food and try again... so probably never. Comcast ended up having "higher than normal call volume" when I called yesterday, so I jusr said "screw it" and decided to call back later. I also decided that I would pass on trying to get to the city today. I'm still sort of getting acclimated and I need to do some ironing and stuff today.

But yeah, yesterday I spent most of my time driving to places I have to go tomorow, so I know where I am going. I actually got within maybe 5 or so miles of the city, but they have these things here called trees that make it so you can't see very far from ground level. I actually ended up passing the building and had to do some fancy turn around stuff later on. The whole round trip took about two hours. Frank told me to plan on arriving between 10 and 11 to avoid traffic, so I think leaving at 9 would be fine... oh, I'm rambling... whatever, I like rambling.

So after that, I worked on finding the commissary and exchange (having a military dependent ID has proven to be EXTREMELY convenient) and the place where I think I will be working. The former two were easy, my dad said to just follow the road until almost the back entrance. Fortunately, they haven't changed it much since 12 years ago (or however long ago it was that my dad would have been on base). Finding the MRC though? That was a bit of a trick.

My first mistake was using google maps. Its a very useful tool if used correctly, but if you fudge it like I did, its pretty much useless. I should have read the directions before printing them, but I was in such a rush that I missed that. The directions included two "restricted roads" that came off the highway, which I did not see at all. Basically, I was left with a general idea of where it was and a very rough map of the area. After overshooting, the first time, I examined said map, found a street name that might work and turned around. I didn't see a sign for the street going northbound... then I overshot the entrance to Quantico. I cursed myself and pulled another Uturn. Then I chanced upon the street sign that I wanted, I guess it was a secondary street that branched of of the one that branched off the highway (I think I may have needed another Uturn to get there).

So I'm going up this first street, and I pass the street I want, that's okay, I'm just going to drive around and see if I can see anything. Then by sheer dumb luck, I round a corner and there is a barbed wire fence, a big grassy hill, a giant golfball-looking building and a big sign that reads "Naval Research Lab: Midway Research Center". Hooray!

So I think that brings the tally up to three for the number of times that I've gotten hopelessly lost since getting here. One thing I've got to comment on is the massive difference in the freeway systems between LA and DC. In LA, you get the feeling that everything meshes pretty well. You get the feeling that the freeways (or the freeway precursors) existed first and then the city grew up around it. Over here, the city was built a LONG time before there were freeways or highways, so you end up with a lot of really weird interchanges and stuff when the roads had to be built around pre-existing structures. The other thing, which I guess is common in pretty much every city outside of California, is that there's like a halo freeway around the city and a bunch of spokes. It kinda looks like a spider web. LA is on the coast, so I guess it wouldn't really work.

Anyway, rambles... I need to use the rest of the internet time to do some sorta productive stuff.

My Odyssey

2011-05-21T08:10:00.000-07:00

Well, I got a paragraph into this post and then firefox crashed when I tried to look something up... I really need to get the internet working in my room asap. $7/hour at this coffee shop is a little ridiculous (also there's zero privacy).

Anyway... I pretty much traveled all day yesterday. I was pretty amazed at how smoothly it all went. LAX to Midway, Chicago, change planes, Midway to Dulles, rent a car, drive from Dulles to Quantico, check in to my studio apartment. It all went smoothly until I got stuck on the I-66 and got lost in Falls Church. (Wasn't that the location of a Super Mutant base in Fallout 3? I feel like a lot of this summer is going to be "that was the place where such-and-such happened in Fallout 3...)

And as I mentioned before, I am on a computer in a coffee shop. I paid for an hour and I am going to use that whole hour... hence me taking time for a blog post. Trying to figure out what to do today, I need to go to the market and get shampoo and rudimentary foodstuffs. Then I have 2 days and 2 plans. First, I need to drive to work and drive to my company's office so I know where they are/how to get there. Second, I kinda want to take the train into the city. Today I'm leaning towards the second plan. Mostly because I don't feel like driving, also because I traveled so long that I feel that I deserve some sort of satisfaction by doing something touristy.

Holy crap, I just crashed firefox again... fortunately the post was mostly saved this time. I guess if there are more than 2 internet windows open at a time, the RAM flips out and crashes the program... God, how old are these computers?

Part of me wants to change my Ok Cupid profile right now to reflect my current location... but there's really no point if I have to pay for the internet... maybe later, I guess. Not that I came here looking for love or anything, but it might be nice to meet some people while I am here... I'm sure I'll tell all about it in some future blog post. I expect there will be several posts in the future... my current diversions are limited t0 internet, books and really slow running minecraft on my computer (this is weekdays of course, I'm going to spend as much of the weekends that I can visiting interesting places)

Also might work on my constructed language, I transcribed all of the useful info from a whole notebook onto my laptop so I don't have to start from scratch. My interest has been rekindled by this one book I'm reading... might talk about it later... There are a lot of things that I would have liked to talk about, but never got around to... so we'll see. I will likely be tweeting from the capitol at some point today, so stand by... I wish I knew how to twitpic with my phone

April

2011-04-25T13:57:00.000-07:00

Haven't done much blogging this month. Between homework, projects, upcoming final exams, my recent discovery of Minecraft, the release of Portal 2, and my most recent discovery of Battlestar Galactica, there really hasn't been much time for blogging... or internet dating or whatever else it is that I do when I'm bored.

Minecraft, Portal 2 and BSG are certainly worthy of blog posts sometime in the future if I ever get around to it.

I've also been thinking about posting something about the "140 characters or less" aspect of twitter orthography... sorta fascinating since I have developed a basic understanding of linguistics.

So this is a ten minute post in which I talk about what it would be nice to talk about. This is somehow a metaphor for life.

The Dreamscape

2011-03-28T12:16:00.000-07:00

Interesting dreams last night. Driving through the Oregon countryside and seeing bison and giraffes and something that I'm not entirely sure what it was supposed to be... I think it was a bison-giraffe hybrid? There was also a super market that didnt have any sweet potatoes (obvious reference to a real experience).

But the really weird part was when I met Summer at my grandmothers house. The house is a popular setting , probably because that was the place where I lived the longest and we were there when I was between the still rather impressionable ages of about 10 and 16. Anyway... Meeting Summer is not uncommon, I assume its something along the lines of the projections of subconscious that was mentioned in Inception.

This time was different though. Occasionally, I'll have dreams where I am Summer, but I cant recall any instance where I actively became her. At some point in this dream last night, we actually "switched", its kinda hard to explain, but at one point I realized I was looking at myself. This of course implied that I became Summer. I've found that perceived reality is heavily dependent on implications, maybe even more so than details. You know when people describe dreams and they are like "you were there too, but you didnt look like you", thats when the details and implications dont line up, but the mind can still discern some form of reality from it.

Dreams lately have been really odd, mostly because of my apparent sleep issues. I feel like I drift in and out of consciousness throughout the night. Like I'll wake up for a moment, become aware that I am awake, then slip back into the same dream. At least I think this is what is happening. I am pretty sure that if they were false awakenings, I wouldn't be able to return to the same dream since technically I am still dreaming. This is so much fun to conjecture about, lol.

oneironaut - A person who explores dream worlds, usually associated with lucid dreaming.

Mass Effect Fail

2011-03-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

Mass Effect just bugged out on me, I got this awesome screen cap of flying Mako

Cubaholism 3.0

2011-03-23T14:50:00.001-07:00

As mentioned previously, part of my spring break was spent perfecting my solution to the megaminx. The whole dodecahedral puzzle seems quaint at first but eventually it snags you. I think its the only 3 dimensional shape that exists that is an analogue of the rubik's cube family of puzzles. I haven't gotten my hands on any tetrahedral puzzles, but I feel like their solutions are more akin to the octahedral puzzle that I have solved.

Anyway, I can solve the megaminx easy. So the next logical step is of course, the gigaminx.

This may or may not be the nerdiest thing I have ever said, but I have already solved the puzzle in my mind. That is to say that I have formulated a solution which I am pretty sure will work, but havent tested yet. Its based on my generalized solution to the higher order cubes. I imagine it would take about 2 or 3 times longer to solve than the 5x5 cube. It has 12 faces, twice that of the cube, and 30 edges which is almost 3 times more. Solving centers and solving edges are the most time consuming steps of the large cubes. (also the megaminx by itself takes way longer than the cube)

Problem is that the main place for buying exotic puzzles is a chinese website... pretty sure its chinese, judging from the apparently "chinglish" grammar and the expensive shipping that takes up to 45 days.

With shipping these guys come out to about $60. There is also the teraminx which is even more advanced (and more expensive) available through the same site. The petaminx is also real, but I don't think it is being mass produced in any market yet (google it, its scary).

Side note, my megaminx actually isn't super great, i wonder if there are better quality ones available.

Cubaholism 2.0

2011-03-18T14:35:00.001-07:00

I'm kinda kicking myself right now. For some reason, I decided that rather than let my original 3x3x3 cube sit and collect dust (and collect, it did, more on that later), I should get it cleaned up. I thought to myself, I should probably document this. But of course, I left my camera at school. I figured, well... I need something to do this spring break, so I should just do it. Now I wish I had asked my mom for a camera, because it was a pretty exciting adventure. Basically took me 3.5ish hours... or rather the last third of Spiderman 2 and the entirety of Independence Day, so however long that is.

I think there are pictures of it somewhere, but it had gotten pretty bad. Two of the orange stickers had already come off completely and the laminate on most of the stickers was partially to totally peeling off. Interestingly enough, the white and red sides showed the least damage. White makes sense, because 99.9% of the time, I solve white side down, so the whites get significantly less attention than the others, especially the yellows. Red just baffled me though, once the bottom is solved, there really isn't any color preference, I'm just solving the 3 side edges, then the 4 top edges. My theory is that the red stickers were somehow more durable. But of course, that doesn't matter any more since all but one of the stickers has been removed. Additionally, there were several stickers that had completely lost their protective laminate and had been rubbed down to white. In short, it was rather difficult when I solved it one last time.

I started out by dissembling the cube, I've never disassembled one either through accident of intent. The mechanism is rather crude compared to the beautiful design of the v-cubes, but hey Rubik's design has been good enough since 1974. Anyway, I was quite surprised by how dirty it was on the inside. This horrible black dust coated everything in the inside. I figure its a mix of plastic liberated by repeated turning, skin flakes, dirt, dust and any other random particulate matter that got sucked in; possibly also rust from the springs, but I didn't get a good look at them, so I don't know. Plenty of windex went in to getting all that cleared up.

Next came the arduous task of peeling stickers. Essentially there are three ways to solve a rubiks cube: 1. the "correct way", 2. disassembly and reassembly, 3. Peeling off the stickers and putting them back. Let me tell ya... peeling stickers is a hell of a lot of work. Also, once you get the stickers off, they are off for good. They may stick for a little while, but the original adhesion is gone forever. Please, for the love of god: If you are going to make my cube unsolvable for me, DO NOT PEEL OFF THE STICKERS. Of course, removing the stickers manually also left a lot of sticky residue on the cubelets so a lot of goo-gone and a lot more windex went into the final cleaning.

So now I am left with a black cube with the white logo sticker on the bottom. I am alternately calling it Little Blacky, Shadow Cube or Phoenix Cube for the time being. My friend came over and started playing with it. After a while, with concern, he commented that he wasn't sure if he was solving it correctly or not. Its rather fantastic really, other than the one sticker, there are no direction or orientation indicators at all. Essentially, all positions are solved positions; this is not counting the 24 full cube rotations that only exist because of the white sticker (if it was all black, then all rotations would be trivial). I will post pictures as soon as I get back to school.

But really, other than its gimmick value, a single color cube is pretty useless. I'm debating on how to re-sticker it. I'm thinking maybe a 3 color cube, a mirror image cube or a cube with solvable centers. The last would require some sort of custom stickers though... not quite sure how I would manage that.

I also fully developed my megaminx solution the past couple days. I may post on that later, but in the mean time, I got sucked into watching videos of the gigaminx and damnit, I want one (I also really want a teraminx and a petaminx... but they are expensive and really, I can't say that I can solve them until after I solve the giga... which, I think I can solve, but I'm not totally sure).

Things I Love

2011-03-01T22:41:00.000-08:00

just found this on the internet

I can't really express how happy this makes me... I want to print it out on poster sized paper and hang it on my wall. I love Portal, I love Dali, I love mash ups of classical and contemporary art. I also love surrealism.

Cubaholism

2011-02-27T12:17:00.001-08:00

Recently, I got asked to help a friend unload her car before a party... Okay, but then I'm going to be 2 hours early for the party. I got it into my head that it would be a good idea to take vcube-6 to the party. Of course every time I get it solved, somebody has to mess it up. For some reason, people always have the impulse to mess up a solved cube. Me on the other hand, it bothers me to no end when the cube is unsolved. So we end up in this vicious cycle in which I end up solving the cube a dozen times in a single night.

Anyway, I can't decide who is my favorite, v-6 or v-7. v-7 is bigger and looks more impressive, but v-6, being an even cube is harder to solve. Of course I run into difficulty whenever I explain that the (n-1) x (n-1) even cube is harder than the n x n odd cube. Whenever I try to explain the concept of invisible or hidden pieces, I always get a blank stare.

At some point I am going to write up a solution. I took these pics sometime before winter break to demonstrate the principles behind the "unsolvable" states that arise in the even cubes due to hidden pieces. The hidden pieces that cause problems are: the centers, which make it necessary to keep track of center colors when solving; and the edge centers, the center piece of each edge.

In the V cube design, these pieces are actually physical pieces inside the cube, hidden from view. In the 4x4 professor cube, these pieces don't physically exist, since Rubik uses a different design that Verdes, but the mechanics are the same in either case.

Edge problem

This problem involves an edge segment that can't be solved using the 3x3 solution. It occurs when two edge centers are oriented incorrectly.

Corner problem

This problem involves 2 corner pieces in swapped positions, it also can't be solved with the normal 3x3 solution. It occurs when two center edges are also in swapped positions.

For Great Justice

2011-02-21T14:59:00.000-08:00

I just found this in with my facebook pictures

What I do with my free time

2011-02-14T13:26:00.000-08:00

This sunday (yesterday) was my stay at home and do nothing day.

I ended up downloading LaTeX, a typeseting program that is apparently much better than MS Word for formatting and stuff. Of course after downloading it, I had no idea how it worked, so I looked at a couple tutorials and played around with it. Then I thought to myself, I should just type something up, just to see if I've got the hang of this.

So I spent a couple hours typing up an article about the language I invented. LaTeX has a module that can type IPA symbols, when I found that out, I entered a state of bliss for a couple minutes. The article is about half done, I got through the overview and fictional history and then phonology and orthography. I still need to type up sections on grammar and vocab, the things I haven't exactly fleshed out yet, but will probably solidify once I get it typed together.

But after a while, I got bored of typing, so I put that aside and opened up the matlab rubik's cube program that Ive been working on. This all started about a week ago when I pondered whether or not I was allowed to say that I could solve an 8x8 rubiks cube. I know that I can, but as they currently don't exist in the mass market, I can't easily get ahold of one at a reasonable price (what exactly is a reasonable price? well, V-cube 7 runs at about 30 Euros ~ $40... also, I will only ever buy the cubes from Verdes, his company has the international patent, I refuse to acknowledge the chinese copy-cat cubes)

So anyway, I figured, why not just program my own virtual rubiks cube, theres one site with good virtual cubes, but they only go up to 7x7. I've been working hard to keep my cube generalized, so I can just plug in n=4 or whatever and it will work as the 4x4 cube. The first part of the code is really easy, its just a lot of rearranging elements in a n x 6n matrix. The hard part there was sitting down with pencil and paper and figuring out what each rearrangement was supposed to be.

But the hard part is creating a user interface. I am learning how MATLAB guis work, which will probably end up being a useful skill in the long run. The problem is that I dream a little of modifying the code to a more accessible form. Student edition of matlab is expensive, the actual version is even more expensive. Of course, then I will have to learn a new language (python was suggested to me). And I'm sure the math part wont be that difficult to program, its the user interface that's going to be difficult. I wonder if this has already been programmed by somebody... I could download it, but where would be the fun in that?

Speaking of rubik's cubes and LaTeX. One of the things I really wanna do sometime soon is to create a how to solve the rubiks cube article and post it online. How to solve a rubiks type cube of arbitrary size... lets do it!

Movies

2011-02-05T09:33:00.000-08:00

Thanks to netflix, my most recent hobby is movie watching. This means I can finally get around to finishing my goal of watching all the movies on AFI's top 10 scifi movies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI%27s_10_Top_10

As of yesterday, I only need to watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which is right at the top of my queue, so maybe sometime this week)

Personally, I didn't really like A Clockwork Orange... I enjoyed all of the others so far (I haven't seen ET all the way through since like 10 years ago, but I think I would enjoy it a lot more now than I did back then)

Clockwork Orange didn't seem very science-fictiony to me. Yeah, it was sorta set in the "not to distant dystopian future" and it had a degree of mind control too it, but it felt the same as I would feel if someone called 1984 a sci-fi classic. The description just doesn't quite fit.

In addition, I didn't really like the movie itself, which is rather odd because I also recently watched 2001 and The Shining, which were also both done by Stanley Kubrick, and I thoroughly enjoyed those two and gave them 5 stars on netflix. Clockwork Orange, I gave 3 stars, which is my default "I didnt hate it, but I didnt really like it either" rating.

Reassurance

2011-02-04T10:19:00.001-08:00

About 330 or so on wednesday, I was walking back to the office from the credit union. Almost back and a car pulling out of psx hit a girl on a bike. He wasn't going that fast, so she wasn't hurt, mostly just shaken up, I think. In my opinion, they were both to blame, he glanced away for a second, and she, being a student on a bicycle wasn't looking where she was goddamned going. (Like half the students here dont look where they are going half the time, the other half never look where they are going... yes, we do have a pedestrian campus, but we still have roads, roads have cars, cars can hurt you)

But anyway, my initial reaction was "how can i help?" (well, after the "holy crap! is she okay?) I did the whole boyscout helpful thing and held the bike up as the driver reattached her chain. I would have done more if there was any more to do. In hindsight its actually a very reassuring thing. As cynical and negative and pessemistic as I get, on the inside I'm still a good person.

I was going to complain to the universe about how I'm a good person but it still hates me.... but that's not entirely fair, I'm mostly being melodramatic.

Starwars

2011-01-22T14:38:00.000-08:00

"Where is Padme? Is she ok?"

"It seems that in your anger, you killed her... but the dark side will take care of you"

"Really?"

"No, not really... the dark side will never love you like she did."

"NOOOOOOOOO"

But seriously though, there are a surprising number of plot points that were decided on pretty late during production. The movies almost actually contradict themselves a little. That being said, the whole "I am your father" is probably the best plot twist there is.

Song

2011-01-21T13:27:00.000-08:00

So this song has been stuck in my head for days now:

And its not even really this song, just this particular solo piano cover. Its actually kinda funny/ironic, I've only ever heard the original Metallica version of this song once when it happened to come on the radio. However, I've listened to this song dozens of times, usually the Apocalyptica cover.

Fingers

2011-01-17T12:01:00.000-08:00

I just had some warts burned off. The anesthetic made me really anxious and jittery. My fingers are numb, but the burns are starting to hurt a little. This might be terrible.

Day 28, 29, 30

2010-12-29T17:32:00.001-08:00

I'm sorta done with this thing. It was fun, but I'm kinda ready to be moving on.

Day 28 - First celebrity crush

Probably Amy Lee of Evanescence. I had a sort of Evanescance phase in highschool. For the most part, I'm not really a fan of celebrities, I have a hard time thinking of them as real people. In my mind, its kinda like falling in love with a fictional character from a book, movie or video game.

Day 29 - Opinions on Glee

I'm not really a huge fan of musicals. Also, I like to watch TV to escape reality, if its not fantastic or ridiculous, then whats the point?

Day 30 - recent photo
This is the most recent non-incriminating picture of me...

Day 27

2010-12-27T16:02:00.001-08:00

Favorite names:

Girl Names:
Summer (obviously, lol)
Victoria
Juliet

Boy Names:
This is actually pretty hard... Not really something I think about ever
Jackson (yeah... I picked my own name, I kinda like the sound of it... )
Alexander (Aleksandr is the awesome russian spelling, but I wouldn't be that mean to my son... also, I'm not Russian)
Tiberius

Pet Names:
We (mostly just me) named our dog, Laika, after the first animal to orbit the earth.

I plan on owning one or several cats in the future. The first three will be named the following:
Spot
Jonesy
Orion
I am a huge nerd, and if you know all of those references, then you are also a huge nerd.

Day 26

2010-12-26T09:53:00.000-08:00

Name one place you would love to visit one day

There are a couple places I would like to see.... I would really like to go to Europe at some point, if that doesn't happen, then Mexico or Canada... if not that, then New York

Day 25

2010-12-24T18:40:00.001-08:00

Gunna do this early since tomorrow is christmas and I don't know if I'll get a chance to post.

Last book I read for pleasure or school

All of the books I read now are for pleasure :)
I just finished reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair. I had it sitting on my shelf forever and needed something to read. There was a lot of philosophy but it was written well, so it was reasonably easy to understand. It was kinda interesting.

Trying to think of the last book (full novel) that I had to read for school... I'm actually not sure if I really had to read anything all the way through since I've been in college... Maybe PHIL 150, there was a book by Victor Frankl, I think.

Day 24

2010-12-24T10:02:00.000-08:00

The last movie you saw in theaters

Um... that might have been Inception... I haven't gone to any movies since the summer.

I did watch Metropolis the other day, I was actually surprised at how good it was. Silent films are interesting.

Day 23

2010-12-23T10:00:00.000-08:00

Opinions on Lady Gaga

Meh, I've had minimal exposure to her, so I don't really have opinions.

Day 22

2010-12-22T17:37:00.000-08:00

Do you play a sport? Tell us about it. If not, tell us about a different hobby you may have.

Sports and hobbies are pretty different things...

In highschool I did wrestling. I also did boyscouts... I guess that would constitute an alternative to sports.

In college I do zero sports. I do prop crew for the marching band, that's pretty much the only thing that's been keeping me in reasonably good shape. I'm going to try to do yoga in the spring... maybe s0me recreational running.

I also solve rubik's cubes of various sizes and do art/engineering projects with lego.

Day 21

2010-12-21T17:42:00.000-08:00

Favorite subject to study:

In elementary school it was science and math. In middle school it was just science. In highschool it was physics. In college its astrodynamics.

Evolution of my education...

Day 19/20

2010-12-20T09:33:00.001-08:00

Day 19: the initials of your crush(es)

Currently non-existent, I just got out of a three year relationship, give me some time... Also, on principle, I think these types of questions are dumb, people reading this will generally figure out who you are talking about and then news would get out. Also it might hurt the feelings of third parties... I'm a big fan of honesty and transparency in human relationships.

Day 20:
Do you wear glasses?
Glasses are generally for when I'm at home for long periods of time (like evenings and weekends) or when I'm really hung over... Otherwise I wear contacts.

Seriously though, yes, I wear glasses/contacts for nearsightedness... I'm also astigmatic, I don't know how that factors into my prescription.

Day 17/Day 18

2010-12-18T15:35:00.000-08:00

I somehow managed to miss a day, so I'm going to double post today

Day 17: Thoughts on Ugg boots:

Not gunna lie, I really kinda like them and I wish I had a pair.

Day 18: Do you drink soda more often than milk?

They are probably about equal, maybe a little bit more soda. I usually don't drink as much milk when I'm not at home, but between tuesday night and friday afternoon, we managed to go through 2 gallons of 2% milk... I don't think anybody else drank any and I'm pretty sure none of it got used for cooking... So basically, I think I drank it all.

N0t as bad as drinking a gallon of milk in an hour... I tried that once (peer pressure, at least 10 other people also tried), I got 2/3 of the way through and had upper and lower digestive problems for the next day and a half. I have a theory that everybody is lactose intolerant, its just the level of intolerance that varies from person to person.

Day 16

2010-12-17T19:08:00.001-08:00

Favorite Disney princess movie

I dunno, its kindof a tossup between Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast

Day 15

2010-12-15T20:28:00.001-08:00

Favorite junk food:

Reese's cups

Day 14

2010-12-14T07:46:00.001-08:00

Do you have siblings? Talk about them

My sister, Janelle, is 3 years younger than me. We get along pretty well (especially now that we don't live in the same place all the time, lol) Seriously though, we played together a lot. One of her Barbie dolls was married to one of my Predator action figures, they ruled the planet together with an iron fist... come to think of it, our games had a lot of villains and not very many heroes...

Day 13

2010-12-13T09:53:00.000-08:00

Your thoughts about Mean Girls

(some questions in this thing seem oddly specific)

I never saw the movie until last year right before the weekender... then I saw it like 3 times in the course of one week. Its not a movie I would have ever seen on my own, but it was pretty good.

Day 12

2010-12-12T20:33:00.000-08:00

Your thoughts or opinions about Harry Potter

(are thoughts and opinions different things?)

I feel like I only read Harry Potter because everyone else was reading it. I kinda hated the 5th book, because it was basically him complaining about his life the entire time. I never bothered reading the 6th or 7th, but I know how they end

Day 11

2010-12-11T23:03:00.000-08:00

Your top 3 favorite bands

hmm

definitely Apocalyptica and Break of Reality, I'm a huge fan of cello-rock/ cello-metal

i guess evanescence will always have a spot in my heart too

Day 10

2010-12-10T09:30:00.000-08:00

Talk about your pets, or the pets you would like to have

At the moment we have one dog, her name is Laika, she is named after the russian space dog, she is an australian shepherd, she has no tail, shes kinda old so she doesnt hear as well as she used to, but she still has soooo much energy

I would really like a kitten of my own, i will name it spot, after the best space cat ever

Day 9

2010-12-09T10:28:00.000-08:00

Its kinda fantastic how I timed this to coincide with the date... I'm awesome

Day 9: Favorite meme at the moment

My favorite meme for a long time (and probably a long time to come)

Day 7/Day 8

2010-12-08T09:28:00.000-08:00

I was sick out of my mind yesterday (I still am) so I'll post 2 for today

Day 7: How did you come across tumblr, and how has your life changed since joining?

Everyone else doing this wrote about blogger instead of tumblr... So I'll write about blogger too, since I have no tumblr

I don't remember how it started exactly... pretty sure when I got to college, Heather and Erin had one... and then I think Rachel made one, so then I made one. The blog is basically my diary. I say this a lot, but part of my philosophy is to never write anything that you don't want other people to read. So, any kind of journal I keep, I might as well keep it on the internet, where the whole world can see. Its basically the outlet for ALL of my thoughts. I posted previously about how this blog is my sole contribution to society thus far.

Day 8: Are you a fitness guru or a couch potato

Well... in some sense, I am both? I don't exercise nearly as much as I feel that I should. This is mostly because I don't have time to exercise. But I feel like band has been keeping me in reasonable shape. So I'm active, but I don't exercise.

I really wanna start running more frequently and I wanna start yoga. These are two of my new years resolutions... actually, I think all of my resolutions have to do with being healthier in some sense or another

Day 6

2010-12-06T10:24:00.000-08:00

You're favorite season and why:

My favorite season is summer (totally not trying to make a bad pun, I swear)

Things I really hate: cold and wind. Summer generally lacks these things, at least in southern california.

Realizations

2010-12-05T14:03:00.000-08:00

There was a conversation last night that went something like this:
"Are you gay?"
"Well... I like girls too"
"So you're bi"
"not really... I think I'm more pansexual"

I had this whole kinda epiphany by the end of the conversation. I honestly can't say when the last time I used the word "pansexual" in conversation or even thought of it in my head. But I think it might actually be the answer.

Over the past year in particular, I've become increasingly opposed to the concept of gender and sexual binaries. When I was talking to my counselor on friday, I actually put into words that I feel like gender is a continuum as opposed to a discrete binary scale. I really hate all these labels that we have made in society. We are trying to quantize things that aren't quantifiable. Maybe I am bi according to some definitions, but words like "bisexual" and "trisexual" are still rooted in the concept of the binary. So I guess I am attracted to men and women and everything in between. Everyone is beautiful in their own way and everyone struggles to find their place in the universe.

Day 5

2010-12-05T12:05:00.001-08:00

Tell us your three favorite colors:

My favorite colors are: purple, green and red

Day 4

2010-12-04T08:08:00.000-08:00

Write about your closest friends:

Im still rather drunk, but one of my friends spent the night after listening to me rant about my problems. Any night when I end up on the balcony is generally awful, but she helped me make it to the morning.

Day 3

2010-12-03T12:28:00.000-08:00

Your favorite television program:

My current favorite is Fringe (omg! I just remembered that last night's episode is on hulu... I was gunna watch a movie, but I think I'll watch Fringe instead)

Its one of those shows that has the most ridiculous plot elements, just like LOST. The writers of the show realize this and the show doesn't pretend to be something its not. I like shows that give a good break from reality, that's the main reason I watch television, to escape.

Day 2

2010-12-02T10:28:00.000-08:00

Talk about your piercings or tattoos, if you have any:

I have neither, but I posted recently about getting the triquetra on my wrist. The whole symbolism of duality and all my metaphysical views.

I don't ever want to get piercings. I spent way too long with braces, so I'm a little averted to metallic objects being physically attached to my body

Day 1

2010-12-01T22:38:00.001-08:00

Yeah, I saw this on Heather's blog and contemplated doing it. Then Erin started it too, so I figured I should go ahead and do it.

So... day 1: my middle name is Charles

I used to not like it at all... but I feel like everyone hated their middle names in elementary school, which is kinda weird (or maybe it was just the people I was hanging out with that were weird...) Anyway, I feel like its grown on me a lot over the years. I think if I were to ever publish a book, I would use the pen name Charles Jackson

Movies, part 2

2010-11-28T20:47:00.000-08:00

So I caved and signed up for netflix. After spending a couple weekends binging on itunes rentals and my steadily increasing dissatisfaction with the selection on itunes, I figured I would just give it a go. I figure an itunes rental is about $3 on average, so if I watch 3 movies a month on the 0-DVD plan, it will be worth it... I can probably accomplish this.

I was pretty productive this afternoon, pretty much hammered out the entirety of the programming for the ame-404 project. I figured I earned a movie. Then I went to the grocery store... and that somehow justified a double feature. So on the menu today, we have: THX 1138 (1971) and Moon (2009). Both are actually pretty fantastic sci-fi films.

THX is George Lucas's first feature film and it is a little rough. I'm pretty sure the version I saw was not the theatrical version, but I think most of the general idea was preserved. It had elements of 1984 and Brave New World (but with a significantly more positive ending) and I'm really glad I read both of those before reading it. Its one of those movies that has had significant influence on lots of the films that have been made since then, but for some reason nobody knows about it. It bugs me a little when I google "best sci fi films" and imdb's page comes up and its got stuff like WALL-E and Avatar. They are both good movies, but they haven't really had time to mature, will they ever be classics? Stuff like Star Wars and Jaws are good movies, but they have been around for decades. I feel like a lot of movies get lost in time. Of all the super hit movies of the 2000's, which ones will be classics?

Moon was my second choice, mostly because itunes has had it for sale forever but for some reason, never put it on rental (watching this movie on netflix was my big "fuck you" to itunes, lol). Yeah, this is one of those movies which may never be a classic, which is a shame, because its actually a pretty good movie. This is an excellent example of hard science fiction (think 2001: A Space Odyssey ). Most of the science fiction in the film is stuff that could actually happen, the whole He-3 mining on the moon for fusion could actually be a thing someday. The obvious exception to the hard sf genre has to do with cloning, but the rationale behind the cloning is grounded in science fact. There's not a whole lot of action, after all, it is hard sf and not space opera, but that makes it more believable, more realistic. By far however, my favorite aspect of this movie is the computer GERTY, which is basically the anti-HAL-9000 (it also has a :) interface to convey emotions, which I thought was a clever touch).

With finals coming up and the conclusion of the semester, I should have some downtime to watch a few more films. I'm generally aiming for scifi classics. The only problem is that a lot of the movies I wanna see are not available on netflix instant, so I may have to pay the extra $2 for the single dvd rentals. But I'm sure it will be totally worth it. I just need to figure out how to get internet access for the wii when I get home for break.

Movies

2010-11-22T21:51:00.000-08:00

I get more and more convinced that I need to get Netflix... itunes has a very limited selection and i probably spend enough on rentals to justify the cost of netflix. And then there was the post game viewing of serenity this weekend, where I brought my entire computer out to the living room just to play the movie off my ipod. I have a wii, wii can have netflix, why dont i have it?

At some point today I was surfing the internet and I figured I would put together a movie list that is somewhat parallel to my recently completed reading list. A few scifi classics that may not be the best but are likely to be extremely influential even if we don't realize it. The list is as follows:

1. Tron
2. THX 1138
3. Silent Running

let me know if there are any others that I have forgotten

If only

2010-11-22T07:31:00.000-08:00

200th post (actually its 182nd)

2010-11-21T14:53:00.000-08:00

I was going to post something about rubik's cube solutions or something, then I noticed that this blog had 199 posts and got really excited... then I realized that 18 of those were actually unpublished drafts. Additionally, they were pretty much subject lines with no content... So I ended up deleting them... but I'm still going to do a self referential blog post.

I've somehow come to think of this blog as the summation of all my internal thoughts and stuff. Its basically my journal... of course its not private, the internet is not private. One of my life philosophies is never put anything in writing unless you are okay with other people reading it. If there's anything I've learned from pop culture, its that you can never be sure who will read your diary.

I've had a couple weird thoughts regarding this blog. Like if I got hit by a car or something tonight, this blog is pretty much all I have to leave behind in the world. Like if that happens, I don't want it to just vanish. I would want it to be around for a while, like my contribution to the universe. I have this blog, a couple forum posts, my cancelled webcomic, a couple short stories and a partial conlang. These are the culmination of my existence. Everything else I've done until now has been preparation for future contributions. Like its really weird to think about, but almost the entire first 20±5 years of our lives are spent entirely in preparation. So until I start working in the industry, this blog is the majority of the sum of my existence.

On a slightly related note, I just finished reading 1984. It kinda scared me. Like I have no idea if stuff is being rewritten or not. Like it almost makes me want to print out my blog posts as soon as I write them, just to make sure that nobody hacks my account and rewrites history...

colors

2010-11-19T20:32:00.000-08:00

So I figured I would post this guide to my feelings, basically the colors mean:
black - come find me immediately, no really, im about to do something terrible and you need to stop me
red - i feel terrible, there is some probability that i will drop to black, so you should probly come find me
orange - i might be okay on my own but it would be nice if you cheered me up
amber - ill be fine on my own, i just feel depressed, ill definitely make it to the morning
light green - im feeling fine... nothing bad, not really anything awesome, dont worry
dark green - everything is fantastic

i am currently amber... my baseline has been amber for a while

That Time of Year Again (Actually, its Not)

2010-11-18T11:45:00.000-08:00

I've been harping on this enough that I figured I should post about it.

I walked in to work today and sat down and coming from the office next to me was christmas music. I immediately facepalmed. It is the middle of November, why are you playing christmas music?? And of course last saturday, while we were setting up, the clarinets (whom I decided that I hate {with the exception of 2 or 3 people}) were playing chirstmas songs.

Personally, I can't stand christmas music... In fact I have this extreme love-hate relationship with the holidays. for some reason, I feel like it has come early this year. In my humble opinion, christmas music can be played on black friday AND NOT A DAY SOONER. I need to get through thanksgiving before I start thinking of christmas. Somebody did bring up a point that we get out of school about 2 weeks before christmas, so that somewhat justifies starting christmas early since you wanna share it with friends. I hope this is different in the real world.

But onward to the topic of my hate for the holidays. Before I start though, I do have to say I do love being able to spend time with the family and friends over thanksgiving and christmas. I just hate the mad scramble of materialism that goes on. I think I really started feeling this way after I started driving, everybody drives like a maniac in the month of december. I don't understand why the holidays are so stressful. Personally, I do all of my christmas shopping on the internet, and I'll probly do it before december even starts.

My mom asked me what I wanted for christmas. I didn't even bother giving her a list, I just told her the one thing I wanted (mind you, it costs almost $300 and I would feel bad about asking for more)... But really, I would be perfectly happy with the one thing that I REALLY want as opposed to several little things that I sorta want. Things, there's always a million different things. I don't need more things, I don't have space for more things, I have a hard time getting rid of things. They are all just objects.

I think The one thing I want more than anything else is space. My room is so cramped, I'm ready to not have a roommate (I do like Tower, and I don't mind living with him). I want space of my own. I want to have a bookshelf. Put up all my books, find out what kind of person I am.

Wow... this turned into a strange stream of consciousness blog post... I need to start keeping a journal and writing down all the random thoughts I have during the day. I could turn it into a book or something...

final thoughts:
I hate peppermint ice cream
whole wheat sour dough is the best thing that has ever happened

LMAO

2010-11-16T13:48:00.000-08:00

so there's some article on cnn about materials that can slow down light or something... which somehow has implications in cloaking and teleportation... I really have no idea how real it actually is, but the comment section has a wonderful comment:

"What this guy is talking about is junk! Plain and simple. What he is doing is taking an antiquated theory by Einstein which has only been proven on paper to either happen or not happen to say that an event can be masked. His words are nothing more than literary conjecture and a result of a condudrum of sci-fiction mixed with real science.

The real discovery should be that 4 divided by 0 does not = 0 but actually equals 4.
How can four whole objects divided by nothing equal nothing. If you divide four whole objects by nothing you still have the four original objects.

Also if you divide 4 by 1 you do not have the result of 4. If four vertically alinged objects are divided by one diviser lets say a metal string down the exact center of each object is our result not 8? Even if the original four objects are divided by one string not centered by still on the cutting of the objects the result is still 8."

Before I get in to the utter ridiculousness of this comment, I would like to point out that Einstein's theory of reletivity HAS been scientifically tested and does apply to the macroscopic universe.

4/0=0 I'm willing to let slide, since I recall being taught something along these lines, even though it is very not true...

But the content of the comment/argument... I hope to god this is a joke... otherwise this person fails to grasp the concept of division... which is like the 4th and final operation in arithmetic...which, last time I checked, was essential to every day functioning... basically, people are dumb

Tattoo

2010-11-05T20:41:00.000-07:00

This is the tattoo that I want:

Several people have asked me why, and I haven't been able to give a straight answer... mostly because I was busy thinking about why exactly I want it. I've thought about it, and I think I've come up with some good reasons for it. Two of these reasons stand out above the rest, but I think I will start from the beginning.

It is pretty. This is why I want it. To me personally it is extremely aesthetic and at the same time simple. But why is it so pretty to me? Because of the very nature of the thing. Every art project I've done with legos or otherwise have had fundamental scientific or mathematical basis. The triquetra is made from very specifically placed circles. The second circle is tangent to the center of the first and the third is centered on the intersection of the other two, and since they are equal, it is tangent to the centers of the other two. This is the fundamental concept of the "binary masterpiece". There is something beautiful, but beneath it is an equally beautiful concept. Hence the first reason, it embodies the beauty that I see in the world and the beauty that I try to emulate in my own art (such as it is...).

Three circles of the same radii, their centers form an equilateral triangle. Now, in modern society, the equilateral triangle represents masculinity, while the circle represents femininity. The triquetra is both. Trinagularity and circularity combine together to form one object. The circles define the triangle and the triangle describes the circle. Similarly, I am fundamentally masculine and feminine at the same time. I paint my nails and wax my skin and I hate the universe for not allowing me to wear dresses in public. At the same time, I do not want to be rid of my masculine aspects. I like my genitalia as they are and thus far, I've made little or no effort to change my voice while I am dressed. I am very in tune with the balance of masculine and feminine within myself (and society seems to be constantly trying to unbalance it) and both of them are important parts of who I am. I decided a while ago, that any tattoo I got would somehow incorporate circles and triangles.

So those are the main reasons, the whole duality of the universe. There are a couple other reasons that I chose this symbol. The number 3 has some significance to me: I am Jackson Charles Pharris III. Each name has equal length, 3 equal parts of 7 (my lucky number). According to my philosophy, there are three processes that control the universe: creation, destruction, and transformation (this is pretty much the extent of my metaphysical belief system). There are three components of a human being: body, mind and soul. Morality is not black and white, the triangle expresses a lack of moral polarity.

hi!

2010-10-28T23:21:00.000-07:00

it is my birthday and I am DRUNK

this is a blog post.

im on a horse.

NaNoWriMo - post 0

2010-10-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

Day count: -6ish
Word count: 0 (+0)
Page count: 0

Its that time of year again... or at least it would be if I had actually done nanowrimo last year
50,000 words in 30 days, or 175 pages... not sure what the more official goal is.... After looking at the official counts for Wheel of Time it appears as though word and page count aren't correlated at all.

In either case, its about 1700 words/6 pages a day. My original plot idea may not have been able to accomplish this goal, so I was thinking that maybe it would become something like The Silmarillion, which wasn't exactly what I was hoping to do. Then Heather gave me the brilliant idea of having a framing story. So now I have the perfect means of pretending that a collection of short stories is actually a novel.

Gathering Storm

2010-10-22T14:02:00.001-07:00

(I almost want to make two posts, since I have 2 very different things to talk about... the second one should probably wait until I have some more conclusive information about it... actually now that I think about it, I have three things to talk about... maybe later today?)

So yeah, one of the functions of this blog is the occasional book/movie/game review... anyway, back in february, I posted about how I had finished rereading The Wheel of Time in anticipation for the paperback release of the twelfth book... Well ya, I finally got it and read all 1071 pages in about a week; I had two stay-at-home-sick days in a row to help me accomplish this feat. In case you don't know, Robert Jordan passed away before he was able to release his "final book". His widow and publisher decided to forge ahead and tasked Brandon Sanderson to be a coauthor and here we are...

I recall reading a review somewhere that reading it was like reading fanfiction, in some sense this is true since large portions of the text(most of it) was written by Sanderson using Jordan's notes. The analogy that Sanderson prefers is thinking of it as a movie sequel with a different director. In either case, the differences are pretty subtle, for me it felt like the chapters were a little shorter... but there were a lot more of them? I don't have any other books to compare it to on hand... but according to the internet, its the longest book page wise, but the 6th longest word count... not sure which is more important...

Aaaaaaaannnnyyyyway... despite the slight differences, the story and characters hold true to Jordan's creation. The fact of the matter is that I thoroughly enjoyed it and eagerly await the thirteenth book... which is scheduled for a November 2nd release date... which means, I will probably have to wait until NEXT November for the paperback edition.... lame.

Funny Story

2010-10-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

So remember a couple years ago when I posted about the flat earth society? Well, I was browsing the internet for a wallpaper for the new work computer, I figured I would see if I could find any good pictures of Jupiter, so I typed "galileo" in the search bar (its the name of the probe that went there). One of the suggested search topics was "galileo was wrong". This piqued my curiosity and it turned out to be this whole website devoted to the promotion of geocentrism.

So of course I had to read into it... Of course they do have a really good implicit point that the common reader hasn't made any of his or her own scientific observations of the universe. I have never taken astronomical measurements of planets or stars... I don't have time for that. But I know enough (or at least have been taught enough) that some of the points they try to make go directly against what I believe.

One of the arguments I've seen a couple times repeatedly thats really bugging me goes as follows: The observation of parallax is explainable in a geocentric system if the motion of the stars is centered on the sun. But that goes directly against the previous assertion that all matter in the universe is equally distributed with the earth at the center. Im having a difficult time envisioning a universe centered on the earth, but all motion is centered on the sun.

Another thing that bothered me was that they claimed that the basic understanding of the universe was found to be wrong at the end of the 19th century, so they had to invent special and general relativity to explain the stuff that was wrong... actually general relativity was verified by satellites in orbit around the earth... aslo gps satelites have to compensate for relativistic effects

One of the things I've noticed in reading these kind of things is that they all have 2 things in common: 1. they seem to suffer from delusions of persecution and 2. they have the uncanny ability to pull facts out of context. Basically they feel like there is this whole conspiracy to cover up the scientific truth of the universe and/or discredit the church and scripture. I have REALLY hard time believing that there is this grand scheme to hide the truth from the masses... especially something that is (or at least seems to be) so verifiable.

aaaannd I just came across this wonderful quote: "False information leads to false ideas, and false ideas lead to illicit and immoral actions – thus the state of the world today." Basically heliocentrism is the reason the world is such a shit hole right now (with all of our crusades and witch burnings)

Addendum:
I also just noticed that the author of the site has a PhD... in theology and religious studies... basically no scientific background at all

Thoughts

2010-10-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

I'm having a really good day today. I still feel like its one of those deceptive moments where I feel like everything is alright and maybe I'm not actually depressed at all... but I've had moments like that before.

Wow... it sucks to start this positive post on such a downer... but anyway, I am super excited about next week. Between my birthday and halloween, it should be pretty fantastic. Its kinda weird, but I feel like this is my first halloween ever.

This might be the first year where halloween actually is my favorite holiday ever. From now on, every halloween, I can be whoever the hell I want and nobody will judge me for it... Actually people might still judge me, even on halloween, but in absolute honestly, I dont give a shit what THOSE people think.

This year is also significant since it is the one year aniversary of the inception of Summer. Like it was kinda dissapointing to come out the night before hallloween, but that has given me pretty much an entire year to figure out my grand first time out outfit... which actually isnt my first time out since Heather took me to RHPS... but ya

Also this weekend we will be playing the undefeatd #2 Oregon team. If we somehow win, then this will definitely be the BEST birthday ever. Even if we lose, it wil still be awesome, but a victory would be the cherry on top of the cake.

Also, people keep asking me about my halloween costume... and I've been reluctant to give answers due to the public locations where they ask me... so I've been forced to say "its a surprise or "I don't know" which are both sorta true

Huge boobs and purple, thats all I'm going to say for now.

It needs to be friday

2010-10-12T13:24:00.001-07:00

Today isn't particularly bad, but I'm sitting here at work with just my thoughts to keep me company. Lovely thing about introspection is the longer it goes on the more layers you realize there are. I'm pretty sure my current condition is due to a whole long list of things... I feel like there's a snake or something living in my gut. I don't really feel sick, but I almost want to be sick so that there is justification for all of these sensations. It like there's something inside, poisoning all my thoughts. Its making me disgustingly poetic... Going in to counseling on friday is something that I've needed to do for a long time, I just never realized that there was a problem because of all the walls that I built up in my mind. But then the walls started to crack and one by one, they all fell down and I became aquainted with all of my hidden thoughts and feelings. Its like, during the last 6 months, everythings kinda fallen appart... but not really, because it was all there to begin with.

Heh

2010-10-11T19:31:00.001-07:00

Chanel surfing this evening and we found Life of Brian, which I have never seen but there was a funny little bit, had myself a little laugh:

Reg: Further more, it it the birthright of every man...

Stan: Or woman.

Reg: Why don't you shut up about women, Stan? You're putting us off.

Stan: Women have a perfect right to play a part in our movement, Reg.

Rogers: Why are you always on about women, Stan?

Stan: I want to be one.

Reg: What?

Stan: I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me Loretta.

Reg: What?

Loretta: It's my right as a man.

Judith: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?

Loretta: I want to have babies.

Reg: You want to have babies?!

Loretta: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.

Reg: But...you can't have babies!

Loretta: Don't you opress me!

Reg: I'm not opressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb. Where is the foetus going to gestate? You're going to keep it in a box?

Loretta: Sniff.

Judith: Here, I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.

Rogers: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister! Sorry.

Reg: What's the point?

Rogers: What?

Reg: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies, when he can't have babies?

Rogers: It is symbolic of our struggle against opression.

Reg: Symbolic of his struggle against reality.

2 weeks later

2010-10-05T13:50:00.000-07:00

Well, I did the intake 2 weeks ago (i think) and they haven't called me back... which means I should call them to make sure I didn't get lost somewhere along the line. And of course I have to make this call between 2 midterms and the weekender and the endless stream of homework that I can't seem to get ahead in. I feel like I made good progress today, but in the grand scheme of things, its all pretty much the same.

And of course, they called me as I was typing this blog post... so now I've got my first appointment set up for next friday, with a woman with a very strong asian accent, but she is a PhD. So we will see how that goes.

I feel a little bit better... but back to the topic of the post... which was going to be about how they didn't call me back yet... um...

I feel like I've been playing the "lets try not to curl up in a ball and cry" game a lot lately. I actually lost on friday night when I came home and went to bed at 1130 and left very sad text messages with people. Honestly, I'm not even sure what the problem is. Its like I've got a hormonal teenage girl living inside of me (which might actually be the cause of this...)

Thoughts

2010-10-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about this one episode of the simpsons for a while, but I haven't made reference to it till now. Lisa is really depressed and there's this one convo that's been stuck in my head for a while. It happens after Lisa plays a reall sad song for the jazzman, Bleeding Gums Murphy

Murphy: You know, you play pretty well for someone with no real problems.

Lisa: Yeah, but I don't feel any better.

Murphy: The blues isn't about feelin' better. It's about makin' other people feel worse and makin' a few bucks while you're at it.

I don't feel right

2010-09-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

I wrote this post last night, but then the internet broke and I wanted to cry... so anyway...

I'm kinda reminded of Heather's "I don't feel real" comment... like I'm walking around and nothing really feels real... I'm just sorta drifting through life and work and everything.

I'm not really sad all the time, but I definitely feel like I haven't had a really long period of pure happiness in a while. Its like all my moments of joy this past month are just icebergs floating on a huge ocean (see how depressed I am?? I used a metaphor!)

Partly, I feel overwhelmed by schoolwork... which is a direct result of poor time management. I can probably trace this back to Hawaii. Its like I got a little bit behind, now I'm caught in this endless cycle of getting stuff done the night or even hour before only to have to press on to the next thing. And then when I do get some time off, I don't have the energy to get ahead. So I'm just kinda bouncing along at the status quo. I can't wait until I start hunting for interships and grants and scholarships and stuff... I'll have even less energy.

That's one of the main problems: energy. Band and school are pretty high energy activities. Toss in the depression and the loss of appetite and desire to oversleep that go with it, and I've got even less to work with.

Honestly, the appetite isn't a huge issue, there are enough people around me to bug me into eating. Its not like I don't want to eat... sometimes I just can't bring myself to go find something. As I typed that, I realized that Im still a little dehydrated from yesterday, so I went and got a glass of water. Little things like that are a sign that I'm not totally a slave to depression and that I WANT to keep on living. I'm really worried that I will reach a point where in my mind, the bad things will outweigh the good things... and then, I dunno.

I'm kinda hesitant to say anything about this, cuz I don't wanna freak anybody out... and I haven't had any suicidal thoughts... but if I ever do talk about it, please be very alarmed and intervene on my behalf.

Being depressed sucks, I've stopped caring about things. I haven't made any comics in over a month. I've stopped posting in the main forum area on this one site I hang out on, pretty much all the posting I do now is in my journal thread and I mainly talk about being depressed. The good news is that I've really cut back on my drinking. I never had a drinking problem but being drunk and alone is terrible.

I'll hit high points and then think, "oh, stuff isn't too bad afterall, maybe I don't really need help"... then I remember that I've thought those thoughts before, and it hasn't really changed anything, I'm right back at another low point.

aaaaaaand I just spent the last 30 minutes looking at youtube videos of kittens... I really want a cat... If I had a cat, I might be less broken

Summer in Autumn

2010-09-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

Aha! see what I did there?

I'm at work right now, but for some reason I'm really hyper/anxious. I got really excited today, and I started feeling like life wasn't all that bad... maybe I don't need counseling. Then I realized that the reasons that I'm excited are pretty much the same reasons that I was depressed earlier.

I dunno, life is complicated... also I can't focus on making this blog post... maybe I'll make it longer later.

Life

2010-09-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

I've been keeping a journal at another site, so I've kinda been neglecting this blog... although I have had longer dryspells of blogging.

I've been going through a very weird phase of my life. Its like self-discovery and existential depression smushed into one. I'll go to parties, get really drunk and have a great time, but the moment I'm left alone with my thoughts I get super depressed. This leads me to weird realizations the next morning about my hidden unresolved psychological issues.

Take last friday for example, I got home and then proceeded to tweet a whole bunch about how nobody pays attention to me. Apparently I'm afraid that my problems aren't big enough for people to care about and thus, I feel neglected. But pondering these thoughts and chatting with people has led me to conclude that these feelings are silly. Of course, I can find somebody to help me fix my poblems. But then I realize that they are MY problems, I need to take the first step and seek out the help I want/need. I have a phone number programmed into my phone, I've just been too much of a coward to call. Today or tomorow... it needs to happen.

In other news, I've become increasingly obessed with the color purple. Also, I am SUPER excited for halloween. These two thoughts are linked.

I had to post about this

2010-09-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/07/florida.quran.burning/index.html?hpt=T2

If you follow my blog, you probably saw this one coming, lol.

So ya, some Florida church is apparently sponsoring a Koran burning on 9/11. Maybe its too early in the morning... or maybe I need to read some of the article's comments for my emotions to flare... oh there we go, just needed to read further into the article ("homosexuality is a sin" is an implicit threat to my existance, blah blah blah).

Of course the first thing I thought about with this article was how unamerican and unchristian this is. Freedom of religion and love thy neighbor and all that. The article did have a wonderful quote: "'But in America, there is the freedom to be ignorant'" taken from an interview. Thats the main problem with freedom of speech, you have the freedom to say things that are really dumb.

The article actually brings up a more important point though. All this anti-muslim sentiment in America is going to cause anti-american sentiment abroad, especially for soldiers in Afganistan etc. Okay, sure you have the right to spend your money on a book that you are going to burn, I won't stop you. But you are potentially putting the lives of American troops at risk.

Why would you do that!?! I have enormous respect for people in the armed forces. Partly beause I'm a military brat, but also because thats not something I could ever do. I am not brave enough to put myself in the line of fire like that. I would fight against the draft so hard, I would much rather be the guy at home building the guns than to be out there shooting them. These are men and women who are willingly protecting America and its citizens and all of their freedoms.

Maybe the whole "protecting your freedoms" argument has lost some of its weight over the past 50 years. Like it seems like a lot of the wars in that time have been fought for America's interests or maybe in the overaching conflict of the cold war. But there was also a little something called World War 2, it was kind of a big deal. I'm no historian, but my understanding of WW2 is that we actually were fighting for American freedom because our opponents wanted to conquer the world. (incidentally, V-J day WAS September 2nd) Reminds me of a quote from the Simpsons "there are no good wars, with the following exceptions: the american revolution, world war 2 and the starwars trilogy".

We haven't really fought a war like that since then, and I feel like people lose sight of things. They don't care about stuff 50 years ago or 50 years into the future, they don't care about things happening on the other side of the world. They just care about the here and now of their lives.

In Summary:

Burning the Koran is both ignorant and wrong
People are dumb
Support our troops

End of summer

2010-08-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

Basically, I will remember this summer as the one where I took my vacation in may and then spent the rest of the time either being super-emotional about my life or lurking on cnn.com's comment section.

I just read a comment that made me laugh. It was a short article about facebook birthday notifications or something, literally 5 paragraphs long maybe 100 words.

"Who cares. Social media is a waste of time."

Yet, you took the time to read this article, probably read most of the comments and then typed that out? That pretty much sums up what I have learned about human nature this summer... people have stupidly strong opinions about stuff. Even when they probably have better things to do, they go out of their way to post angry comments on the internets.

As I wrote that last sentence I was suddenly struck by a bolt of irony...

Just found something interesting on bbc, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10929159 apparently the maximum minimum number of moves to solve a regular rubiks cube is 20 turns. So if you scramble one, you shouldn't go over 20 turns because any more would just be a waste of time and energy. Once you're past 4 or 5 turns, I don't think I could solve it instantly anyway.