Posted by Ryan
March 19, 2010
It’s been a while.
In the last month I…
I’m really excited to be doing something new for work. I’ll talk about it when we launch the new website.
Disney World was awesome and I wish I was still there.
Posted by Ryan
February 12, 2010
Inspired by Justin’s post, these are the cities I spent one or more nights in during 2009:
* were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.
Bear Lake, UT
Boston, MA*
Eagle Mountain, UT*
East Wakefield, NH
Kaysville, UT
Monteverde, Costa Rica
New York, NY
Puntarenas, Costa Rica
Riverton, UT*
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Stony Point, NY
Washington DC
And for the previous four years… I think this is all correct.
2008:
Denver, CO
Eagle Mountain, UT
Island Park, ID
Logan, UT
Los Angeles, CA
New York, NY*
Orem, UT
Queens, NY*
Redlands, CA
Rigby, ID
Riverton, UT
San Diego, CA
Seattle, WA
Sacramento, CA
Wilton, CT*
2007:
Denver, CO
Eagle Mountain, UT*
Logan, UT
Los Angeles, CA
Minneapolis, MN
Provo, UT
Riverton, UT
San Diego, CA
Sacramento, CA
Seattle, WA
Vernal, UT
2006:
Austin, TX
Dallas, TX
Denver, CO
Eagle Mountain, UT*
Logan, UT
Los Angeles, CA
Minneapolis, MN
Moab, UT
Rigby, ID
Riverton, UT
Sacramento, CA
San Diego, CA
Seattle, WA
Vernal, UT
Washington DC
2005:
Cincinnati, OH
Cleveland, OH
Denver, CO
Logan, UT
Los Angeles, CA
Rigby, ID
Riverton, UT
Sacramento, CA
Vernal, UT
Washington DC
2004:
Las Vegas, NV
Rigby, ID
Riverton, UT
San Diego, CA
St. George, UT
Vernal, UT
Posted by Ryan
January 7, 2010
Books I read this year:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Anatomy of Peace by The Arbinger Institute
Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Books I listened to this year:
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card
Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card
Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card
Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card
Shadow of the Giant by Orson Scott Card
The Final Empire: Mistborn Book 1 by Brandon Sanderson
The Well of Ascension: Mistborn Book 2 by Brandon Sanderson
The Hero of Ages: Mistborn Book 3 by Brandon Sanderson
Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (terrible book)
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Getting Things Done by David Allen
The 8th Habit by Stephen R. Covey
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Ringworld by Larry Niven
Crucial Confrontations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
Influencer by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
The Dip by Seth Godin
Mort: Discworld #4 by Terry Pratchett
Sourcery: Discworld #5 by Terry Pratchett
Wyrd Sisters: Discworld #6 by Terry Pratchett
Pyramids: Discworld #7 by Terry Pratchett
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
Incomplete listens:
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Incomplete reads:
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien (2 chapters left)
Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood (1/3rd of the way through)
The Duck That Won the Lottery by Julian Baggini (1/3rd of the way through)
The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (1/3rd of the way through)
Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath (1/3rd of the way through)
The Power of Less by Leo Babauta (1/3rd of the way through)
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (only a few chapters in)
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White (mostly finished)
Letters from a Stoic by Seneca (only a few chapters in)
El Principe Caspian by C.S. Lewis (reading this in Spanish was incredibly boring. I have no intention of finishing it.)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (only a few chapters in)
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (have read this before, but thought it’d be nice to read it again before Christmas. Only got a few chapters in.)
Conclusions:
I love love love audio books. I spend a lot of time on the subway and walking around the city. I’ve spent hours on the couch playing tetris on my phone while listening to books.
I can’t help but read multiple books at once. I intend to finish them, I really do. When I’m home, though, I tend to spend all my time on the computer so it’s harder to finish paper (or electronic) books.
Posted by Ryan
December 16, 2009
I shiver violently, water cascading down my cheeks. A childish grin steals its way across my face and insists on staying—I let it. I turn to look toward a nearby building and, in the glow of a streetlamp, see the wind suddenly take shape and hurl a shower of rain towards me. My body tenses, teeth gritting in anticipation. It hits, soaking me as if from a fire hose. I was already completely drenched; I had been since stepping out of my apartment building and into the downpour, but each gust of wind seems at once to deepen the wetness as if reaching for my soul—for that which it can not obtain. Sirens wail in the distance. This storm came to conquer. I shiver again.
The sky lights up, the creature in the wind lashes out at me again and again, its deafening roar ever louder. My friend jumps in puddles and laughs gleefully, the sound audible over the thunder. I fear the storm for a brief moment. I fear what it can do, what it could bring. It’s trying to crush us in its onward march. And yet, the rain seems to wash away my fear. The water is a symbol—a sign: a cleansing, comforting power that can almost be heard to say, “you’re on the right path, fear not.”
The storm came to conquer, but cannot conquer me. The rain washes away my fear, warms my heart. And I am conquered.
(This happened back in August and was perhaps the first day I truly admitted to myself that I liked living in New York.)
Posted by Ryan
December 14, 2009
You know that feeling you get when you climb up the steep side of a mountain or big rock without any safety equipment? If not, it’s something of a sinking, oh-my-gosh-I’m-going-to-lose-this-tetris-game sort of feeling, except more serious and in reverse (because in real life you want to reach the top and in tetris you don’t). If this feeling were verbalized it would sound something like, “I sure hope I can keep going up because if I have to go back down photos of my broken body will end up in email forwards about the dangers of being stupid. And I can’t have that. I hate email forwards.”
I went rock climbing two months ago near New Paltz, NY, about an hour and a half north of NYC. Well, the intention was to go climbing anyway. What actually happened consisted more of scenic routes, collecting acorns, pretending to be hung by a rope (would also have ended up in email forwards had it gone badly), and a lot of staged photo opportunities than actual rock climbing.
There were three of us, one of whom was camera-happy. I like having camera-happy people around. It means adventures get documented. I almost always forget to take pictures. The problem is when the person with the camera slows everyone down. Which is what happened on this particular climbing expedition.
Naturally, we got sick of waiting.
So we started exploring the rocks. I found a large, pitch-black cave that needed exploring. Except it wasn’t really a cave. It was just a bunch of massive rocks piled on top of each other that formed lots of dark crawl spaces.
You know that feeling where you know your mother probably wouldn’t approve of what you’re about to do, but you know you’re going to do it anyway? Yeah, me too.
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 1
This particular hole in the pile of massive rocks didn’t turn out as exciting as we’d hoped: no endless rabbit hole, no dead bodies. It didn’t even stay pitch-black for very long. All it did was go up. The problem was that it looked a bit too risky to go up, as did going back down the way we had come (not to mention that admitting defeat would be disastrous to my inner mountain man pride).
I managed to find a crawl space that looked just big enough for someone slightly smaller than myself. Maybe I can get out this way! Either that or it’ll dead-end in an impossible to get out of hole? Awesome.
As I started squeezing through the small hole at an awkward angle my friend Ladd commented, “I sure hope there’s not an earthquake.”
I laughed, agreed, and continued on my way, but then noticed my brain trying to freak out. I don’t get claustrophobic, but my mind/body/conscience/whatever was trying to tell me I should.
Ridiculous. I’m not claustrophobic. I’m not really in any danger.
That’s what I told myself. And it worked. Sure, I couldn’t actually turn my head, or take deep breaths in some spots due to the lack of space between the rocks, but whatever. Who needs breathing room as long as the way ahead appears to offer a way out?
It didn’t.
Well, it may have, but the chance of getting stuck looked better than the chance of escape so I gave up and wriggled back out.
Anyway, the point of this is that, while what I was doing wasn’t necessarily the most rational thing to do, listening to fears after getting into the mess would have been more irrational than the original irrationality.
Deer and other animals do this all the time:
Deer: Do I cross the street?
Deer Conscience: No, streets are dangerous and unknown. They are not nature.
Deer: But I am fast and I want to be on the other side.
Deer Conscience: Stay where you are, something’s coming.
Deer: But I am fast! Watch!
Deer Conscience: Augh! Something’s coming! Panic!
Deer: I’m almost acros… what? Panic? Okay! Must go back the way I came!
Deer Conscience: AAAAAhhhhhhhhhh……
The next time you get yourself into a sticky situation and you feel yourself trying to panic, don’t. It doesn’t help.
Posted by Ryan
November 16, 2009
I have no idea if it was a Chinese movie, but it was Oriental.
I took that picture at Shake Shack today. I’m probably in the background of some of their shots. They were moving all over.
The last time I was at Shake Shack (one week ago) another movie was being filmed (though not oriental as far as I know).
This one was a bit more exciting. Very official. There were crew members everywhere, lighting, cameras, and signs notifying of us that by standing in a line and buying food we would agree to let ourselves be in a Hollywood film. Sweet. While we were in line they filmed a shot of Matt Damon talking to some woman at a table. We were in the background, but no doubt we were very much out of focus. So much for fame.
These expeditions to Shake Shack were not only for the goodness of good food (like the “pumpkin pie oh-my!” custard shake (with a slice of pumpkin pie mixed in!)), but rather to celebrate–or rather mourn–the departure of our friend Lydia. She’s leaving New York City tomorrow morning. We are sad, but at least we got to eat at Shake Shack together before she left. Twice.
Posted by Ryan
November 13, 2009
My friend Lydia asked everyone what they were doing 3 years ago. I’m a fan of history so I thought I’d look into it.
Three years ago…
I had just started a new job. I counted spam and ham. I went to Dallas to visit my friend Adam. While in Texas we drove to Austin and danced like there was no tomorrow at the Austin Lindy Exchange. I drove my truck (something I miss) and played an awesome numbers/math game (not while driving).
My post about the Austin Lindy Exchange contained a map of the states I’ve been to. I figured it was probably a good time to update that.
I still haven’t been nearly as many places as I’d like (everywhere), but progress is progress.
What were you doing 3 years ago?
Posted by Ryan
November 12, 2009
Dear AT&T, Walmart, Microsoft, Dell, T Mobile, Sprint, HP, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, Best Buy, and a myriad other* companies** people love to hate,
Thank you for doing what you do. People give you a bad time (myself included), often for valid reasons, and I’m sick of it. I’m tired of complaints.
So, thanks.
Regards,
Ryan
* There are companies I believe should cease to exist, but this isn’t about them. This is about companies people hate when, in fact, their existence makes their lives better–not worse.
** AOL not included. I have my limits.
Posted by Ryan
November 11, 2009
I made a realization today.
The realization isn’t surprising, shocking, revelatory, or an epiphany. If anything it’s controversial. It’s simply this: cheating makes life easier.
But only under the following conditions:
For example, I admitted in my last post that I was going to attempt posting every day this month, as I did the previous two years. I also admitted to cheating a little the last two years. The cheating didn’t matter at all. I’m pretty sure I never back-dated anything more than an hour or two. All it did was maintain a status in my head that kept me posting every day.
I didn’t cheat this year. And the result? I’ve missed three days. Had I just cheated the first day I missed I would have felt an obligation to keep posting. Now? Not so much.
So, if you’re on a diet with rules you made up and you screw up and eat donuts all day, cheat and pretend you didn’t mess up. You’ll feel much better the next day and less likely to spend another day eating donuts. You haven’t failed simply because you violated a rule you made up.
Of course, it does no good to cheat every day. “I posted every day!” is a complete lie and is in no way excusable when you wrote 30 posts on the last day of the month and back-dated them all. You may as well write thousands of posts and claim you’ve been blogging since 1980. No one will believe you (especially if you were born after 1980).
What do you think? Am I going to be strapped to a waterboard with sinister* demons pouring water on my head for all eternity? Do you cheat?
* First time I’ve ever used ’sinister’ in a blog post.
Posted by Ryan
November 9, 2009
I wasn’t going to mention it–and it’s a good thing I didn’t as expectations would have been shattered–but now that I’ve screwed it up I can confess to attempting to post every day this month. I did it in November 2007 and 2008 though I’m pretty sure I cheated a few times and posted a day late and changed the post time. I decided not to do that this time. I’ll just post twice a few days this month to make up for it.
The culprit for missing Saturday?
I know, right? It was pretty awesome.
Yes, I was belaying when I took the photo.
Don’t worry, the guy was on a fat ledge and I told him to wait a second while I took the picture.
He’s still alive.
Posted by Ryan
November 6, 2009
I’m at a pent house party. It’s awesome. 47th floor (well, the roof) of a building near Wall Street.
That is all.
No idea if this photo is any good…
Posted by Ryan
November 5, 2009
I’ve heard a lot of strange things on the subway. This morning was something new though. A short lady with reddish-brown hair, I’d guess between age 50 and 60, apparently wasn’t able to get on the train as fast as she’d have liked. She voiced her opinion of the man–the cause of the delay–for all to hear (I missed part of it due to my in-ear headphones): “… and you’re on your phone texting! We all deserve to walk on the train when we want to!”
I guess she didn’t realize I deserve to stand quietly on the train without anyone else saying anything. Oh wait, that’s just as absurd.
She rattled on for some time, but I stopped paying attention so I could write down what I’d heard her say. The man said something I couldn’t hear. The woman in front of me, whose face was about 18 inches from mine (it’s only awkward if you look at each other), shook her head in amazement.
Over 5 million people ride the subway on an average weekday.
This lady probably lives here in the city. I do not doubt she is a smart, rational human being. I do not know what happened to her this morning. Maybe she nearly got hit by a bus. Maybe the man really was rude. I don’t know. What I do know is that it’s completely absurd to claim any sort of entitlement concerning when you get to walk on a semi-crowded train.
The subway can be a pretty stressful place, especially during the morning rush hour. It’s not uncommon to see someone squeeze in a crowded train, making other people more uncomfortable (unless you like playing sardines with strangers!), and then look all put out when someone else does the same thing behind them.
I have nothing against the lady on the train this morning. I know nothing of her other than that she has moments of weakness just like the rest of us do. We’ve all done and said things we’ve regretted. What bothered me this morning was not her, but the sense of entitlement she expressed–a sense of entitlement you, as I, have experienced from time to time.
The majority of the people you meet are smart, rational people. You are a smart, rational person. I, too, like to think I am smart and rational. So why does this happen to smart, rational people? Why does this happen to you? Are there things we can do to guard against this sort of thing? I’m interested in what you have to say.
What helps me stay rational in stressful moments (though I often fail) is to consciously remember that everyone around me is, in fact, a living, breathing person. It works even better when I take it a step further and remember that everyone around me is a son or daughter of a Heavenly Father who loves them.
If, however, you’re feeling particularly upset and have no desire to feel happy feelings about anyone I suggest you think of everyone else as vampires. Look each person in the eye and tell them they’re a vampire. Then, if you’re on a train, get off at the next stop so you can feel stupid all by yourself. After you’ve felt stupid for a few minutes walk up to a stranger and tell them they look nice today.
Posted by Ryan
November 4, 2009
Westville in New York City is a superb place to eat. If I were to only recommend one item on their menu I’d tell you to get an order of sweet potato fries, but then I’d also recommend their cobbler, thereby violating my made up rule to only recommend one thing. So I won’t only recommend one thing.
The mixed berry cobbler with which I finished off my meal:
Their burgers are pretty good. They were out of black bean chipotle soup so I enjoyed some turkey chili in its place. I was envious of the salmon my friend got. Oh, and the staff were friendly, too.
In summary, the food here will nourish and strengthen your body and do it the good that it needs (though perhaps not the cobbler).
Posted by Ryan
November 3, 2009
To cast aside regret and fear. To do the deed at hand. Every man that can ride should be sent west at once [...] we must first destroy the threat … while we have time. If we fail, we fall. If we succeed–then we face the next task.
– Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, chapter 6
Posted by Ryan
November 2, 2009
I am tall, skinny, and wimpy. I’m not as wimpy as some, but still pretty wimpy. I think it’s time to change this fact.
Public declarations are rarely a good idea and I certainly don’t intend to announce any new 30-day plans or anything of the sort in some lame attempt to become a manly hunk of muscle; rather, I’m just saying it’s time for this state of wimpiness to change.
The ultimate wimp is he who can admit to his wimpitude and do nothing about it, even though he’d like to.
No, really. I am bringing this up for a reason. I don’t like going to gyms to work out. I don’t like doing push ups just so I can do more push ups.
The best kind of workout is the one that doesn’t feel like a workout.
Rock climbing is a good example. It’s a great workout, but to me doesn’t feel like one while actually rock climbing. Dancing is the same way for me. It can be great exercise, but to me it doesn’t feel like it. I suppose others feel the same way about running, doing push ups, and working out in a gym.
So I don’t want to get a gym membership, do push ups every day, or go running every morning. I do, however, want to improve my physical health in a meaningful way while also having a good time.
The problem with rock climbing is finding a good place to go and people to go with often enough. Also, winter is coming on and winter has a tendency to be cold outside. Climbing gyms in NYC are expensive and really not that great anyway (from what I’ve been able to discover online).
Do you know of any other fun hobbies that also happen to be a good workout? I do like swimming. Basketball can be fun. What else?
Posted by Ryan
November 1, 2009
Highlights of my weekend in Boston in no particular order:
I could live in Boston.
Posted by Ryan
October 29, 2009
I like change. I like to try new things. I like to meet people. I find it difficult to form new habits. I have high ideals I don’t always live up to. I like watching people interact instead of taking part in large groups. I like my comfort zone. I don’t like change.
One month ago while listening to classical music at work I remember thinking the following: “I’m happier when I listen to this kind of music. I don’t want to listen to anything else. I wonder if I’d go crazy if I only listened to classical music and other uplifting* music for a month.”
* My opinion, naturally. I am fully aware that others may not find the Mormon Tabernacle Choir uplifting.
This is not the first time I’ve tried something I thought was kind of crazy as a 30 day trial. In May 2005 I attempted (successfully) to go to bed and wake up early for a month (see here, here, here, and here). In April of this year and again in July/August I lived on a low-information diet in an attempt to simplify my life (it worked). Also in July/August of this year I tried, mostly successfully, to be sugar-free. I’ve also attempted several 24-hour read-a-thons.
While I have not stuck with everything I have tried, I do not regret these experiments. I have learned a great deal from each one and recommend trying it.
Though my experiments aren’t mind-blowing or record-breaking in any way, the responses I get are insightful and can be broken down into a few basic categories:
Most people express a combination of these four emotions, the intensity of each varying wildly in each mixture. While I cannot be sure what makes someone upset over my choice to not eat sugar for a month, I have a hunch it comes down to a fundamental attribution error. People assume that because I have chosen to do something crazy I must actually be insane or dogmatic or masochistic. Perhaps I come across as judgmental. Perhaps every time you ate a cookie during the month of August you heard my voice in your head saying, “that’s what, 3 pounds right there?” If so, I’m sorry. I certainly didn’t say that and I wish I hadn’t give that impression.
I really doubt anyone thought that though. The point is that we’re all really bad at attribution. You probably don’t know the reasons I have for what I do (even if I’ve explained it to you), and I don’t know why you react the way you do.
The point of this isn’t to necessarily to defend myself against those who commit attribution errors (and against whom I commit attribution errors in return). The point is that everyone is different. My way of making habits may not be your way of making habits, so you shouldn’t necessarily try to form new habits the way I do.
But hey, if other things aren’t working you might as well try the way others do it.
“Abstinence is as easy to me, as temperance would be difficult.”
– Samuel Johnson, quoted in “Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More”, edited by William Roberts
Abstinence is easy for me. So is indulgence. If I can accomplish a goal by one extreme or the other, all the better. Most often, though, a short period of abstinence (sugar) or indulgence (classical music) is all I need to establish temperance going forward.
So try it, if you want. If not, I don’t care.
P.S. I almost forgot. A month passed without ever really thinking about the classical music goal. I did it, though I wasn’t strict about it. I went swing dancing and listened to jazz music. I didn’t plug my ears in grocery stores to avoid hearing that other music or anything like that. 90% of what I listened to, though, was classical music. I expanded my classical music collection. All in all it went well and I’m glad I did it. I’ll probably continue it, though perhaps to a lesser degree.
Posted by Ryan
October 25, 2009
From what I’ve been able to gather from the others participating in the read-a-thon, they started at a later hour than I did. I started at 1:30 AM EST and it’s now 1:00 AM the following day. I am going to bed. Between falling asleep, running errands, and attending birthday parties for 2 friends (I read on my phone while at the parties!) I certainly did not spend a full 24 hours of reading. I’ll wager I read and listened to books for a good 12 hours.
12 hours is quite good I think. About 11 hours more than usual.
Still, it doesn’t seem right to sign up for, and participate in, a 24-hour read-a-thon without reaching the goal. So, I plan to make it up this week. I don’t think I’ll be able to fit another 12 hours in tomorrow, but I certainly can over the next few days. I will keep all ya’ll updated by posting my progress here.
Thanks to all the ‘cheerleaders’ who have commented on my posts for encouraging me to keep reading!
Posted by Ryan
October 24, 2009
Soon after my last post I realized I needed to buy some dress shoes for tomorrow. Upon ensuring that I had an audiobook I could listen to I struck out for Macy’s. While waking I listened to Catch 22 and while waiting for and riding on the subway I read 1984 on my iPhone. Amazon’s Kindle app is by far one of my favorites. I also have the new Barnes and Noble eReader app, but have yet to use it.
Since returning from my shoe errand I finished The Fellowship of the Ring and have delved deeper into 1984.
While I love days like this, a part of me (the inner narcisist perhaps) wishes I could show more. To say I read 10 books in one day would be awesome, but then I’d have to choose different books. Oh well. I may not be able to demonstrate progress with numbers, but that’s really not what matters anyway.
Posted by Ryan
October 24, 2009
I started at 1:30 AM, read until 3 AM, fell asleep until 9 AM, and have been reading since. I’m rubbish at that whole staying up thing when super tired, especially when reading. Anyway, I’ll probably not get a full 24 hours in, but at least it’ll be close!
Currently reading: Fellowship of the Ring. I started this book forever ago and have yet to finish it. I’m only a chapter or two away from the end.
Next up: 1984 by George Orwell.
Posted by Ryan
October 23, 2009
My mom doesn’t like the word moist, my friend Adam can’t stand the word grok, Carrie hates the term read-a-thon, Justin has a strong distaste for ‘webinars’, Brandon doesn’t like the word soil, Craig dislikes ‘loaf’ and ‘moist’ (but likes moist loaves of fresh baked banana bread), Alex hates ’should’, Lexi hates ‘whatever’, Missie is very picky and hates 5 words, Mandi hates ‘lowly’, Jenna hates ‘parabola’ and ‘bulbous’, Curtis can’t stand manager speak, Peter hates ‘quick’ and ‘poll’ (though that may be because I was conducting a ‘quick poll’), and one of my sisters can’t stand ‘toot’ and ‘tune’ (who tooted?!).
My least favorite words? While I share some dislike for webinars about read-a-thons wherein books about moist toots are discussed, two of the words I dislike most are ’sleep’ and ‘deprivation’, the former only when used in connection with the latter.
Long-term sleep deprivation has caused death in lab animals.
Insofar as far as we can tell, we are not lab animals. But still. You never know.
Tomorrow I intend to deprive myself of sleep by participating in a 24-hour read-a-thon. Yeah, I know. Not only is it a read-a-thon, but sleep deprivation is inherently required in the ‘24 hour’ part. Self-inflicted torture.
At least as long as I eat the right food I won’t have to toot much while reading. That’s the worst. You have to go find a new spot to read.
Anyone who wishes to bring me a loaf of banana bread is welcome to come over. I’ll even give you a dramatic reading of whatever I’m reading at the moment.
Posted by Ryan
September 3, 2009
I started blogging exactly 5 years ago. My first post was excruciatingly boring. This post is going to be excruciatingly boring, too. You know, in celebration.
Have a nice day.
Posted by Ryan
September 1, 2009
On the surface I’m just an average 27-year-old guy, but when you look closely you’ll discover that I am, in fact, just an average 27-year-old guy. I like to think I’m different, above the mark, funny, comical, smart, intelligent, witty, hilarious, though perhaps a bit repetitious.
I haven’t been shopping in quite a while. And by quite a while I mean since June. While it may be a slight exaggeration, it’s not too far from the truth (because that’s what slight exaggerations are: not too far from the truth).
I moved to New York City in November of last year, right after Thanksgiving. My apartment is located in Spanish Harlem on the island of Manhattan; my roommate and I call it Hotel Harlem. The reason for this name is obvious: we know a lot of people and a lot of people come to have sleepovers. We have an uncomfortable couch and a few uncomfortable air mattresses. Perfect for a hotel.
At the end of April we had a friend come stay for a few weeks. While here she ended up getting a job. So she came back to work for the summer a few weeks after her vacation was over. She was originally going to live somewhere up north, but that didn’t work out so she ended up in Hotel Harlem for the duration.
When you have someone living rent-free on your couch for 3 months, and that person is not a jerk, they tend to do nice things like buy food, cook food, clean the dishes, etc. In other words, I haven’t needed to go shopping much in the last 3 months.
All of that is the long way of saying: I am out of food.
Like, almost completely out of food. This isn’t exactly a new situation for me to be in, but it’s never a fun one.
So imagine my surprise when I realized that our nearly-permanent Hotel Harlem guest didn’t clean up after herself! She left peanut M&M’s, some chocolate, and gingersnaps. That’s like enough food for a week! Or perhaps just an afternoon.
What would you do if the only food items you had were peanut butter, gingersnaps, chocolate, milk, butter, tapatio hot sauce, apple sauce, eggs, old cookies, honey, pancake mix, syrup, and grape nuts cereal?
That’s right. Mix it all up and eat it.
No, I didn’t do that. I don’t have a blender.
This is what I did:
At that point I knew it was time to stop. The ketchup wasn’t even mine. Sorry, roommate.
It was with this that I came to the realization that I am just an average 27-year-old bachelor. Single men do weird things. And I am one of them.
Oh well.
If you’re ever starving with gingersnaps and ketchup, don’t worry, it’s not as gross as it sounds.
Posted by Ryan
August 9, 2009
So recently I was thinking of anniversaries. I’m really good at remembering my own: when I was born (also known as my birthday), when I turned 12 (12 years after my birth), when I started ryanware.com (June 1999), when I went on a mission for the LDS church (August 2001), when I started blogging (September 2004), when I moved to NYC (November 2008), and how long I’ve been without eating ice cream or other delicious desserts (usually celebrated by eating ice cream or other delicious desserts).
I figure if I work on remembering anniversaries now there’s no way I’ll ever forget my wedding anniversary. Of course, I do have to get married first. So that’s a bit of a trick.
A month ago I went on vacation in Utah and Idaho and, while there, ate a gazillion delicious cookies. At one point I remember thinking to myself something like, “I cannot believe I am eating more cookies. I just finished eating some! I have no self control. When I get back to NYC I will not eat sugar for a month!”
It’s been really hard, but I’d like you to know that, since returning, I have not eaten any sugar. At least not plain. I’ve never really been one to eat it straight out of the bag anyway. Easy goal. Mission accomplished.
(It’s fun to invent goals that are super easy to accomplish: I will not read a terrible book today. I will not get off the computer while typing this sentence. I will not eat a pound of raw fish tonight. Done done done.)
So on August 20th I will have a new anniversary to celebrate: not eating sugar for a month. I started on July 20th. I will admit that I have not been very strict. The reason for this is that I quickly realized “being healthy” and “having a social life” don’t go well together (for me). So the goal became: no ice cream, cookies, brownies, and other delicious desserts*.
* So here’s the part where being a lawyer would be helpful: the small print (as if the goal wasn’t vague enough already).
You know how some special offers from companies have blackout dates? Well, my no sugar goal has blackout dates: cookie night, cookie night again, and my roommate’s birthday (I had to help eat the Italian ice cream while out for his birthday dinner. There were 4 of us and 4 parts to the tartufo ice cream ball).
Cookie Night is exactly what it sounds like: a bunch of people getting together to eat cookies. There is a cookie night in Orem, Utah and it was only appropriate to continue the tradition here in New York City, in Hotel Harlem (my apartment is Hotel Harlem, as we almost always have people sleeping on the couch). Last week we emphasized cookie dough. Tonight is just plain cookie night.
All in all it’s been very interesting so far. I cannot believe how often I crave sugar (about every 5 minutes). It’s been hard (first world problems, oh woe is me)! I have plenty of self control in other areas of my life (I don’t drink, smoke, do drugs, or eat cucumbers), but I was lacking in this area. When it’s over I’ll probably go back to eating sugar, but I certainly intend to keep it under better control (after a day or two of making myself sick on ice cream).
Posted by Ryan
August 5, 2009
I opened a support ticket with the Jungle Disk folks and they helped me do some “consistency checks” in the software and everything reappeared. Whoo! My previous post no longer applies to Jungle Disk, though I still think it’s a good thing for software not to do (ie. mess things up).
I can once again recommend Jungle Disk as a good solution for backups.
Posted by Ryan
August 5, 2009
Edit: I got everything worked out. The people over at Jungle Disk helped me out.
I lost my laptop a few weeks ago. Okay, I actually left it on a train on accident. I had hope because it was the JFK AirTrain and the people on the AirTrain generally seem more trustworthy than those on the subway in NYC*.
I also wasn’t too worried because I’m a nerd. My hard drive was completely encrypted with an insane password. There was no way anyone would ever get anything off of it.
Lost data wasn’t a worry, either, as I’ve been backing up my hard drive for years. I used to backup manually on an external hard drive and then I installed Jungle Disk which lets you store files on Amazon’s S3 service. Infinity storage! You only pay for what you use, and it’s cheap! I configured Jungle Disk to automatically backup all the stuff I cared about.
So with an encrypted hard drive and backups on the intertubes, I wasn’t too worried. All it really was was a big inconvenience. I’d eventually get a new computer and get my stuff back.
Well today my new computer arrived: a brand new 24″ iMac. I’ve been a Windows user forever and people usually assume–because I’ve argued against Apple fanboys and defended Windows–that I am anti-mac. I’m not. I just preferred Windows. I still do, actually. But I figured on a Mac I can run Windows in a VM. Now I have access to both operating systems and can do what I please on either.
Anyway, so I was all excited to get my stuff back today! I installed Jungle Disk and was very happy! I knew my stuff was safe! But! I was a bit stupid. I should have immediately initiated a manual restore of all my data. Instead, I kept installing software I needed so I could get back to work (since it is the middle of a work day).
Do you see where this is going? I should have. I noticed that Jungle Disk was doing some sort of “archive clean up”, but I couldn’t tell what that meant. I let myself get distracted away, probably installing some software or something. 30 minutes later I look again and notice IT’S DELETING STUFF. I immediately cancel it, but it’s too late. The “archive cleanup” meant “all your backups were old and so we deleted them.”
Yeah. All my stuff. Gone.
The default Jungle Disk settings were to “Remove previous versions [of files] after 30 days” and “Keep at most 10 previous versions of each file”. Actually, I’m not sure if those were default settings or just my settings. I don’t know if Jungle Disk syncs settings with its servers. Either way, I don’t see why it would have deleted my stuff. My backups were NOT 30 days old. But it did delete stuff. Almost all of it (it would have had I not stopped it, but everything I wanted is gone). All my photos. Journal entries. Everything that actually mattered. Gone.
How not to write software: don’t delete my freaking stuff.
* I was wrong. Or it’s just that the people at the AirTrain lost and found are useless. I know a ton of stuff gets lost, but all I ever got on the phone was incredibly rude people who told me entertaining things like this: “we, like everyone else, use technology. call back and leave a message.”
Posted by Ryan
July 27, 2009
I decided to experiment with the excerpt thing in Wordpress on my last post and, apparently, when you do that it becomes the only thing that shows up in feed readers. So if you saw my last post in a feed reader and wondered what on earth I was talking about, you might be interested to learn that there was actually a really long post about it.
Posted by Ryan
July 24, 2009
I’ve never been much for dieting. Truth is, I’ve never really needed it.
Until now.
Forget all the thoughts that just ran through your head. Well, assuming you’re human, you probably shouldn’t really forget all the thoughts that just ran through your head because it’s plausible that your mind wandered and you pondered on all sorts of things unrelated to diets, such as polar bears or rotary telephones.
It’s also plausible that you started reading this post on a laptop while on an airplane, which then crashed and you ended up on a remote and magical island for years and years. When you finally get back home the government mails you your old laptop, which was magically preserved in the airplane wreckage. So you powered up the laptop and found, once again, this post. So please don’t forget all the thoughts that ran through your head from the time you read the first sentence until now. Unless, of course, you want to.
So now that I’ve successfully made you forget what this post is all about, I will proceed.
On March 28th, 2009 I began cultivating selective ignorance. I stopped following Twitter. I even nearly stopped posting to Twitter. I stopped reading blogs. I stopped wasting time on Facebook. I didn’t check my email nearly as much as before. I kind of wish I was into mainstream news so I could have stopped following it as well.
As you can see from my twitter stats, my average tweets per month for November-March was 133. During the month of April, however, I only tweeted 42 times, which I admit still seems like too much, but that number doesn’t show the biggest change, which was in the time I was spending on Twitter. Time spent on Twitter in April was negligible in comparison to previous months.
You’ll also notice on that stats page that Twitter usage has gone up since April. I’ve regressed a bit, which is actually why I’m posting this now. I started writing this back in April, but decided to wait to see how it went. I wrote this paragraph back in April:
How long will I stay on this new low information diet? I don’t really know. It’s hasn’t been long enough for it to be a good experiment. What I really aim to accomplish is to put the constant stream of information in its proper place. I don’t want twitter to be as big a part of my life has it has been in the past. The same goes for email and blog reading.
I certainly accomplished what I set out to do. I put the constant stream of information in its place. And I enjoyed it. The problem is that as I have added things back into my life they haven’t stayed in their proper places, rather they tend to try to move back in, consuming everything they used to.
So I’ve experimented and learned. I’m now readjusting and moving forward.
BUT WHAT IF THE WORLD BLOWS UP?!
Then we’ll all be dead.
We’ll all be dead and I’ll be the one who has spent more time having fun. Have fun with your news.
Seriously though, I hear about important news. I haven’t missed anything. People talk. Nothing went wrong as a result of my information diet. On the contrary, things have been better. I’ve actually had more time for reading books. I feel better. I’m happier.
Would anything go wrong if I kept this up for the next 5 years? Perhaps, if you consider not knowing things like that the Obama family is spending their vacation at some lush resort as something going wrong, then yes, a lot of things will go wrong for me. I won’t know a lot of things that don’t matter. And for that I am quite happy because, as a result, I will know more of the things I wish to know of.
In the pursuit of knowledge, something is added every day. In the pursuit of enlightenment, something is dropped every day.
– Lao Tzu, found on twitter the day I decided to start this whole selective ignorance thing.
Oh, I do intend to keep reading the blogs of family and friends, but will cut back on everything else. Also, I’d like to apologize in advance for not reading and starring your funny tweets (you know who you are).
Posted by Ryan
July 21, 2009
It’s been a long time since I’ve partaken of a pink lollipop, but I have had the opportunity to know, at least in part, what it feels like to be one.
In actuality, my experience is far less like being a lollipop than it is like being roasted in an oven.
Last week I was in Utah and Idaho. I partook of a delicious raspberry lime shake. I drove an ATV down dirt roads at what seemed like perfectly reasonable speeds. I tried wake boarding for the first time. I drove a jet ski around in circles on a lake. I also spent time with family and ate a ton of food. Thankfully, I managed to sleep on the red-eye flight back to New York.
I have been at work for 24 hours straight. I am not particularly thrilled about that.
I’m pretty sure that being roasted in an oven would be much less pleasant than my time on the beach at Bear Lake, but I do feel that I was lightly toasted and then painted a bright pink, I assume, in order to hide pink lollipops on my person. I hope to find them soon.
P.S. I’m a bit out of it and will probably regret posting this. I think I should go get some breakfast.
Posted by Ryan
June 24, 2009
Though it’s a late anniversary.
I first registered ryanware.com 10 years ago: June 1999!
Before that I think I was hosting my software on a user account (eg. example.com/~ryan/) on an old ISP. Before that I was on geocities. Before that I was on Netcom back when it was an ISP. I’m probably missing a few in there somewhere. I had a bunch of awesome websites. And by awesome I mean awesome for the 90’s. At least I thought so.
To celebrate 10 years of ryanware.com I decided to move my blog to a new domain which, you’ll notice, has not happened yet. Today is not the day for the switch, but I did make a step in the right direction this morning: I moved ryanware.com from the server it lived on since the beginning to a newer, shinier one*.
I don’t want to publicly announce what I’m planning because, hey, I tend to take a long time to do anything with my website. Besides, it’s not that exciting. All you really need to know is that, someday, my blog won’t live here anymore (and you probably don’t even need to know that). I’m only posting this at all because I wanted to post something about the 10 year thing before it became 11 or 12 years.
* I went with a VPS at Linode. I set up the hosting account months ago. Seriously. Like 4 or 5 months ago. Thankfully, it’s amazingly inexpensive for what you get, though that comes with what will be a downside to many: you setup everything on your own. You pick a linux distro (or install your own from scratch) and install everything you need, all by yourself. No plesk, no cpanel (you could pay for, and install them if you wanted, but why would you want to?). It’s rather fun, I think.
Posted by Ryan
June 20, 2009
If you were sitting next to me, or anywhere else in my apartment, you would hear an awful lot of Latin American music. There’s an outdoor concert practically outside my window.
Posted by Ryan
June 20, 2009
Last week I said I was going to post more, and perhaps even walk a whole bunch or something today.
If I were able to calculate the total number of feet I’ve rolled around in my office chair today I bet it would be more than the total number of feet I have walked today.
Yeah, I’m working today.
So, that’s more of something.
Just not what I had intended.
However, I did choose this. I traded a day. Work today for no work another day.
Perhaps on that day, whenever it may be, I will walk somewhere.
Hopefully that somewhere includes donuts and/or ice cream.
Posted by Ryan
June 13, 2009
It appears that my average post count per year is about 103. My last post, nearly 2 months ago, was about doing less. I wasn’t really thinking that I’d blog less when I wrote that post. It just sort of happened that way. At least it was a funny post to have be at the top for 2 months, yeah?
Today I walked a little over 7 miles. I had no destination. I was bored so I started walking. I kept thinking I’d turn back soon or decide on a destination and go there, but I didn’t. I just walked. I eventually found a pizza place and, as is the tendency in pizza places, bought and then ate pizza. I also drank some cream soda. It was pretty good.
Perhaps next Saturday I will do more. Maybe even more miles (though I’d prefer they not be in the city).
Posted by Ryan
April 18, 2009
I’ve now been reading, or walking and listening (to an audiobook), in Central Park for hours and hours. I’m writing this on my iPhone. Isn’t technology grand?
And yet, at the same time, it isn’t grand.
One of the books I’ve been reading is called The Power of Less by Leo Babauta. The book was gifted to me by a very good friend. I don’t intend to review the book, as I haven’t finished it, and because others are much better at book reviews than I am; however, the book is perfect in its timing, or rather, my decision to read it at this particular time was perfect, though I certainly don’t intend to suggest I am anything close to perfection, nor are my decisions.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about doing less. Don’t get me wrong, I have no intention of being less productive–this isn’t about being lazy–rather, it’s about accomplishing more with less, however trite that may sound.
Anyway, I’m at a park, enjoying a beautiful sunset, reading.
More about less I’m a future post.
Posted by Ryan
April 18, 2009
Five and a half, really, but five sounded better for a title.
My alarm sounded at 1:30 AM. An hour and a half wasn’t enough sleep, that was obvious, but I figured I would do better with at least a little sleep. On Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week I woke up at 4 AM, hoping it would prepare me for today. Perhaps it did, but not enough. I reset my alarm for 1:40. When that went off I reset it to 1:50, and 10 minutes later to 2:00. That was it, I had slept as much as I was able. Now was the moment.
I knew that if I sat down on the couch I would be tempted to lay down, then to get a blanket, eventually leading to the demise of my plan to read for 24 hours straight. Several times this week, however, I stayed awake at 4 AM by listening to audiobooks (Ender’s Shadow and then Mistborn: The Final Empire). I even laid on the couch while listening. The books were interesting enough to keep me awake, despite wanting, desperately, to sleep. I knew that it would be harder with less sleep. But knowledge does not always translate into action. Can you really know if you don’t do what you know?
If you didn’t catch the hint already, I fell asleep. I think I lasted about 20 minutes on the couch before I drifted off. I was awakened at 4 AM by my roommate’s return from a dance and made a half-hearted attempt to stay awake, but once again drifted off into the world of make-believe, or rather, a world of make-believe, for there are many. Sleep is one such world, reading is another. I find it fitting that at least I was in one of these worlds instead of, say, scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush, though that might have kept me awake.
It’s now almost 9 AM. Since awaking on the couch I’ve been listening to Mistborn. I will now commence reading a real book, perhaps The Alchemist? I’m not sure after that. The Power of Less? Lord of the Rings? A Narnia book in Spanish? High Performance MySQL? No, most definitely not that.
I will read until 2 AM, longer if I can. I’ll be posting updates on here and twitter throughout the day.
Posted by Ryan
March 31, 2009
Patriotism is something innately due our country in return for the many riches and opportunities it affords us. Taxes are statutory entitlements the people grant to the government in return for certain constitutionally mandated obligations.
“Country” is not synonymous with “government.” Country is a diverse union consisting of the citizenry – we the people. Country is the basis and the process from which innovation abounds, dreams are realized, and goods are produced.
Government is merely an autocratic bureaucracy that attempts to regulate and control the actions of the country. Government produces no goods and no products. It only consumes resources and redistributes them.
– A friend of mine
Food for thought.
Posted by Ryan
March 30, 2009
I have signed up for Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-a-Thon.
This means that, as the “24 hour” part of the read-a-thon’s name implies, I will read for a solid 24 hour period starting at 2 AM EST on April 18th, 2009 and end at 2 AM the following morning (that’s how a 24 hour period of time works).
Yes, I expect to stop reading for those pesky survival habits like eating and using the restroom; however, I have no intention of letting a single moment pass without the words of some book or another stimulating my brain. This will be accomplished through audiobooks. I will read until it’s not possible to read, at which point I will switch to an audiobook and carry on until I can read again. This way I can start out reading at home, walk to Central Park or something, and resume reading there.
I can’t wait!
Any suggestions for books?
Posted by Ryan
March 25, 2009
A few quotes I’ve collected over the last few weeks on twitter, or just had lying around, or whatever.
My Goal of the Day: Fully listen to my critics, even if they may not know exactly what they’re critical of.
– Malcolm Gladwell
I don’t think I mentioned it, but I ran into Malcolm Gladwell in the lobby of the office building I work in. I always feel a little bad in interrupting someone who probably gets interrupted a lot, but if I actually care about who they are I will usually interrupt anyway. Some may see that as backwards, but whatever. I don’t try to become their friend. I just say hi, express my appreciation for their work, and go on my merry way.
The following advice, given by the deceitful Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood in C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, describes a common malady afflicting many of us today: “Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.”
– Michael J. Teh quoting The Screwtape Letters
I posted this quote back in November of 2007 and I’ve already said everything I have to say about it (for now).
“To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.”
– William H. Walton
Which would be pretty terrible, especially if you had no allergic reaction to the bee. I choose a grudge-free life.
Also, that would be quite the persistent, death-resistant bee.
Few concepts have more potential to mislead us than the idea that choice, or agency, is an ultimate goal.
– Dallin H. Oaks, “Weightier Matters,” Ensign, Jan 2001, 13
Choice, or agency, is a condition of life. This should not be confused with the ability to act on choices without undesired consequences. That’s called freedom.
If your knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you need to seriously rethink your life.
– Calvin (Calvin & Hobbes)
And in the spirit of Calvin & Hobbes, here’s a semi-sad reminder (if you love Calvin & Hobbes) about saving things for your children instead of throwing them away. I’m really just putting it here because I like Calvin & Hobbes, I’m sentimental, and I wanted an excuse to post it.
Posted by Ryan
March 7, 2009
I started reading Perelandra by C.S. Lewis today. In the second chapter the character Ransom says something I find extremely interesting.
Haven’t you noticed how in our own little war here on earth, there are different phases, and while any one phase is going on people get into the habit of thinking and behaving as if it was going to be permanent? But really the thing is changing under your hands all the time, and neither your assets nor your dangers this year are the same as the year before.
– Perelanda, C.S. Lewis
Then, I read this post, How far away is your emergency? by Seth Godin, and marveled (mainly because I wanted to use the word) that Godin illustrates exactly the point Lewis was talking about.
It’s amazing that people have so much time to fret about today’s emergency but almost no time at all to avoid tomorrow’s.
A glimpse at the TV and internets shows one talking head after another angsting about today’s economy. These are the same people who needed to devote entire hours to mindless trivia nine months ago when they could have done an enormous amount of education about avoiding this mess in the first place.
…
They say the best time to look for a job is when you don’t need one. And the best time to invest in a new Purple Cow is when you’re still milking the old one. Move your emergency back in time and you’ll be amazed at how far your money goes.
– Seth Godin
It’s important to remember that our present circumstances are not permanent. Tomorrow’s emergencies will be different from today’s and we ought to keep that in mind so as not to be surprised and, more importantly, so that we’ll be prepared when the changes occur.
Posted by Ryan
February 28, 2009
I just noticed that I only posted on the first and last days of this month. Whoops.
Posted by Ryan
February 28, 2009
If I read 76 books a year until I’m 80 years old I will have read 3,000 books.
Of course, I don’t know the actual number of books I’ve read. I only know that I’ve read or listened to approximately 82 books in the last 3 years. A few of those are books I remember reading while growing up (real books).
If I could remember all the books I read growing up the full number would probably be closer to 150, or at least I hope it would.
So basically, my depth of reading is pretty sad.
I recently started twittering about my book reading over at 3000books. I also have the domain 3000books.com, but I haven’t set anything up on it yet. When I get around to it it’ll be a book reading blog, naturally.
My most recent reads:
I am currently listening to The 8th Habit by Stephen R. Covey and just started reading The Fellowship of the Ring By J.R.R. Tolkien.
I’m still poking along at several books on dailylit: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, A Tale of Two Cities, and Little Women. Whew!
Not that that’s enough. I just purchased The Joseph Smith Papers, Out of the Silent Planet (already read it, but it was among those lost when I moved), Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength.
So if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go get busy reading (or listening).
Posted by Ryan
February 1, 2009
So tonight I had dinner, which is normal. The abnormal part was that it was unlike any dinner I’ve ever prepared for myself.
(just ignore the dirty stove)
I took a picture in case no one would believe me.
The bag it came in was a little tough to open so I almost abandoned the idea for a big bowl of ice cream, but I managed all the same.
I followed this up with some roasted almonds, then raw almonds, then granola, then I got out some yogurt for the granola.
The challenge now is to resist the temptation to eat a big bowl of ice cream before I go to bed.
Actually, that should be pretty easy. I’ll just eat it straight from the carton.
Posted by Ryan
January 24, 2009
I am sitting here, in my home office (sounds so official), starving to death. Some people (you know the types), upon reading that last sentence, immediately thought, “well, you’re not really starving to death because you’re going to eat food soon enough. you’re just experiencing hunger pains because you haven’t eaten in a little while. if you waited long enough, they would go away. give it a day or two and then you’d really be starving to death.”
To those types of people I respond thusly: You’re wrong. I’m not experiencing hunger pains. You see, I started to eat a bag of chips right before I started writing this post. The feelings of death by starvation have been dissipating ever so slowly.
I knew when I opened the bag of chips that it might keep me from going outside (in the ACTUAL outdoors) to get food. I accepted the consequences, though I think I’ll regret it later.
I decided a few weeks ago that I was never going grocery shopping again (for as long as I don’t have a car). It wasn’t a completely silly thing to decide, and you might be making all sorts of wrong conclusions about my eating habits, but the decision did have one consequence I did not intend: starving to death.
In the battle of quantity vs. quality, quantity almost always wins. For example, I’d rather eat two bags of plain tortilla chips than one bite of amazing pizza. The deciding factor being this question: “if this is the last thing I eat, how long would I last before starving to death?”
There all sorts of flaws with my quality vs. quantity decision making, and an examination of my behavior would no doubt provide ample reason to distrust everything I have said thus far. The fact remains, however, that my cupboards are almost completely empty and if I don’t do something about it soon I could easily be hungry way more than I like to be.
I do have pancake mix, some eggs, some chips, hot chocolate mix, a bottle of hot sauce, and plain yogurt (I thought I was buying vanilla). This is a suitable amount of food on which one can survive (not for long), but not on which one would pleasantly thrive.
So, a few weeks ago I ordered food from FreshDirect, an online grocery delivery service for the New York area. I ordered, and the food arrived. I didn’t have to walk. I didn’t have to take the subway. It was awesome.
So I decided to shop like that for the rest of my car-less existence.
Then, I ran out of food. So I bought a few things from the grocery store. But not too much because it’s cheaper and easier online.
The problem with online shopping is that you have to wait for it. You don’t get instant satisfaction, which is fairly important when you’re trying not to starve to death.
So now that I’ve rambled on and on and have eaten way too many chips, I’m gonna go outside and find something to eat. Wendy’s? Subway? Crown Fried Chicken?
It would be nice if restaurants had signs that said “our food prevents starvation.” That way, if a restaurant didn’t have the sign, you would know not to get food there.
Posted by Ryan
December 20, 2008
Upon reading the title of this post you may think to yourself, “self, I think he must have meant ‘Lost World – Jurassic Park’.” If you thought that, I’ve been wondering, is it a book I should read? It’s been on my list for a while now.
Books are awesome. Especially books wherein the story takes place in a different world, or in an alternative or modified version of our own world. It’s as if the books came from those other worlds. They are a gateway to a different reality—often a more desirable one than our own. Separating myself from this world and learning of another allows me to accept things I might not otherwise accept (which can be good and bad), and hopefully use those things to improve my life.
When I moved to New York I packed up the stuff I could bring with me, which wasn’t much, and then boxed up the rest and shipped it to New York. I got most of it last week. Today I got another box, full of books. Earlier this week I got a letter from the U.S. Postal Service stating, “an empty wrapper with your address was found in the mail and it is believed to have been separated from a parcel during handling.” They even tapped the address label to the paper so I could see it.
I can fill out a description sheet and mail it back and they’ll try to find my stuff. I waited until today for the other box full of books to come so I could get a better grasp on what I lost. While I still have both my English and Spanish versions of The Chronicles of Narnia, I lost all my other C.S. Lewis books, which I am very bummed about (I mark up and write a lot in the margins of my books). I also lost my Malcolm Gladwell books, Gordon B. Hinckley’s biography as well as some of his books. 13 is the total number I cannot account for. I’m sure I’ll remember more later.
Oh, I also lost a few movies on DVD. I used to be the proud owner of 6 movies. That number has now been reduced to 1. Pride cometh before a fall, they say.
One funny thing. I packed the books and DVDs in these two boxes and used my socks to keep them from sloshing around. I kept expecting the boxes to come so I didn’t go out and buy socks. It’s been rough. I like socks.
So, in a lost and found, under a machine at a post office, on the side of the road, or perhaps in some happy postal worker’s living room, lay my books. Lost worlds.
Posted by Ryan
December 8, 2008
I originally published this on 2008/12/8. I removed it from my archives later because I was afraid it sounded like I was making fun of him, which I wasn’t*. After re-reading this and laughing at myself I decided to make some modifications and re-publish. 2009/12/9
I, like just about every other 26 year old straight male in the world, don’t dream about David Archuleta. I would have liked to have had it stay that way, but what we get and what we want are not always the same, however unfortunate it may be.
It started out as a normal Sunday. Then, suddenly and without warning a girl said something about David Archuleta. I guess it really wasn’t without warning; it’s pretty common for girls to ask me about him, probably because I look like a short, young Latino and have an amazing voice? Or not. Maybe it’s that I grew up in Murray, Utah, which is where he’s from.
Nothing, actually, made Sunday abnormal at all. I just thought it sounded more suspenseful to say “it started out normal…”. You see, I’m practicing to be an scary book writer. So far so good, eh?
Of course, if I was really trying to be a writer of scary books I wouldn’t call myself a “scary book writer” because that doesn’t sound, well, terribly frightening.
Once or twice, when I was young, I had a sleep-over at a friend’s house. Well, I had a lot of sleep-overs, but the “once or twice” I’m referring to was with a friend who had a bunk bed. Even then, I probably had a lot more sleep-overs with him than just once or twice. What I’m trying to say is that I remember his bunk bed.
I don’t really remember, but it’s entirely possible that I thought the bunk bed was cool.
Then, once or twice (or whatever) on scout camps when we slept in cabins, I realized that the desirability of the top or bottom bunk on a bunk bed was directly proportional to the season and the quality of the heating/cooling in the cabin (which is usually pretty bad for the types of cabins which scouts stay in).
So last night, high up on my loft bed, I apparently fell asleep. I say apparently because it took me a long time to fall asleep. So long that by the time I actually woke up I was uncertain that I had ever fallen asleep. I did know one thing, however, and that was that I had had a weird dream.
In the dream I was in another state attending the high school graduation of a cousin. The graduation was in a huge, awkward gym. I’m not entirely sure how gyms can be awkward, unless it was a gym where people work out. Because those gyms are always awkward. Where else on earth can you find people dressed in weird clothing, lifting heavy objects for the sole purpose of destroying their ability to walk up stairs or drink orange juice properly the next day?
Also in this gymnasium were enemies. I’m not sure what kind, but I’m pretty sure they were bad enemies, because enemies are usually bad. It’s possible I added the enemies to the dream after I awoke, similar to removing the face of an ex-girlfriend from a photo in photoshop, except the reverse because I added instead of removed. This could have happened in an attempt to create some sort of real memory which I could associate with the dream, and thus remember it better (though it’s clear I don’t remember it at all).
So in my dream I remember being somewhat confused, as you probably are now. Then, suddenly and without warning, someone magically changed a big sign they were holding up to read, “David Archuleta.” It also said, helpfully, “to the left” with a handy arrow pointing to him.
While I can no longer say that I’ve never dreamed of the American idol from Murray, I will say this much: if it becomes a common occurrence I will buy a gym membership. The reason for this is, naturally, so that I can work out and destroy my ability to ascend the ladder of my loft bed, rendering it impossible to sleep on my bed. This means I will not sleep very often, which means when I slept I would be really tired, which would mean I would dream less because I don’t dream much when I’m really, really tired.
* I have nothing against David Archuleta or his family. I know his parents and have met him as well. They’re all excellent people. I just thought it was funny to have dreamed about him.
Posted by Ryan
December 7, 2008
One writer said: “Again Christmas, abiding point of return. Set apart by its mystery, mood and magic, the season seems, in a way to stand outside time. All that is dear, that is lasting, renews its hold on us: we are home again.”
President David O. McKay (1873–1970) declared: “True happiness comes only by making others happy—the practical application of the Savior’s doctrine of losing one’s life to gain it. In short, the Christmas spirit is the Christ spirit, that makes our hearts glow in brotherly love and friendship and prompts us to kind deeds of service.
“It is the spirit of the gospel of Jesus Christ, obedience to which will bring ‘peace on earth,’ because it means—good will toward all men.”
Giving, not getting, brings to full bloom the Christmas spirit. Enemies are forgiven, friends remembered, and God obeyed. The spirit of Christmas illuminates the picture window of the soul, and we look out upon the world’s busy life and become more interested in people than things. To catch the real meaning of the “spirit of Christmas,” we need only drop the last syllable, and it becomes the “Spirit of Christ.”
– The Best Christmas Ever, Thomas S. Monson
Isn’t this time of year wonderful?
Posted by Ryan
December 6, 2008
According to the weather app on my phone, it’s currently snowing in the great outdoors. I actually noticed this by looking out the window before I looked at my phone.
I suppose it’s always snowing somewhere in the great outdoors. It just so happens that it’s snowing in the part of the great outdoors that is viewable from my window.
It’s not snowing much—a light snow is what it’s called. Most snow is light, compared to steel cube of roughly the same size. Some snow is lighter other snow, though. For example, the snow in Northern Utah, specifically in the Salt Lake City area, is especially light and fluffy. It makes for amazing skiing. But that’s not what I meant by “a light snow,” which you probably knew.
When I was young I remember really liking the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I just looked and it turns out it was published the same year I was born. Cool.
So today was cloudy. I also ate meatballs today. They were on top of pasta, smothered in marinara sauce with a slice of garlic bread and a small salad. I also bought a cookie, and my bed frame. And desk. And an ice cream cone, and a hot dog. Oh, and a cinnamon roll. And a bunch of groceries. Oh! And rope. The rope was for taking the old bed frame back. That was an adventure. So if you’ve been following this blog at all you know that I went to IKEA today. I also did 50 push ups in a total of 5 sets, which is 5 more than 2 days ago.
And now I’m going to go dream of raining meatballs, because they taste really good (though I admit I’ve never tried the rain variety).
Posted by Ryan
December 5, 2008
Low, rumbling noises usually signal a few things. A few of these few things would be: a hungry stomach (or, rather a hungry person whose stomach is reminding them of said hunger), a train, or perhaps a giant who is so big that his stomach apparently never stops rumbling (or is it the footsteps that make the rumbling noise when they approach?).
In my case, I’m pretty certain that I’m not hearing giants, and while I do occasionally hear my stomach rumble, most often the noise is from a train.
If you were standing in my room right now you might ask me to turn the light on. That’s because my light is off. I’m posting this from my iPhone, in the dark, ready to go to bed. So I’d say no, and leave the light off. Having the light off is better for looking out the window, which is what I think you’d want to do if you were here. Why? Because you’d see train tracks. Well, not exactly. You’d see the elevated railway, but not the physical tracks themselves. But you get the point.
So every few minutes I hear a low, rumbling noise in the distance. As it gets closer, it gets louder, as noises have a tendency to do. At night, when I’m laying in my bed, waiting to fall asleep, you might think the trains would keep me awake. On the contrary, I find that the noise helps me fall asle…
Posted by Ryan
December 4, 2008
It’s not that the number 100 changes how big it is depending on where it’s at—it obviously doesn’t. It’s constant. 100 is 100. This is a fairly well-established fact. The perceived size of 100, however, is directly proportional to the effort involved. 100 steps to the bakery? Depends how hungry you are. 100 steps to the lavatory? How badly do you need to get there? 100 steps from your loved one in a movie or TV show, with happy music playing all around? You’re likely to get shot so you probably want to remember to mind your surroundings instead of running at top speed towards each other, ignoring the deadly monster you were just fighting. Sure, running towards each other with arms open and silly grins makes for a more exciting/sad show, but I highly suggest you proceed with caution. Then, when you’ve conquered the evil aliens or whatever you can re-create the moment on some lonely beach with a stereo and a cardboard cutout of the evil monster.
So my boss decided that we should have a push up contest at work. The goal is to work up to be able to do 100 push ups at a time. Yes, 100 push ups all at once. Well, not really all at once, but rather in fairly quick succession, one after the other.
Two days ago we did an exhaustion test to see how many push ups we were capable of doing at one time. The purpose of this was, naturally, to humiliate the weak. No, not really. The purpose was to place each person into a workout plan designed for their level of strength/weakness. I was able to do 17 push ups before collapsing on the floor, completely wasted. While that may be a slight exaggeration (the part about being completely wasted, not the 17 push ups), the fact remains the same that 100 seems like an awful lot.
We do push ups every other day. So yesterday I reveled in keeping my hands where they belong: not on the floor doing push ups, but rather stuffing myself with food.
Actually, I didn’t actually eat much yesterday. But this morning I had a smoothie from Jamba Juice. It was amazing. And then I did 45 push ups. The 45 were spread out over 5 sets, but still. 100 is still a big number.
Posted by Ryan
December 3, 2008
If my bed were Pinocchio, which it’s not, it wouldn’t yell out “I’m a real bed!” because, well, it’s not a real bed. It’s trying to be, and, I suppose in a very simple sense, it really is, but there are a few critical problems that one notices with a simple glance–a glance much like that which you’d give an uninteresting book in a dull library and not at all like the glance you’d give an oil tanker in your living room.
The first and only, and therefore most significant thing you’d notice, is this: my mattress is on the floor. That’s because, as is natural and right, gravity is keeping it there instead of letting it float around aimlessly. Also, I don’t have a bed frame. Well, I do, but it’s in a box. And it’s the wrong bed frame. I could set it up, rendering my bed situation into a better bed situation, but that’s not really what it would do. It’d make the bed situation worse, because then I’d have the wrong bed frame set up, in my room of all places. Which is not what I want, which is why it’s not set up.
So this weekend I am taking the very large box back to where it came from. I will return with what will probably be a bigger box, hopefully with the right bed frame enclosed in its interior.
Have I talked about my chair at all? I like my chair a lot. I’m sitting on it, as is pretty standard for a chair, and not anything like a standard for, say, a large venomous snake.
In case you were curious, my feet are on my mattress. It makes a nice, warm foot rest.
Posted by Ryan
December 2, 2008
Yesterday, after dropping the zipcar truck off at its parking spot, we wandered around looking for food and garbage, but not for the same purpose. The food was to eat, the garbage was for a bag of broken glass I was carrying around. Because that’s a totally normal thing to do at night, in the city, or anywhere else for that matter.
As it turns out, a bag of broken glass would be a really good weapon.
Rewind an hour to an hour and a half before that and you’d see me, holding a dish drying rack with two boxes of glasses on top of it, walking up to the apartment building on the sidewalk. You’d also see me get my keys out of my pocket and attempt to open the first door. You’d see me finally get it open, walk inside towards the second door, and then, drop a box of glasses. Remarkably, IKEA packs the glasses in the boxes very nicely, and only one of them broke into a few big pieces and several thousand smaller ones.
After unloading everything, we swept up the broken glass and put it in a plastic bag. We were in a hurry to get the truck back, and, not seeing a garbage can around anywhere, carried the bag of glass around figuring we’d find a garbage can later.
Okay. Fast forward back to the hunt for food and garbage after dropping the truck off. Somehow, I managed to hit my hand with the bag as I was changing hands or something. I felt something sharp on the middle finger of my left hand. I looked, and beheld much blood. That’s odd, I thought, as I stared at it. It didn’t hurt at all. The cut is 3/4ths of an inch long? Maybe an inch? I had 3 bandaids in my pocket, which didn’t really help. While Justin found a store on his iPhone, in the which I could purchase better bandages, I bled all over the place. Not really, of course, but it sounds more exciting that way.
The moral of this story is, if you find yourself carrying a bag of broken glass, keep it away from your flesh, as well as the flesh of others (unless it’s an angry mob). And probably clothing, too. Unless you don’t like the clothing, or want clothes with holes in it. Since clothing with holes seems to be the fashion I bet you could put the broken glass in the dryer with your clothing and viola! Expensive clothing without the expense.
My finger is fine. I’ve got a butterfly bandage and a bigger bandage over the top of that. No more profuse bleeding.
Posted by Ryan
December 1, 2008
Justin and I spent the day today moving into the new apartment. I like it a lot. It was recently renovated and is very nice. It was originally intended to be sold as a condo, but for some reason or another it’s now an apartment.
To do the move Justin rented a truck from Zipcar and we then loaded all his stuff and what little I brought (boxes full of my stuff are in-transit) and, then, spent a long time in traffic.
It wasn’t that bad, but it was pretty stressful trying to get to the new place, unloading everything, then to IKEA to buy my loft bed frame, mattress, desk, chair, and bookshelf, along with silverware and other random kitchen and house stuff. Then, we had to get back to the apartment, unload everything, and drop the truck off at its parking spot before our time ran out (which costs a lot more money). We had to extend the rental 2-3 times, and still went over the allotted time (couldn’t extend again due to another person who had it scheduled). Traffic is terrible here, but we’ve established that before.
I know some of you are wondering what this apartment looks like. Never fear, I’ll take pictures when everything has been setup. That may be a few days. Right now, everything is a mess. I’m sitting next to the door to the apartment in my newly assembled chair from IKEA. I’m sitting by the door because that’s where I assembled the chair. From here I can see a fantastic mess. I like it, a lot. The chair, that is, not the mess.
Posted by Ryan
November 30, 2008
You might think, upon reading the title of this post, that rain and water always go together. Well, I’m here to tell you that, as matter of fact, they usually do. I’ve never experienced acid rain*, or any other type of non-watery rain. All I know is that it rained today, and there was water involved.
* I suspect acid rain isn’t really acid in the way that I usually think of acid. What first comes to my mind when I think of acid? Stomach acid. Why? Because it happens to be inside of me. Not that I always think of myself and my stomach first. Really. The first thing on my mind when I wake up is usually myself; how tired I am, etc. Just the other day, though, I thought of my computer instead**.
The second thing that comes to mind when I think of acid is a car battery. Those are the only two things I thought of before reading the wikipedia article about acid rain. So now I’m thinking of other things, like brook trout and a girl named Brooke I knew in elementary school (no, she doesn’t have a wikipedia page***, but the page about brook trout had a link to a Brooke Trout, who apparently sings or something and the word ‘Brooke’ made me think of the Brooke I knew a long time ago). Why? Because that’s how wikipedia works. You read one thing, but then you click on a link and the next thing you know you’re learning about popular sovereignty.
In case you were curious, it took 41 clicks to get to popular sovereignty from acid rain.
So, I like rain. Unless it’s acid rain, but since I’ve never experienced any such thing, I think it’s safe to say “I like rain” without any further qualifying statements, except when deemed necessary by any extraneous circumstances which may or may not matter.
** Please don’t take anything I said in this post seriously.
*** I didn’t actually check.
Posted by Ryan
November 29, 2008
I’m back in New York.
Went to IKEA today for the first time, ever.
IKEA is in Brooklyn.
I’m at the train station.
I can see the statue of liberty off in the distance.
It’s cool.
Posted by Ryan
November 28, 2008
Today, I packed.
I hate packing.
I dislike unpacking even more.
I like non-stop flights.
I like books.
Cereal, too.
Goodbye, Utah. For now, anyway. I’ll be back for Christmas.
Posted by Ryan
November 27, 2008
Isn’t today great? I sure think so.
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.
– Cicero, ‘Pro Plancio,’ 54 B.C.
I can’t think of a better excuse for a holiday than a day set apart for gratitude.
So, if gratitude is the parent of all other virtues, what about, say, the testing point of every virtue? Oh, whaddya know, I have a quote for that too.
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
– C.S. Lewis
To be virtuous we need to be grateful and courageous.
Sometimes, it takes courage to be grateful.
So now we’ve got the greatest of all virtues, which is also the parent of all the others, but to be grateful in tough situations gratitude becomes courage, so is courage the grandparent of all other virtues? Only in some situations? I think I’m confused.
Happy Thanksgiving! And for those outside the United States, I hope you have a great day. Thanks for reading.
Posted by Ryan
November 26, 2008
This evening I went to a friend’s house and, among other things (like eating pizza), played Tecmo Super Bowl. This classic Nintendo game from 1991 was a huge part of my childhood. We used to go over to another friend’s house and play for hours and hours. Good times.
The game brought back a lot of fun memories. The graphics and sound were just as amazing as we remembered. Also, I was probably about as bad as I used to be. Okay, I was probably better than I was today. I won 1 game out of… 6? 7? I sure hope I was better than that all those years ago…
Posted by Ryan
November 25, 2008
Today, while working, I came across this little piece of text: “asdfasdf nelkjlkj meh aaa af”
As anyone in their right mind might do, I tried pronouncing that. Yes, out loud. I was on a conference call so I muttered it under my breath. I caught myself on the “meh aaa af” and, had I not been on the phone, would have laughed out loud. As it was, I still laughed out loud, but it was more of a silent laugh. Like this: “hahahahaha” without the “hahahahaha” so really it was “ ” but my face looked like it was saying “hahahahaha.”
Does that make any sense at all? I hope so.
Anyway, I’m not sure why I thought the gibberish needed to be read, but I suspect it’s not the first time I’ve tried doing this.
Maybe someday I’ll discover some secret code that will save humanity from all sorts of evil, like mutant pickles. Or, I’ll just get a good laugh out of it. I’m cool with both options.
Posted by Ryan
November 24, 2008
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
– Charles Mingus
The lesson of Henry Eyring’s life is that simple people, people just like you and me, can change the world. We do it a little bit every day. And we have the potential to change the world much more, if we can better understand and use our unique gifts.
– Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
– Albert Einstein
To hear is relatively simple. To heed and apply what is heard becomes life’s perpetual challenge.
– Charles Didier
I could make this post longer, but there’s no point in complicating things.
Posted by Ryan
November 23, 2008
But not really long.
I like driving, especially at night. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth mentioning again right now because I just got back from a drive.
I drove for perhaps 30 minutes south along the west side of Utah Lake, which isn’t a particularly impressive lake. Well, it looks impressive. It’s huge. It’s not, however, a very fun lake to be in or around as the water quality isn’t what I’d call superb. The average depth is 9 feet with a maximum of 14 feet.
While it’s not a great recreational lake, it is nice to look at, and I’ve recently decided that it’s good for night drives.
It was incredibly quiet. Lots of stars were visible. Across the lake I could see Provo, Utah, among other cities (for some reason I can never pick out the border lines in real life like I can on a map).
I stopped and just sat there for a while, taking it all in. And then I came back, ready for bed.
I move to New York City this week. Thanks to Justin, I actually have a place to live now! I am excited to get back to the city for a number of reasons: the city is exciting, working with my coworkers in person, NY pizza, more food, and just doing something different. I will, of course, miss a few things here, one of which is being able to go driving at night whenever I please. So I hope to go a few more times this week.
Posted by Ryan
November 22, 2008
Sleep in. Check.
Get on the computer. Check.
Make weird noises for no apparent reason. Check.
I’ve recently decided that I have a soundtrack going on in my head at all times. Sometimes, it comes out. Say, for example, that I’m walking down the street on a crowded sidewalk at night. The likelihood of a crowded sidewalk in Eagle Mountain, Utah is about as probable as a seeing a nuclear submarine surface in my living room; however, it’s just an example, okay? So I say I’m walking down a crowded sidewalk at night. If someone tripped and fell and I had to either jump over them or kick them in the face, I would probably kick them in face. No, not really. What I would do is yell out “do doo doo!” and jump. The “do doo doo!” is the soundtrack in my head. It would decide “whoa! something exciting is happening, this music must be made known to the world!” and I’d have no choice—the music would escape.
Write a blog post. Check.
Do laundry.
Eat.
Get oil changed in my truck.
Decide what I’m going to do with my truck when I move.
Get in a really scary situation involving large amounts of cheesecake so the soundtrack in my head can tell the world how scared I am (dun dun dun!).
Posted by Ryan
November 21, 2008
Things on my mind right now:
The funny thing about all these thoughts is that they’re all somehow related. It’s not always easy to draw relationships between them all, but I think they’re there. If nothing else, they’re related by being in my head—they’re a part of me.
Posted by Ryan
November 20, 2008
About an hour ago I said the following in response to a question: “very rarely.”
Rare is already pretty rare, as the word itself implies. So to be very rare it’s gotta be, well, very rare.
While I don’t know for certain, I think ‘very rare’ is overused. In fact, the cases where it’d be appropriate are rare.
Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
– C. S. Lewis
I am far beyond guilty of this.
See? I just did it again. It’s a disease!
Does this really matter? I think so. It extends beyond words, reaching into our lives and sucking out everything good. Maybe.
Posted by Ryan
November 19, 2008
It’s really easy to start things. New goals, projects, 12 course meals.
The last piece of pie after a 12 course meal is tough.
Not that I’ve ever tried.
I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to trying, though.
Anyone know of any good restaurants I should check out?
Posted by Ryan
November 18, 2008
“Outlier” is a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience. In the summer, in Paris, we expect most days to be somewhere between warm and very hot. But imagine if you had a day in the middle of August where the temperature fell below freezing. That day would be outlier. And while we have a very good understanding of why summer days in Paris are warm or hot, we know a good deal less about why a summer day in Paris might be freezing cold. In this book I’m interested in people who are outliers—in men and women who, for one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August.
– What is Outliers about?
I’ve been waiting for this book, Outliers, to come out for, well, as long as I’ve known about it. I don’t know how long that is, but it’s felt like a long time.
It finally came out today.
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
- On Audible
- On Amazon
I bought it in both audio and paperback. If you like audiobooks at all I highly recommend the audio versions. He reads them himself and does a fantastic job.
Posted by Ryan
November 18, 2008
Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.
– Douglas Adams
The vastness of space has fascinated me for a long time. And by a long time I mean at least 3 weeks.
Okay 3 weeks is a gross underestimate. I’ve been fascinated by space for a really long time. I bought this telescope 8 years ago? 9 years? 10? I don’t really remember. I bet I could find out, but I’m not going to today.
So we know that the universe is vast. Hugely vast. Bigly big. Thinking about how big it is makes my cares feel so small and insignificant. But, they are significant. Even if we care about something we shouldn’t care about, the very act of caring about it makes it important.
Caring about something simply means means that action needs to be taken. If that action is to stop caring about it because it shouldn’t be significant, then it’s probably a pretty big deal. Little things add up. If our lives are full of the mundane and what we deem unimportant, that’s significant.
If you recall from my post on Saturday, I woke up really late. I worked until about 10:30 PM. I was bored. Tired of being indoors. Still not happy about having slept in. I wanted to get out of the house. I went for a drive.
I didn’t have any specific destination in mind. I just started driving. I ended up in American Fork, UT (about 15 miles away). I stopped at a McDonald’s and bought an M&M McFlurry. Yes, very unhealthy. I made it even less healthy by requesting Oreos be added. Yeah, I know. It was a total sugar overload and so not worth it.
After ordering, and just before driving up to the window to pay, I noticed something interesting on that little screen where they show you your order. It was photo of this guy:
Not really though. What I saw was this: “Extra Salad Dressing 0.25″
25 cents for Oreos? Ok, sure. That’s fine. I thought it was funny they charged it as Salad Dressing. I wonder if anyone in McDonald’s upper management ever looks at trends. “Why are so many people buying salad dressing with McFlurrys? Should we market this?”
When contemplating the vastness of the universe, and then 25 cents for extra salad dressing (I choose Ranch) on a McFlurry at a McDonald’s in American Fork, Utah (located on a tiny little rock floating in space), it feels markedly ridiculous to think for a moment that those 25 cents matter. And yet they do.
This realization is mind boggling. How is it that the sheer mass of the universe (and perhaps multiple universes) is not more important than the needs of one individual, or even 25 cents?
The vastness of the universe does not supersede my individual cares, nor yours. And, of course, vice versa. Or, are the ‘cares’ of the universe as a whole made up of the sum of its parts?
Is it possible for the collective needs of a society to supersede the rights of any individual?
Posted by Ryan
November 17, 2008
I was writing a post, but something came up so I’m posting this until I can post what I was writing.
* Reason for this was because I’m posting for NaBloPoMo and have to post every day!
Posted by Ryan
November 16, 2008
In this post we’re all going to learn to use our imaginations, because imagining is fun. Ready?
This morning was beautiful. It was really clear and the mountains had a lot of snow on the peaks.
I didn’t take a picture. So, you’re just going to have to imagine what it was like.
The end.
Posted by Ryan
November 15, 2008
My schedule this whole week has essentially been this: wake up between 7-9, work until 3 AM (with a few breaks here and there), sleep; repeat. It wasn’t like that every day. Friday wasn’t.
Today (Saturday) was going to be a little different. I was planning on waking up early and working until the evening and then going out on the town, or something. Instead, I slept 6.5 hours longer than planned.
So I guess I’m all caught up on the lack of sleep I’ve been enjoying, but now my day is shot. Wheeeeeeee!
Posted by Ryan
November 14, 2008
In yesterday’s post I told everyone I don’t know how to bake bread. While I think it’s possibly true that I’ve never baked bread, it’s not like I couldn’t do it if I tried.
Similarly, I might be able to blow up the universe if I tried.
On second thought, that’s not very similar at all.
What I’m really trying to say is that I went to a friend’s house (Tim) this morning and we made really good french toast. Seriously. You should be jealous.
Sure, French Toast is easy and what we made was easy. The point is, though, that I cooked.
Actually, I’m pretty sure there is no point to this post.
Carry on.
Posted by Ryan
November 13, 2008
Ah, high school! Those were the days! Oh wait, I didn’t go to high school. Whatever. They were still the days. Whatever “the days” really means.
And they really weren’t “the days,” anyway. Who says that about adolescent years? A lot of people, actually.
They were “the days,” if that’s meant to imply that the days were awkward and weird. Because that’s what they were. But only in retrospect.
I’ve seen a lot of photos of my two older sister’s high school days. Whenever I see one I think “wow, I’m glad I wasn’t that awkward.” But then I realize I was. Probably more so, since I was the home schooled kid. Perception plays a big part of awkwardness and telling someone you are ‘home schooled’ makes that perception, whatever this perception is, bigger. The words ‘home schooled’ generally evokes images of anti-social, geeky people learning how to bake bread.
Not that there’s anything wrong with learning how to bake bread. I would have loved doing that. Baking bread smells amazing.
It’s usually delicious, too. Especially with homemade raspberry jam (that you learned how to make while in home school!).
Anyway, eventually you look back on your life and realize everyone was awkward, everyone was geeky. 10 years from now we’ll look back and think we were all sorts of awkward. This means two things: we’re all hopelessly awkward, or we’re not at all. I vote not at all because that means we can all just move on and not worry about what we look like.
So, I’m the guy in the back left of the photo. I don’t remember my date’s name. I remember having a hard time with her name that day, too. It’s weird. I can’t remember her name, yet I see people I saw once 15 years ago I know who they are and what they do. Okay, maybe not to that extreme, but still. My name-remembering ability seems to be mere random coincidence. So if I call you George when your name is, in fact, Sally; I’m sorry. I apologize now.
P.S. I loved my home school experience and wouldn’t trade it for anything. Except, maybe, for large amounts of freshly-baked bread with homemade raspberry jam.
Posted by Ryan
November 12, 2008
While back East I saw this at someone’s house and had to take a picture.
Why would someone want such a big remote control?
I figured poor eyesight was probably the reason.
I was so wrong.
I realized just how wrong I was when I saw this:
Question answered, problem solved.
Posted by Ryan
November 11, 2008
1.5 years ago I came across an article in the Washington Post describing, in great detail, a musical experiment. The article is called Pearls Before Breakfast, the experiment was to see if one of the greatest musician’s could distract people from their rush to work in a D.C. Metro station.
The musician behind the experiment was Joshua Bell, an utterly amazing violinist. I read the article (it’s long) in amazement. I wondered what I would have done in the same situation: you’re in a hurry to get to work and hear some amazing music. Do you stop and listen or plow on?
I’ve often wondered “what would I do?” or “what would I have done?”, not only with simple things like this, but with bigger things. What would I have done during the American Revolution? What would I have done if I’d lived in Jerusalem 2000 years ago? What would I have done if I had been the one to discover how to make donuts?
I took this photo on Nov. 1st, underground in the New York City subway. It was late Saturday night, I wasn’t in a hurry, and it wasn’t very crowded. Still, I almost walked right on past. I caught myself and thought about the Washington Post experiment. I stopped and listened for a few minutes. She was good—not as good as Joshua Bell, but good. I’m glad I stopped to listen.
I had a lot of opportunities to stop and listen in New York. Sometimes I stopped, sometimes not. When I didn’t I was either in a hurry or the musician wasn’t that great. I wanted to stop whenever the musician was good, and tried to listen as long as possible even if I didn’t feel like I could stop.
While questions like “what would I have done?” are important, they’re much less important than the here and now. I believe that one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves is “what will I do?” I’ll never know how I would have acted had I been in that D.C. Metro station that day, but I can decide what to do in similar situations. The key is remembering what we’ve decided when the moment arrives.
Posted by Ryan
November 10, 2008
Here’s an example of the diversity of life I mentioned yesterday:
And another, though I’m not too sure of the intelligence of this one. Yes, that’s SNOW on the right. The water was very, very cold.
Of course, I did pay him a dollar to do it. It’s all about the dollar challenge. Would he have done it for $10? Probably not. $1? Heck yes.
Posted by Ryan
November 9, 2008
There’s something thrilling about skyscrapers. For some it may be the view from the top. For others, they represent the apex of human civilization—power, money, human ingenuity, thousands upon thousands of tiny cubicles.
For me, it’s the diversity of life. Not only of the sentient occupants, but of the plant life as well. I love the challenge it takes to rise to the top. The weather is all sorts of different as well. A few months ago I hiked one with a friend, Kevin. It was a hot day in the valley, but cold and windy on top. The snow never fully melts up there. We scaled hundreds of feet of hard, slippery snow, in places at least 20 feet deep.
While some like the dazzle of the city variety of skyscrapers, I prefer the natural type. Mountains are my skyscrapers.
Posted by Ryan
November 8, 2008
Flying Home by Lionel Hampton is one of those classic jazz songs that, when played at a dance, you just can’t help yourself—you have to get up and dance. It’s quite fantastic.
As you may have guessed, astute reader, I am back home in Eagle Mountain, Utah. I’m exhausted. The flight itself was about 4.5 hours. It felt like it was a lot longer, though I did talk to the guy next to me quite a bit. He was cool. I mostly listened to an audio book though. The book was called The Opal Deception, which is a part of the Artemis Fowl series. Fun books. I’m far too lazy/tired to make links out of those at the moment so if you’re at all interested you’ll have to actually do the searching yourself. I know that’s asking a lot of you, but really I didn’t ask anything of you so it’s actually not asking anything of you at all. Uh… ok I’m moving on.
I flew Delta, non-stop from JFK to SLC (non-stop is the only way to go!). The airplane was a bigger, newer airplane of some kind. It had a 7 in the number. 700? 770? 777? Something like that. There was a monitor in the back of each seat on which you could watch movies, live TV via satellite, play games against other passengers, and see a live map of where above planet earth the plane was currently along with other information. On the flight to New York I browsed the TV channels and played trivia for a while. This time, I just sat there, listening to my book, intermittently talking to the guy next to me.
It’s good to be back in Utah again. I’m not entirely certain how long I’ll be here before moving to New York for good, but I’m guessing it’ll be at least a few weeks. I’ll figure that out later. Right now, all I can think about is sleeping in my own bed tonight! I’m pretty much super stoked about it.
Edited to add: I think I edited this 6 times after posting it to get the date right. I’m writing this just before midnight on Nov. 8. First the time settings were wrong in wordpress so it was showing up with a Nov. 9th date. So I changed the settings, then then changed the post to the 7th, then edited some other post and changed its date, then tried changing this one again and failed, and then failed again, and now finally have it right. I really need sleep.
Posted by Ryan
November 7, 2008
I started writing the title of this post with a specific thought in mind (apartment hunting), but that changed as soon as I had it typed. The imagery in my mind went from a big city and lots of buildings to an apartment complex being chased down by a hunter with a gun. You know, hunting. Hunting for apartments. Like deer hunting, only different.
I don’t own a gun and I’ve never been hunting. Unless, of course, you count the years of my early adolescence when my days consisted of going down to the local river and trying to trap birds with homemade cages and other contraptions (rocks on tree branches that were supposed to fall on unwitting fowl who stepped on some string). We also made some sweet bows and arrows that didn’t work very well (but they were still sweet). We even tried throwing rocks. I hit my friend in the head once (on accident). Our hunting/trapping attempts always failed, but we did manage to catch a lot of fish. I’m good at catching fish. We even made a fish trap, placed it in a deep fishing hole, and came back the next day to quite the catch of 3 or 4 fish. It was awesome. I think there were a few sucker fishes and a rainbow trout.
So I took the day off today to find a place to live. In the process, I discovered that the nearest Wells Fargo bank is in Illinois. I was told, though, that that will change in January when Wells Fargo’s acquisition of Wachovia is finalized. Or something like that. I fly back to Salt Lake City tomorrow (the 8th) so not being able to deposit checks isn’t a huge deal. By the time I get back to NY direct deposit will be setup and I won’t have to worry about depositing checks. Good timing.
Anyway, apartment hunting. I did a lot of looking on craigslist. While I don’t have time to go look at much, I am going to look at a place tonight. If it’s not trashy then it’ll work out well as it’s a month-to-month lease and quite cheap. That way, I could live there for a few months while I find a better / more convenient place to live.
I could go on, but I must end this here so I can go make a sweet bow and arrow for my apartment hunting expedition this evening. Wish me luck… or happiness. I like happiness.
Posted by Ryan
November 6, 2008
I’m going dancing tonight. I’m actually posting this from my phone while on my way since I won’t be home until 1 or 2 AM. So this will be very short.
Really short.
I could make it shorter by deleting this sentence. But I’m not going to do that.
Posted by Ryan
November 5, 2008
There was a lot on my mind last night as I walked home from work. Or more accurately, there was a lot on my mind as I walked from work to the subway, rode the subway, and then walked from the subway to my friend’s apartment in Queens where I sleep on a couch that folds out into a bed. The point is, there was a lot on my mind last night.
The streets are crowded in the morning, afternoon, and evening. They are at night as well. Especially if you go to Time Square. Especially if you were at Times Square last night with the whole election thing going on. Normally, though, the streets are generally less crowded at night than during the day, just like every other place I’ve been.
I have noticed that whenever I drive on a crowded freeway I tend to drive faster. At night, when the freeways are far less crowded, I slow down. I’ve caught myself driving under the speed limit on more than one occasion at night. I walk slower at night than I do during the day.
It’s not my intention to delve into the fundamental attribution error yet again, but I can’t help realizing that the way I act on the streets and the way I drive is not so much about what kind of person or driver I am as it is my environment that in large part determines what kind of person and driver I am and and what other people think I am. It also effects how I feel about myself and about my driving. Time constraints also play a huge part (eg. during the day you’re more likely to be in a hurry). Something to think about.
My friend’s apartment is located in Queens. It’s not really his apartment as he’s renting from someone else, but I digress. The apartment is on the 3rd floor of a building with more than 3 floors. I do realize how incredibly not useful that is in helping you create an image of the building in your mind. I think it has 4 floors. The apartment is very small and the floor is dirty (at no fault of my friend).
Queens is what’s called a borough of New York City. The other boroughs are Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, and Staten Island. Queens is basically east of Manhattan, and as I understand it, one of the best places to get good, cheap food (cheap for here).
Last night on the way home we stopped at a 24-hour grocery store. 24-hour grocery stores are nothing special or out of the ordinary. In fact, there’s nothing at all special or out of the ordinary about this place at all. It wasn’t even that late when we stopped there. We did stop there, though, and I bought some chips, grape nuts, raspberries, and milk. I know, very exciting.
Upon arriving at the apartment the number of items on my mind decreased, but only because one of the items decided to take up all my thoughts. As it was election day that item was, naturally, chips.
Seriously. It’d been a while since I’d had a good bag of chips to munch on. There are few things I like more than opening a bag of chips and eating it all in one sitting. Especially if cheese is involved. Or salsa. Both is even better. I didn’t eat the whole bag, for the record.
Since I didn’t have cheese or salsa I bought a bag of lime-flavored tortilla chips to compensate for the lack of pizazz that the cheese and salsa usually bring to an otherwise boring bag of chips. Believe me when I say that the pizazz was not missing with the lime chips. If you’re on a small budget and want some pizazz in a bag, go for lime-flavored chips. If you’re in the UK I highly suggest the lime-flavoured variety (chips meaning chips, not chips as in “french fries.” the brits are just confused).
As the events of the evening unfolded before my bag of chips and I (along with my friend and his roommate), it became increasingly clear to me that I should have purchased two bags of chips. And maybe some ice cream.
Posted by Ryan
November 4, 2008
For today’s post I could post about how I’m really sad that I didn’t get an absentee ballot in time to vote. Or I could talk about something completely different, like donuts.
Sunday evening I attended the latest CES Fireside (a LDS church education system meeting primarily for young single adults). It was a spectacular meeting. I attended at an LDS Institute of Religion building somewhere in Manhattan. I think that’s where it was anyway. I’m still learning where everything is. For all I know it was New Jersey (it wasn’t).
The meeting is broadcast to church and institute buildings all over the world via satellite. After the meeting was over, there were refreshments to be had, as dictated by tradition. The refreshments consisted of apple cider and glazed donuts from dunkin’ donuts.
For those who don’t know, I talk about donuts quite a bit. I don’t know if I’ve posted about them on here much, but I talk about them in person a good deal. Actually, that’s not really true. I doubt I talk about donuts more than 10% of the year. I do, however, talk about them enough that there are people who associate me with donuts. And I’m not even shaped like a donut (which would be awkward considering I’d have no legs, head, or arms).
I’m pretty sure the people who associate me with donuts think I eat donuts every single day. But I don’t. In fact, I can’t remember the last time (before yesterday and the day before) that I ate one. Wait, that’s not true. I had one last Saturday. Wow so apparently I eat them more often than I thought.
No really, I don’t eat them that often. Before the last few weeks I probably hadn’t eaten a donut in at least a month or two. Maybe more.
I’m not really sure where this is going. Oh yeah! The institute bought too many donuts so they gave me a box to take home. On Sunday and Monday combined I probably ate a good 12 donuts. I felt gross.
I still feel kinda gross, actually. I need to put something healthy into my body.
Bacon sounds good.
Posted by Ryan
November 3, 2008
I’m currently listening to The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. It’s a fascinating book. I love it.
In the book he mentions some studies that suggest that the more social an animal, the bigger its brains are. I’m sure I’m greatly oversimplifying, but basically the size of our neocortex is directly related to how many people with which we can maintain a stable social relationship. This number is about 148.2. You may have heard of Rule of 150. Many social groups and even colonies have used 150 or numbers close to it for years because they recognize that when a group of people gets bigger than 150 you end up with groups within the group and it gets really difficult to maintain cohesion. If you’d like to verify these facts, read the book as I don’t intend to put references here.
Anyway, as I listened to that portion of the book I couldn’t help but wonder that with all our social networks (facebook, myspace, linkedin, twitter, friendfeed, etc.) if the human race will evolve huge heads a few thousand or million years in the future. Or maybe even next week! I have 380 or so friends on Facebook alone. If I tried to have a stable social relationship with all of them, I would fail, but what if my neocortex grew and I succeeded? I’d have a huge head and look funny. Forget about balance, especially if I had to wear a motorcycle helmet. It’d be hard to even find a motorcycle helmet that big. That would be tragic (about the big head, not about the motorcycle helmet).
I like our heads the size they are. If you do too and want your great great great great great great great great grand children to have good sized heads I suggest you cut back on your facebook friends.
P.S. I’m glad we’re on this end of the evolutionary scale. Nevermind the fact that I don’t believe in that whole evolution thing.
Posted by Ryan
November 2, 2008
In light of my recent discovery of my great counting skills (see last post) I thought it would be a great time to elaborate on my experiences in Manhattan. It hasn’t really been two weeks though, and as I stated 2 posts ago I also haven’t been in New York the whole time, let alone Manhattan. I just thought “2 Weeks in Manhattan” sounded better than “Tomorrow I will have been in or around Manhattan for 2 weeks.”
2 Weeks in Manhattan should be the name of a movie. This movie would be a true story about a car chase around Manhattan. It wouldn’t, of course, be a very exciting movie because I’m pretty sure it takes at least 2 weeks to drive across the city. The traffic here could be likened unto 15 adults trying to slide down a slide on a children’s playground all at the same time: there’s no way it’s going to work, but they’re going to try anyway. Someone is bound to get pushed off and go tell the recess referee (is that what they’re called?).
No really, you could do a car chase. It’d just require doing it at night or perhaps roping off a section of the city and staging the whole thing. Since it’d be a movie, that’s what they’d do anyway.
I’m getting distracted. Traffic in Manhattan is pretty much irrelevant to my experiences here. I’ve driven once and it wasn’t in the city, and it was only for a mile or two.
The subway is nice. It’s funny how many people you can pack into one of those things and not have anyone say a single word to another person. Then, dress people up in halloween costumes* and pack them in even tighter and you get the most friendly people on earth. Dressing up removes people’s inhibitions. Or maybe it’s that no one is thinking about work. Or both. Everyone, myself included, ought to be more friendly and talk more.
* You wouldn’t actually dress them up yourself. Let them do their own dressing.
I’ve spent way too much money on food. It’s been really good food though. There are fast food restaurants, but when you’re hungry and in a hurry you don’t have to go to one of those unless you really want to. There are so many options. And they’re all so much better than fast food. I guess there are always alternatives to fast food, no matter where you are. The difference here is that there’s far more alternatives. I quite like it.
In summary, I’ve given a pretty bad summary of my experiences here so far. I think I’m okay with that. I am, after all, posting every day this month. More experiences are bound to come out.
Posted by Ryan
November 1, 2008
I have 5 things to do today. 11 things, actually, if I count all the things I have to do, but I’m not going to do that. I’m just counting 5 of them. That seems much more reasonable.
Because I know you want to know: today I’m getting a haircut, buying some blue socks, doing laundry, writing this blog post, working on a website, and calling a bunch of people on the phone. That’s 6 things. I’m really good at counting.
If you’ve skipped ahead and read the tags at the bottom of this post you might notice a funny acronym. If you remember, this funny acronym was a part of my posts last November.
It’s true. It’s NaBloPoMo time: National Blog Posting Month. And I’m doing it again. I’m going to post every single day this month.
On my last post a few people suggested that I ought not to wait so long between posts. Perhaps by the end of this month I’ll be getting the opposite requests.
Anyway, I better get going on the 4 things I have to do today. Or however many it is.
Posted by Ryan
October 28, 2008
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
– C. S. Lewis
3 weeks ago I was happy, albeit quite stressed. Over the course of the month prior to that I took my consulting (web dev work) full time. It was quite fun. Life was great.
It’s interesting how things can change in an instant. No, things didn’t get worse. Life is still great. It’s just a bit different than before. One moment I was planning on staying where I was, perhaps buying a house in Salt Lake City early next year. The next moment brought new choices and new opportunities that, if chosen, would take me far from where I was.
Not that any given moment is really that different. We always have new choices to make, new opportunities to take advantage of. It just so happens that that which was presented to me 3 weeks ago was not what I expected that day.
I’ve been in New York for 1 week now. Well, that’s not really true, but I don’t need get all technical and explain that I’ve been in both New York and Connecticut so really I’ve been in this region of the country for a little over a week, and not in New York itself. Anyway, I got a job in New York and moved. Sort of. I am only here until Nov. 8th, at which point I return to Salt Lake to pack up my stuff and come back out here to move into the place I hope I soon find.
The company is located in New York, with a few different offices. The office in Manhattan is where I will be working. Therefore, I will be living in or around Manhattan. Yeah, I know. From Eagle Mountain, Utah to Manhattan. Huge change. But not really. Yes, I need to learn the Subway. Yes, there’s gazillions of people. Yes, it’s more expensive. But, on a very basic level it’s exactly the same: there are people who live and work and travel. While there are drastic differences, that one level is essentially the same everywhere. Because of that, I’ve never been anywhere that really shocked me in the way that people tell me it will.
Yes, there are shocking things. You could easily say that the beauty of the east coast is shocking. In the same way, seeing the mountains in the Salt Lake valley is shocking if you’ve never seen them. But shocking in a way that I have a hard time adjusting? Never.
In the same way, but reversed, while my plans have changed, my actual life goals have not changed. I would have not have taken the job had it required a change in my life long goals. :)
Posted by Ryan
October 1, 2008
I think I might have a new hobby.
Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called “geocaches” or “caches”) anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and “treasure,” usually toys or trinkets of little value. Today, well over 800,000 geocaches are registered on various websites devoted to the pastime. Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.
- Geocaching, Wikipedia
I’d been wanting to go geocaching for quite some time, but didn’t have a GPS device, until now. Well, up until a few months ago when I got an iPhone. This possibility didn’t dawn on me until last week. So I went on Saturday.
It was a bit of a pain with the the phone. I had to go to geocaching.com, put in a zip code, find a cache, write down the latitude and longitude, exit safari, fire up google maps, and type in the latitude/longitude. This page explains the process in more detail. I’m very excited about an official geocaching.com iPhone app to be released soon.
One funny thing with the GPS/Google Maps on the iPhone: the little blue dot.
Yes, the little blue dot. It’s hilarious.
Not inherently so, but somehow it still manages to pull off a striking sense of humor.
The little blue dot marks your location. When the iPhone was new (and if you were really irresponsible and stared at google maps while driving) it was fun to watch the little blue dot move along the streets. “Look! There we are! That dot is us! We’re on the freeway!” As if you didn’t already know your precise location (unless you weren’t watching the road, of course).
Then it got more fun: “Hey! Look! The little blue dot isn’t on the road anymore. It’s driving through those buildings! hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahaha!!!!!1!!11!1!” As if this were the funniest thing ever.
And it totally was the funniest thing, ever.
So, while geocaching I noticed that they fixed this little problem. Now, there’s a new problem. See, we looked up the latitude/longitude for a geocache and drove to the location. The location, however was off. Google Maps placed it on the road when it wasn’t on the road. The reason for this is because Google Maps on the iPhone is made for directions and driving and the like. Not geocaching. So if a location is not on the street, but close to a street, it thinks it should be on the street. So it moves it.
The little blue dot also stays stubbornly on the street, even if you’re not on the street. As we walked along a ditch on a little dirt road behind some houses I watched the little blue dot have a little conversation with itself. It went something like this “I’m on the dirt road! No, I must be on the street! But I’m pretty sure I’m on the dirt road. No, it can’t be. It’s a mistake. I’m on the road. Yes. The road. Whatever.” The little blue dot jumped back and forth from the street to our actual location, repeatedly.
This new feature is especially unhelpful if, for example, you’re driving down the freeway staring at your iPhone and fly off a cliff. While the little blue dot had an argument with itself, you would be flying to your death without even knowing it. What a tragedy.
Posted by Ryan
September 30, 2008
Why? Because then you’d have cheesecake! All the time!
If, that is, you had a beech tree.
Not recommended if you don’t like cheesecake, or beech trees (you tree racist!).
Discworld, “a comedic fantasy book series by the British author Terry Pratchett,” are the weirdest books I’ve ever read (listened to, actually). There’s something like 36 books and I’ve listened to two of them thus far. Beyond random and weird, they’re completely hilarious. Maybe it’s just my wacky sense of humor.
Here’s an example from the second book, The Light Fantastic:
It was a still night, tinted with the promise of dawn. A crescent moon was just setting. Ankh-Morpork, largest city in the lands around the Circle Sea, slept.
That statement is not really true.
On the one hand, those parts of the city which normally concerned themselves with, for example, selling vegetables, shoeing horses, carving exquisite small jade ornaments, changing money and making tables, on the whole, slept. Unless they had insomnia. Or had to get up to go to the lavatory. On the other hand, many of the less law-abiding citizens were wide awake and, for instance, climbing through windows that didn’t belong to them, slitting throats, mugging one another, listening to loud music in smoky cellars and generally having a lot more fun. But most of the animals were asleep, except for the rats. And the bats, too, of course. As far as the insects were concerned . . .
The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh some legislation was passed in attempt to put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty into reporting. Thus, if a legend said of a notable hero that “all men spoke of his prowess” any bard who valued his life would add hastily “except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a liar, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him.” Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like “his mighty steed was fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,” and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.
Quimby was eventually killed by a disgruntled poet during an experiment conducted in the palace grounds to prove the disputed accuracy of the proverb “The pen is mightier than the sword,” and in his memory it was amended to include the phrase “only if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp.”
So. Approximately sixty-seven, maybe sixty-eight percent of the city slept.
This is how I think, people. Not all the time, of course. Perhaps only sixty-seven percent of my life is spent thinking this way. Maybe.
Posted by Ryan
September 23, 2008
Looks like there is hope on the horizon.
[Yesterday], U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) announced his opposition to the $700 billion plan proposed by the Bush Administration to bailout Wall Street.
Posted by Ryan
September 23, 2008
What’s your take on this huge financial bailout?
“It’s more of the same. More debt and more inflation and more pressure on the dollar. Ultimately, although the markets are responding very favorably at the moment, I think it is going to be devastating to the dollar and to our financial situation in this country.”
- Ron Paul: This Bailout Won’t Be the Last
Given that Ron Paul is one of the few living politicians who understand how government should actually function (in my so humble opinion), it’s not surprising that he makes me wish I lived in a time when those in power had no real power. However unlikely that may have ever been, there have, at least, been better times in the history of this country than now (I think everyone would at least agree with that).
So, I don’t really wish I lived in a different time. Not at all, actually. I’m glad to be living here and now. What I do wish is that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. Apparently I’m not the only one, either.
A Rasmussen Poll out today puts the support for the bailout at 7%! For any legislator to vote yes on this plan is to spit in the face of his constituents and reveal his utter contempt for the democratic process and the voice of the people. To do so would require them to utterly disavow the Constitution that they swore by oath to uphold.
- Now is the Time to Unite and Say with ONE Voice… – From the blog on campaignforliberty.com
Another excerpt from the Ron Paul interview:
Before the Depression, [the government] generally allowed these kinds of problems to unwind. They were very severe. They would last six months or a year—a lot of liquidation of debt would be wiped off the books. And then it would go back to work again. What we’ve been doing now—especially since 1971—is preventing the real liquidation of the malinvestment and the excess of debt… If this process continues, we’re going to own General Motors and Ford, then we will have to own the airlines. We are socializing our country without even a vote by the Congress. It’s a horrible situation.”
Posted by Ryan
September 22, 2008
Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory.
- Henry David Thoreau
For quite a long time now I have read and listened to podcasts and articles dedicated to speculation. Speculation about upcoming products, who will win the browser war, the OS war, political races, what will happen in the next episode of a TV series (Doctor Who is the only one I’ve ever speculated about), and on and on. Speculation galore.
The speculation is important, perhaps, at least for people who work in those specific industries. I tend to think, though, that it’s all a waste of time—nothing but a huge distraction. The successful ignore the distractions and work smart.
Yes, this is an oversimplification and perhaps even speculation, but I can’t help thinking that we’d all be a bit better off if we spent less time worrying about that which is transitory. Does it really matter that much? Probably not.
I challenge you to spend a little less time on the transitory and more time on the truly meaningful: on your family, friends, and the world around you. You’ll be happier and less stressed.
Posted by Ryan
September 19, 2008
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “set up a straw man,” one describes a position that superficially resembles an opponent’s actual view, yet is easier to refute, then attributes that position to the opponent.
- Straw man argument, Wikipedia
In case that description didn’t make you think of Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads, read it again. It should now.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, Microsoft has launched a new ad campaign to reclaim Windows’ supposed battered image. The response seems largely in response to Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads.
The first two ads were really weird, but I have a wacky sense of humor so I quite enjoyed them. The New Family is hilarious. As funny as I might think they are, I still don’t know why on earth they made them. They’re very random and weird.
Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld: Shoe Circus
Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld: New Family
The newest ads, released yesterday, are much better. They make owning a PC look cool again. Not that I needed any more reasons. I’ve been happy running Windows for years. Barraged as I may be by Mac lovers, I really don’t see myself switching. I won’t say I won’t switch, because it’s always possible. It’s just that right now I don’t have any compelling reason to switch. They’re both good operating systems.
I’m a PC 1
I’m a PC 2
I’m a PC 3
Anyway, these ads are cool. I hope this will help people see through Apple’s straw man argument. They aren’t educating people about the truths of the PC. They are creating a misrepresentation of their competition, and then tearing it down. I guess it’s pretty common in advertising, but I’ve never liked it. I believe a company should and can tell people why they’re better than the competition without tearing anyone down.
Tearing someone else down to build yourself up is really just another way to express jealousy. I know all those Mac users out there are extremely jealous of my sweet Dell. Yes, it runs Windows. And I like it.
Posted by Ryan
September 17, 2008
Challenges people may face when they consider making choices that matter (which I wrote about yesterday):
Today I’m simply posting a rebuttal to those and similar complaints.
What we see, over and over, is that the brave but cheap leadership that leads to passionate movements always (always!) defeats the top-down, mediocre, slow-moving and very expensive techniques we all grew up with.
- Seth Godin, How to Sell a Book (or Any New Idea), free summary PDF
In other words, we don’t have to choose A or B on the basis that choosing anything else won’t make a difference.
It does matter, it does make a difference, and you can do something about it.
Posted by Ryan
September 16, 2008
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
- Peter Ustinov – English actor & author (1921 – 2004)
With the upcoming election I am pretty sure I am not the only American with feelings similar to those described by Peter Ustinov.
The challenge when faced with an apparent nothing-to-choose-from situation, is to make a choice that matters. How do you make a choice that matters when your choice is “none of the above”? Choosing none of the above feels so hopeless, pathetic, futile. Choosing option A or B, on the other hand, doesn’t make you feel any better.
The answer lies in being true to yourself. Though being overly trite an answer, I actually believe what I just said. If you believe all your options are bad choices, don’t choose A because A is less bad than B, or vice versa. Choosing the least bad option in order to keep the more bad (don’t you love that? more bad? ha!) option from happening is conforming to the conformity that brought about this choice in the first place.
Also, what happened to personal accountability? If you choose a bad option because it’s not as bad as the other option, you’re still choosing badness. I’m going out on a limb here, but I think most people would agree that choosing badness is bad.
So since when is choosing bad a good thing just because the worse bad (I’m pulling out all the stops on good grammar here) didn’t get chosen? Bad is bad. If I choose bad over worse bad and bad is the result, who is responsible? If we’re talking U.S. politics here, then I am responsible because I am a voter. That’s how a democratic republic works. In a monarchy, the monarch is basically responsible for what happens in government. In a democratic republic, the leaders of the nation obviously have a lot of responsibility, but they are only there because we the voters put them there.
Ultimately, we are responsible for everything that happens in our nation.
But what if worse bad is chosen because I didn’t vote for bad? Then you’re not responsible for the worse bad. That’s good. Yay for being responsible.
I do not and cannot feel comfortable supporting “bad” in any form. Where do you stand? It’s your choice and your responsibility. We all have to answer for our responsibilities. Somehow, I don’t think explaining that you supported bad because bad was better than worse bad will go over too well.
P.S. Feel free to write my name in for president when you vote in November. I promise to use good grammar in any speeches I give. Well, maybe.
P.P.S. A choice has to be made, a vote cast. Making no choice at all isn’t any better than choosing a bad option. By not voting at all you’re not opposing badness, which is still bad. To shun badness you have to oppose it.
Posted by Ryan
September 11, 2008
… people have an unjustified tendency to assume that a person’s actions depend on what “kind” of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces influencing the person.
- Wikipedia, Fundamental Attribution Error
I would like to suggest that the fundamental attribution error relates, not only to the actions of individuals or groups (group attribution error), but also to their opinions, and knowledge.
Here’s a very simple example. I was told today that one should not put egg shells down a garbage disposal in the sink. I thought this was a ridiculous thought. I told the person who told me (who heard it from someone else, who heard it from someone else) that it was absolutely crazy.
I decided to do some research on the internet in order to find out who the crazy one really was. I discovered that I’m not crazy, but also that those who hold the egg shell theory as fact may not be so crazy either. And not because it’s true. I still don’t think it is.
Here’s a few things I found in very short research:
Some thoughts from all this:
I do realize I’m making a huge generalization about plumbers. I apologize, I don’t mean to skew anyone’s view of what a plumber does or thinks. I’m merely suggesting that making judgments off of the actions, opinions, and experiences of others, while valuable, should be used with caution. One should always get as much information as possible (from the right sources) before making a judgment call. Who said it? Where did they learn it? If it’s an action, is the person shy? Confident? Stressed? Perhaps their computer blew up yesterday and they lost all their family photos. You never know.
Posted by Ryan
September 10, 2008
Yes, this is an email forward. I don’t even know if the 143 days is correct. I don’t care to find out. I just liked this. That’s all.
You couldn’t get a job at McDonalds and become district manager after 143 days of experience.
You couldn’t become chief of surgery after 143 days of experience of being a surgeon.
You couldn’t get a job as a teacher and be the superintendent after 143 days of experience.
You couldn’t join the military and become a colonel after a 143 days of experience.
You couldn’t get a job as a reporter and become the nightly news anchor after 143 days of experience. BUT….From the time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate. That’s how many days the Senate was actually in session and working. After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World, to fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan. 143 days? We all have to start somewhere. The senate is a good start, but after 143 days, that’s all it is – a start.
AND, strangely, a large sector of the American public seems to feel comfortable with this and campaigning for him.
We wouldn’t accept this in our own line of work, yet some are OK with this for the President of the United States of America?
Come on folks, we are not voting for the next American Idol.
Dear America, please don’t vote for Obama. Please.
Posted by Ryan
August 7, 2008
The problem with an epidemic is that just because it’s gone doesn’t mean it will stay gone forever. Unless you developed an immunity in the first pass, you’ll probably die the second time. When it comes to epidemics, the glass isn’t half empty: it’s broken. Unless, of course, you use a glass that isn’t made of glass. I recommend plastic.
What would be better than a plastic drinking cup, though, is some sort of shield to go on my head that keeps certain things out, and alters my brainwaves, making it impossible to think specific things or sing certain songs.
The first thing I would filter out of my brain is a certain song that has long haunted not only my dreams, but every waking hour as well.
Yes, it’s true. It’s back. With vengeance. My permanent head song.
Posted by Ryan
July 31, 2008
So I’m pretty sure that everyone who knows me well just read the title of this post and had one of the following thoughts: A) What? B) What?! C) I bet the recipe is disgusting.
But this actually isn’t a post with a recipe in it.
Do you know what 1080p (pronounced ten-eighty-p) is? Here’s a brief intro:
1080p is the shorthand name for a category of display resolutions. The number “1080″ represents 1,080 lines of vertical resolution (1080 horizontal scan lines), while the letter p stands for progressive scan (meaning the image is not interlaced). 1080p can be referred to as full HD or full high definition to differentiate it from other HDTV video modes. The term usually assumes a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9, implying a horizontal resolution of 1920 pixels. This creates a frame resolution of 1920×1080, or 2,073,600 pixels in total. The frame rate in Hertz can be either implied by the context or specified after the letter p, such as 1080p30, meaning 30 Hz.
- Wikipedia
For everyone who almost fell asleep reading that, many HD TVs are 1080p. It’s a hi-def thing.
So now that you know what 1080p is, at least on an introductory level, you will understand my reaction upon seeing the following title on a book in a library: “1080 Recipes.”
“Ten-eighty-p Recipes? What?! ……. oh. ha.”
I still can’t read “1080 Recipes” as it should be said: one thousand eighty recipes. I just keep saying ten-eighty.
So I suppose I could post a recipe. Here’s one of my favorites:
1. Buy vanilla ice cream.
2. Buy some really good raspberry jam.
3. Mix.
4. Enjoy.
Raspberry jam is also really good mixed into grapenuts cereal.
Posted by Ryan
July 29, 2008
Take a moment and think about your best friend, or several good friends. Can you remember when you first met? Was that meeting memorable? How was it different than meeting any of the hundreds or thousands of people you’ve met since then?
More likely than not, meeting your best friend, or whoever we’re thinking about here, was just like meeting anyone else: nothing special. Perhaps you were introduced through another friend, bumped into each other at school, or maybe he/she punched you in the face.
The memories I have of my best friends are there, but faded. Best childhood friend: my dad took me over to his house shortly after he moved in to meet him and his family. I think I was 5 years old. There were lots of unpacked boxes in his room and all over their house. We might have played with legos. That’s about all I remember. Two friends I’ve had for 14+ years now were public enemies number 1 and 2. I couldn’t stand them, and I’m pretty sure their feelings towards me were pretty hostile, too. Of course, looking back, I have no idea why we didn’t get along. Maybe we did the first time we met? No idea. That’s not the point though.
The point is, when I look back on those first meetings, I remember very little about what actually happened. What I do remember is the outcome. I think of how it is now. Looking at those first meetings from the perspective of someone living in that same time period, nothing special happened. Looking at it from 2008, it’s quite different.
The poem is a good example. For the most splendid line becomes fully splendid only by means of all the lines after it; if you went back to it you would find it less splendid than you thought.
- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
Perhaps you’re married. Think of the first date with your spouse. Was it that different from any other date you may have been on? Probably not. But you remember it with fondness because of what your relationship has become.
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff.
- The Tenth Doctor, Doctor Who (British sci-fi TV show), in the episode “Blink”
To think of our experiences, all the people we’ve met, everyone we really know, as being part of some time line places a brick wall between us and who we are. We aren’t on some time line. Well, perhaps we are, but I don’t see it that way. I see it like this: today is the only day there is. There is no tomorrow, there is no yesterday. There is only today. All our experiences fill our life, our today. That doesn’t mean we can’t correct mistakes; it makes correcting mistakes possible. You don’t have to change the past. You can’t change it, because it doesn’t exist. The only thing you can change is what is actually real: yourself.
A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, [Human], as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. … What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then–that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it.
- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
When you reflect on what we call the past, when you remember pleasures gone by, do not wish you could go back. Remembering pleasures is what makes the pleasure full. It makes it real.
And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back–if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?
- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis (emphasis added)
Posted by Ryan
July 4, 2008
I love Independence Day. No, not the movie. Today, the 4th of July. I figured today would be a good day to listen to a portion of John Adam’s biography by David McCullough. I didn’t listen to any specific part of it. I listened to the abridged version years ago and for the past few months have been listening to the 30 hour unabridged version, while also trying to listen to podcasts and other audiobooks.
I have no profound thoughts from listening to it today, though I did gain an heightened sense of appreciation for what is enjoyed here in the United States of America. I highly suggest everyone either read or listen* to the John Adam’s biography. I also suggest reading at least the first and last parts of our Declaration of Independence.
* You can get the abridged version for $7.49. And no, I don’t get any affiliate benefits of any kind from anyone buying anything linked in this post.
Posted by Ryan
June 17, 2008
Firefox 3 is out! Go download it today and help set a world record for the most software downloads in a single day.
If the site doesn’t come up for you, try again in a little bit. The site is getting hammered by people trying to download it.
Posted by Ryan
June 14, 2008
Put a dryer in the back of your truck. Seriously.
So a few weeks ago I bought a washer and dryer off of craigslist for $25. I only needed the washer, but the guy I bought them from told me I couldn’t take the washer unless I took the dryer too. I have no idea if the dryer even works.
I haven’t figured out what to do with it yet so I’ve just left it in the back of the truck. The last time I filled up the gas tank I reset the trip odometer or whatever it’s called. The tank is now almost empty and I’ve driven about 75 miles over what I usually do on a tank.
Reason? The dryer.
No really. The dryer. Since it’s been back there I’ve been driving more cautiously, not taking corners as fast as before and not accelerating/decelerating so quickly. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a crazy driver. With the dryer in the back I’m driving like I try to drive all the time. The dryer reminds me to drive slower when I’m in a hurry as I don’t want it sliding around in the back.
Funny.
Or at least slightly amusing anyway.
Or not at all.
Whatever.
Posted by Ryan
May 17, 2008
As my family and close friends will attest, I get bored a lot. It doesn’t, however, take much to remove said boredom. I’m pretty easily entertained. For example, I was bored 3 minutes ago. Now I’m not. I was bored the other day, then I went outside and sat on the porch and was bored no more.
I’m far from an avid moviegoer. The number of times I’ve heard “what? you haven’t seen ___?! how have you lived?” numbers in the hundreds. I can probably name all of the movies that I have not liked… Mission to Mars, The Brothers Grimm, some movie that was so terrible I blocked the name from my memory, High School Musical and… okay no I can’t name them all, but it’s not that many.
Okay I must confess: I’ve never actually seen High School Musical. I know I would detest it though. I heard part of it from another room and that was enough. I am not a fan of musicals. Except Newsies. Newsies is cool.
Other people do like musicals though. And that’s ok, so long as I’m not roped to a chair in front of the screen with my eyelids taped open.
Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create.
- Calvin Coolidge, speech, Jul. 25, 1924
From time to time a movie will come out that I am really excited about. So I go see it. And it’s amazing. And then because I’m all excited about it I read reviews to see what other people thought (if I happen to come across them in my daily browsing). And they didn’t like it. What? And I look at the box office results, and it’s going crazy. Apparently people like it, so why are most of the reviews negative? I don’t get it. Have professional movie critics seen too many movies? Is there something in a movie critics’ job description that states they must be negative? What’s more interesting is that if the movie does get super popular the reviews seem to change from negative to positive (Napoleon Dynamite anyone?). Maybe I’m wrong? I don’t actually have any data to prove this; it’s just my perception. Also, I’m not sure if that’s a correct use of a semi-colon.
Any guesses about where this all came from? If you read my last post you’ll have a pretty good chance of getting it right. Prince Caspian was really good. The 18 people I saw it with liked it too, but the reviews I’ve read have been rather negative. Why? Well obviously they didn’t like it. No big deal. Some people are bound to have differing opinions, and who am I to say they’re not just as valid, or more so, than mine?
I guess my issue here comes from the word critic in “movie critic.” I am often guilty of being critical, skeptical, and doubting. Perhaps I am just being critical here, I won’t argue with you on that one. I don’t expect every movie or book review to be glowing with praise, that’s just silly. We read reviews because we value other’s opinions. I read a few reviews this week about an episode of a TV show I saw (Doctor Who). I didn’t think the episode was super amazing, but I did enjoy it. As I read the reviews (all negative) I found myself liking the episode less and less. I started thinking of more reasons why the episode was rubbish. An enjoyable experience (watching the episode) quickly became a painful experience.
What on earth. Did you catch that? A decently positive experience was turned into a negative one by something that happened after it. History was changed. The present moment changed the past.
More on this in an upcoming post with a few C.S. Lewis quotes from Out of the Silent Planet, which I recently finished.
Edited to add: apparently I read all the wrong reviews. Prince Caspian is getting good reviews. So like I said was possible: I’m wrong. Nothing new there. Still though, it’s not the first time this has seemed to happen. Also, my main point of this post was about cynicism and what it does, but the post got long and I never reached the conclusion. So I split in two.
Posted by Ryan
May 16, 2008
So a few weeks ago I announced to a bunch of my friends that we should all go see Prince Caspian on opening night. So we did. We ended up with a group of about 19 people. We went to a 12:15 AM showing. I chose the 12:15 showing because it was a DLP (digital projection) screen and I like digital better than film projection. Not only was the picture quality better, but the 12:15 showing had another benefit over the other early showings. What was it? The people waiting for the other early showings had to wait in lines. We just went right in and waited in the theater! It was really fun just hanging out, sneaking in food, dancing in the aisles, and the movie was good too.
So go see it! The movie was awesome. Yes, they added a lot to the movie that wasn’t in the book, but I still liked it. Just don’t go see it expecting it to be exactly like the book and you’ll enjoy it.
Posted by Ryan
April 18, 2008
So one of my friends was over here today (yesterday, technically) and we both thought “a shake sounds really good right now. so does food.” So we got in my truck and made the very long drive to the restaurant about half a block down the street. After eating, we drove back. Half a block.
Yes, we should have walked. I do spend most of my time in front of a computer, but I still think I could have managed walking half a block. Granted, we didn’t know where we were going to eat when we got in the car, but still… I would like to think I’m not that lazy.
Posted by Ryan
March 27, 2008
In my constant struggle to have a balance life, I usually don’t have a balanced life. It usually goes something like this: read the books I want to read, read all the blog feeds I want to read, post on my blog a few times, realize that I haven’t worked in a few weeks days. Work. Repeat. After I’ve repeated that a few times I stop reading just about everything (I can never completely stop) and work a lot. After a few weeks I realize that I’m really far behind on everything I want to read so I catch up and it starts all over. And that’s why I haven’t blogged much recently (and you know I usually blog so much).
I do, for the record (whatever that means… who’s record?), believe I have improved in the whole balanced life thing this year. At least it feels that way (so it’s probably true).
A few other things:
My iPod nano locked up (all I did was push the play button on an audiobook). Wouldn’t respond. Reset procedures did nothing. I took it to the Apple store and they gave me a brand new one. No more little dents in the side!
I went to Sacramento a few weeks ago for the Sacramento lindy exchange. For the past 4 years I’ve said “I’m not driving there again!” and every year I do it again. This time I mean it: I’m not driving there again next year! The dancing was fun though. Also, we went to the Sacramento Temple! That was sweet. The weather was beautiful.
I saw Horton Hears a Who! and liked it (overall).
(I used a lot of parentheses in this post.)
Maybe I’ll post again tomorrow (don’t count on it, but you never really know).
I just had a really weird thought that will probably make everyone’s brains explode. You know how in math (and programming) you’re supposed to calculate the innermost parentheses first? Well, if a sentence were structured that way it’d be really hard to read: (I did, however, buy chips and salsa! (I haven’t bought shoes in a really long time. (except I didn’t really because (and bought some shoes (I went to the store (The other day)))))).
Yeah, I’m going to bed now. Sorry about that.
Posted by Ryan
March 18, 2008
My birthday was last week. I’m now just a little bit older, though I don’t feel older. The day was a good day. My sister brought me breakfast and balloons, the guys I work with got me a shiny new black 8GB iPod nano, and I had a splendid dinner with my family.
In my classic new gadget fashion, I managed to have it drop out of my shirt pocket and chip it a bit, but no real harm done. Perhaps it’s because I drop small things a lot, or that I’m just not as picky as others, but a chip or two in it doesn’t bother me at all.
I’m feeling a bit too lazy to link to past posts right now, but if you’ve been reading this blog for a while then you know I really love to read. I especially like audiobooks because I spend a lot of time driving. My new favorite thing is audible. Have I mentioned audible before? I’m on their Gold plan at $14.95 a month, which gives me 1 credit per month. Most books are only 1 credit. Anyway, having all my audiobooks on the iPod nano is absolutely fantastic. I used to listen to them on my ancient iPod shuffle, but it didn’t quite work right. When I would pause the book and played it again later I’d have to rewind for a long time to get back to where I was. That was probably because I’d dropped it in water a few times. It was never the same since the first time it got soaked. heh. My goal is to keep the new nano out of water.
I kind of feel like rambling on and on, but since I have nothing more to say it’d be pretty boring. So instead I’m going to bed.
Oh P.S. My parents got me the collected letters of C.S. Lewis books. I’m in heaven! Books books books. Now if I could only be paid to read.
Posted by Ryan
March 10, 2008
My mother is amazing. I was home last night and I watched her cook eggs, bacon, waffles, oatmeal, toast, and set the table. All in 15 minutes. I did help with the toast and bacon, but still… it might have taken her 18 minutes without my help.
Today, a coworker got up off his computer, proclaiming “I’m going to go make toast.” He returned 30 minutes later, having made toast and eating it. 30 minutes. He was nice enough to make toast for me and another guy, but still… 30 minutes.
If I could somehow package and sell my mother’s super powers (without depriving her of them, of course) I’d become a billionaire in no time at all.
Posted by Ryan
February 22, 2008
Doesn’t the title of this post sound thrilling? Sorry, but the actual post isn’t nearly as thrilling as the title. No matter, the important thing here is that it’s snowing in Eagle Mountain, Utah. The snowflakes are huge.
Yes, of course I know that that snowflake is really hundreds of snowflakes clumped together. That’s not the point. The point is that it’s huge! That’s my camera case, by the way.
I love snow. Driving in it isn’t always fun, but it sure is pretty.
Posted by Ryan
February 21, 2008
This is so cool.
Over 200 New Yorkers recently walked into one of the busiest train stations in the world, New York’s Grand Central Station, and at exactly 2:30 pm, all froze in place. There’s one guy in the video who froze just as he was stooping down to pick up some scattered papers. Talk about commitment.
The Grand Central Station time stopping prank.
A bigger group of people did it in London.
Posted by Ryan
February 21, 2008
Approximately 57 thousand minutes ago (6 years, 6 months) I was laying in a reclining chair, watching blood in a tube. No, I’m not describing a dream. I didn’t get to watch very long. I fell fast into a drug-induced sleep, my eyes closing involuntarily. I remember trying to itch my nose, but for some reason my arm kept getting pushed back down. I was having my wisdom teeth out. Thankfully, I don’t remember much about the surgery.
The next thing I knew I was being led down the hall by a nurse. I could barely walk. I was laid down on a little recovery bed, I have no idea how long I was there. I remember waking up, my hands and arms outstretched in the air, trying to find the mouse and keyboard to my computer.
Even though I was drugged up, I quickly remembered where I was. I sat up. There was a window, and I looked through it. I saw a nurse. I remember feeling stupid, thinking she was probably wondering what in blue blazes my arms were doing flailing in the air. I wonder if I’d been trying to type.
I’ve loved reading for as long as I can remember (I suppose I should ask my parents when I actually started to enjoy reading). When I got into computer programming (circa 1996) I kind of forgot that I liked books about other things. I remember reading a lot of non-computer books from 1996-2001, but the more entrenched I became in programming, the less I read other things.
I like to think that had I been reading some science fiction book at the time of the oral surgery that I might have woken up, sword and shield flying around defeating some horrible enemy instead of looking for the mouse and keyboard. Then again, perhaps I was the geek hero in the dream. Who knows.
In the year 2005 I had a realization: “hey, books are awesome.” Some people can manage 100 books in a year. I’m not there yet, but working on it. I’ve managed to finish 6 books so far this year (I think I read 12-14 books last year, 16 the year before that). At this rate I’ll only have read 36+ books by the end of this year. I really gotta make more time to read! My goal is 80 books this year. We’re in the 8th week of 2008, leaving just over 44 weeks left. That’s almost 2 books a week. Yikes! This is going to be fun!
For the record, I think it’s completely fair to count audio books as “read.” 2 of the books I’ve “read” so far this year were audio books.
Anyway, so about dreaming. Those 2 audio books were book 1 and book 2 of the Artemis Fowl series. Since I started listening to them I’ve noticed that I’ve remembered far more of my dreams. While I haven’t woken up wielding any imaginary weapons, the dreams I’ve remembered have been more interesting (though still weird). I wonder if it’s the specific genre of books (Science Fiction / Fantasy) or the fact that they were audio books? I read a fairly wide variety of books, from religion to history to fiction to self improvement; I don’t remember the science fiction books I actually read, or the history books I listened to as having an impact on my dreams. Perhaps I forgot or it’s the combo of audio book + science fiction/fantasy. Anyone else noticed anything similar?
P.S. A podcast I listen to, Windows Weekly, was offering an Audible promo for a free audio book. Anyone can use it. You just go to http://www.audible.com/windows/ and you get a free audio book. You have to sign up for a monthly subscription, but there’s nothing stopping anyone from getting the free audio book and then canceling before your card is charged the following month. I’m quite excited to have the subscription though, so I’m keeping it.
Posted by Ryan
February 19, 2008
Several years ago (3? 4?) I wrote a tiny little Windows application that plays an MP3 file at a specified time of day. That’s all it does. Nothing fancy. You have to select an MP3 file, type the time of day precisely (eg. “6:00 AM”), and check a little checkbox. I’ve opened up to 50 instances of the little app at a time and set them all manually to play some MP3 file at different times to ensure I’ll wake up. It works.
There are many applications out there that do alarms much better than this little thing, but I recently got an email requesting it so I thought I’d share. Heck, notwithstanding all the fancy alarm apps out there I still use this excruciatingly simple thing. The simplest solution isn’t always the best solution, but is often the most used.
Download the self-extracting exe file – 288 KB
Posted by Ryan
February 18, 2008
I was driving to a dance in Logan, Utah, listening to Artemis Fowl, book 2 in audio book format from audible.com on Friday night. I was in Sardine Canyon, in a section of the canyon containing signs that said “deer migration area next 3 miles.” I didn’t actually see those signs that night though. Speed limit was 60 MPH. Out of the corner of my eye I saw 2 deer. At least I think it was 2 deer. Maybe it was only 1. I slammed on the brakes, but it was too late.
The deer was lying in the middle of the road, not in traffic. It was very dead. I looked at the front of my truck, saw that the radiator was hissing from what looked like a dent. It didn’t seem to be gushing radiator fluid so I took off, hoping I’d get to Logan without the engine overheating. I kept my eye on the temperature indicator and it never moved at all. I got to the dance and got out and looked again in better light. The radiator was still hissing, but nothing was dripping on the ground. I parked and turned off the engine. It was then that all the radiator fluid decided to leak out. I guess something about the circulation in the radiator kept it from leaking while it was running? However it happened, I’m just glad it didn’t leak until I got to where I was going.
I spent all of Saturday morning and most of the afternoon on the phone with State Farm insurance. I have to pay a $100 deductible and get a paid for rental car to boot (time will tell if this will make my rates go up). Logan is a small city and all the auto repair shops were closed. I called the Toyota dealership in Logan and found out what repair shop they use and with the help of a friend’s dad I got it towed there. I just left it in their parking lot and worked everything out over the phone this morning. Finding a rental car was quite difficult. Everywhere was either closed or completely out of cars! I finally found a car at Avis. I drove home in a nice Hyundai Sonata. I took the pictures on Saturday.
Did the dancing make it worth all the trouble? Well, no, but I don’t think any amount of good dancing would make it worth hitting a deer. The dancing was fun.
Posted by Ryan
February 10, 2008
I found my camera (der, it was a few weeks ago, but I’m still excited about it)! I thought I’d lost it several months ago. I’d given it up for gone. I even let a friend borrow the battery charger, telling her that she could just keep it since I would probably never find my camera. I think I found it two days later. I should have let someone take the battery charger sooner! In commemoration of the camera that was once lost, but is now found: a (fairly boring) photo.
This was taken over at a friend’s house, where I spend the majority of my time working.
Posted by Ryan
February 6, 2008
I finished The Time Machine by H.G. Wells the other day. This is the second book I’ve read by him, the first being The War of the Worlds. I quite like his writing style. The Time Machine, as I understood it, is more of a political statement than a science fiction book about time travel. It’s a warning to humanity that this quest for the perfect world, the quest to remove all hardship will backfire if done in the way it’s currently being handled.
H.G. Wells wrote the book in the late 1800s and saw then this trend towards all play and no work. It’s worse now. Think about all our modern inventions: cars, planes, computers, microwave ovens, refrigerators, heating, air conditioning, TV, iPods, bread makers, etc. All these things can make life easier and can even allow us to spend more time on what matters most to us. But where does the luxury stop? If the current course follows it won’t be too long before everything is all taken care of for us. What happens when so much is done for us that we forget to do things any other way? What happens if it all goes away? With all the computerized advances cars are making, they’re getting harder to fix. I don’t even know how to fix a traditional car without any computers in it, let alone these new amazing pieces of machinery.
With all the technological and even biological advances we are making, we would be wise to learn how to live without it all. Life without all our present luxuries (for that is what they are) is not frightening if you’re prepared.
Posted by Ryan
February 2, 2008
In my last post I quoted this…
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
- Sun-Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter II. Waging War
… and endorsed Dr. Ron Paul. This time I’m mentioning Ron Paul again because that is what us Ron Paul supporters do (mention him a lot. have you read what he stands for yet?). I really didn’t quote it again to go on about that. If you spend any significant amount of time on the internet you already know all about him (but if you don’t, then you should probably find out). Okay really, I’m done with that.
So I was thinking about that quote from The Art of War and since I’m not exactly, and am certainly not planning to be, a general in a war it’s kind of useless to read the book only to learn about war. It’s far more useful a book to apply to work, education, dating (kidding! sort of!), and grocery shopping (why not?). Basically, just life in general. So let’s try it shall we?
There is no instance of a person having benefited from…
… prolonged decision making [when the outcome isn't that important anyway].
… prolonged TV watching.
… prolonged shoe shopping.
See how easy that is? Okay, maybe that last one only applies to shopping-haters such as myself, but you get the idea. Also, I’m sure someone could argue the other two, but I’m not here to do that. I’m really only saying that I need to stop prolonging all my decision making. Seriously, most of the things I have to decide aren’t that big of a deal, yet I take forever to make up my mind. I put off the decision until the last possible moment, sometimes even farther, causing much grief.
Okay, a sort of related question for anyone out there reading. What do you to organize your life? I tried a day planner type thing, but I refuse to carry them around so they’re utterly useless to me. I don’t like carrying stuff around with me. If it’s not my phone, wallet, keys, or iPod (an old shuffle! whoo!), then I don’t like carrying it. Currently, I try to remember everything. I put some reminders in my phone, but my phone is kind of crappy. I use Backpack and Remember The Milk (along with twitter) to send me text message reminders, but nothing has really clicked for me to the point where I can’t live without it.
I’m thinking a better phone would really help. Something with really good calendaring. iPhone? Treo? Blackberry? Something else? What do ya’ll think? Sorry for the rambling-ness of this post. Your suggestions/comments/jokes are appreciated.
Posted by Ryan
January 30, 2008
I think I have some sort of disease: I can’t stop starting new books! I’m reading 9 books right now. Yes, reading multiple books at the same time means I finish them all at a slower rate, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s so much fun! Here’s my currently reading list:
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
The Art of War by Tzu Sun
The Alchemist by Ben Jonson
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
Gandhi An Autobiography by Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi
Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Positive Imaging: The Powerful Way to Change Your Life by Norman Vincent Peale
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
I started reading the first 4 on that list just yesterday. I’ve been reading A Tale of Two Cities and Positive Imaging for a very long time now, but I’m still plugging away. I have a feeling Gandhi’s autobiography is going to take me a really long time. It’s a big book.
Anyway, the main reason for this post is because of something I read today in The Art of War:
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
- Sun-Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter II. Waging War
No benefit from prolonged warfare? Sounds like the United States’ current situation in the middle east. Perhaps President Bush could learn a thing or two from this book. Then again, I think trying to win a war that can’t be won isn’t a very bright idea. We should be getting out of there instead. Too bad nobody really wants to do that.
Oh wait, except this one guy, I hear he’s running from President or something?
Both Jefferson and Washington warned us about entangling ourselves in the affairs of other nations. Today, we have troops in 130 countries. We are spread so thin that we have too few troops defending America.
- Ron Paul
Posted by Ryan
January 9, 2008
Posting every day? haha
I forgot yesterday.
Getting back to work now, hopefully this won’t be my post for today.
Posted by Ryan
January 7, 2008
Justin posted his twitter stats last week and I was insanely jealous. Okay, maybe not jealous, but insane? Totally. No really, I thought “hey, that’s cool.” The script he linked to was for OS X, which I don’t use so I waited. Today I found a site that did it online. The stats are far uglier than Justin’s so I’m still jealous (at least still insane), but they work.
Tweets Per Hour:
Tweets Per Day:
Tweets Per Month:
Top @replies:
Oh. What is twitter? It’s a grand time wasting scheme, micro-blogging it is often called. Read about it on wikipedia or go right to my profile and read my tweets. One of these days I’ll add my twitter feed somewhere on this site.
Posted by Ryan
January 6, 2008
In wondering what to write today I came across this quote, by myself:
I’ve mentioned before that I have had, at times (every single time), a hard time waking up in the morning. Actually, that’s a little misleading. It doesn’t matter what time of day I wake up. It’s always hard.
So yesterday I woke up early! It was a holiday, no work! Independence Day! Whoo hoo! My alarm went off at 7:45 AM, I jumped out of bed and got on the computer. Then, I had this overpowering urge to go back to bed. But it wasn’t really overpowering because I overpowered the overpowering feeling, thus causing the overpowering feeling to not be overpowering because I was overpowering it with overpowering thoughts.
I wrote that in July 2007 and saved it in a draft post. For all I know I changed it a bit and actually posted it, but I’m not gonna go look for it.
I’m posting it now because I read it and laughed at myself. I know, so very humble.
No really, I’m posting it because I’m going to bed earlier tonight (I’m actually going to bed when it’s nighttime) than I have for the past two or three weeks. I figure I need some pretty overpowering thoughts to overpower the overpowering feeling with which I’ll feel overpowered (but not really because I’ll overpower it) when my alarm goes off. In other words, this post is a reminder to myself of what I am capable of: waking up without pressing snooze 4 gajillion times.
That’s right.
I rock.
Posted by Ryan
January 5, 2008
This is how I feel today:
This is what I’m trying to do (no, I’m not literally trying to pull that face constantly):
I’m guessing that the top one will win in the end. I just hope it doesn’t win until later tonight when I’m in bed.
Posted by Ryan
January 4, 2008
I stayed up late reading again last night! I did manage to go to bed an hour earlier than the previous night though, and I woke up earlier to boot. Also, I finished The War of the Worlds. I sometimes struggle reading books like that, but not because they’re hard to read: I feel as though I should be reading educational books or something. Am I wasting my time reading books just for fun? As fun as it is to curl up on a couch, fire blazing, and read The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics I just can’t do that all the time. So I have to remind myself that it’s perfectly OK to read books just for fun.
Also, I don’t know a thing about quantum mechanics and I’m sure that book would blow my mind. I used that because it had the most complicated title I could find.
Subject change! So I received a few questions regarding my post a few days ago. The questions are about my beliefs in the Trinity (what I call the Godhead). I said I believe God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost to be 3 distinct individuals, whereas the Trinitarian belief is that they are 1 being. The questions and my answers are as follows.
Question #1: “What are the implications of one vs. three?”
One implication is that the LDS faith is often considered non-Christian because of this unorthodox belief.
The main implication, and the one that in my opinion really envelops all others, lies in one verse of scripture from the Bible.
John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
Just as if you want to spend some real time with someone you have to get to know him or her first, the Christian belief is that to live with God in Heaven you have to get to know Him. Learning God’s nature lies at the core of getting to know Him. Are we literally his children or did he just create us? Is He a spirit, a man-like being, a mysterious presence in the universe? Is he three Gods in one, or just one God?
C.S. Lewis describes “The Three-Personal God” through different dimensions. He states that a creature living in a one-dimensional world could never understand two dimensions, and one living in a two-dimensional world could never understand three-dimensions. He compares the Trinity to a 3D cube and us, being in a two-dimensional state of mind, cannot comprehend this. Or maybe I’ll just let him say it.
“In God’s dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube. Of course we cannot fully conceive a Being like that: just as, if we were so made that we perceived only two dimensions in space we could never properly imagine a cube.”
In my other post I linked to an article that describes my feelings of this better than I can, so I’m including a quote from it:
All three members are separate persons, but they are a single being, the oft-noted “mystery of the trinity.” They are three distinct persons, yet not three Gods but one. All three persons are incomprehensible, yet it is one God who is incomprehensible.
We agree with our critics on at least that point—that such a formulation for divinity is truly incomprehensible. With such a confusing definition of God being imposed upon the church, little wonder that a fourth-century monk cried out, “Woe is me! They have taken my God away from me, … and I know not whom to adore or to address.” How are we to trust, love, worship, to say nothing of strive to be like, One who is incomprehensible and unknowable? What of Jesus’s prayer to His Father in Heaven that “this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”?
In summary, the implications of one vs. three run deep. To gain eternal life one must know God, and at the very root of knowing Him lies his very nature. The LDS doctrine is that they are 3 distinct individuals. I’ll explain a bit more about that in answering the next question.
So I hope that answers the question. I am curious what others out there have to say on this. Have I misrepresented anything? Serious commenters only, I am not interested in arguing.
Question #2: “Also, doesn’t three cause a problem that you would be believing in multiple Gods?”
We believe in, and worship only one God. This worship is done in the name of Jesus Christ, which is often confused for polytheism. A typical prayer will go something like this:
1) Address God by saying something like “Dear Heavenly Father,” or “Our Father who art in Heaven”
2) Express gratitude for blessings
3) Ask for forgiveness, needs, answers to questions, etc.
4) End by saying “in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.”
We worship God the Father, in the name of Christ because Christ is the Savior of all mankind, and therefore our advocate with the Father. Redemption comes only in and through Christ so we recognize him as the link between us and God. The Holy Ghost is God’s messenger. The Holy Ghost guides, comforts, and teaches.
Also, I should probably add that we believe (again from that article I linked to) “They are one in every significant and eternal aspect imaginable except believing Them to be three persons combined in one substance.” For example, they are one in purpose (to bring Salvation to everyone), just as individuals in a country can be united in the purpose of protecting itself, or as a husband and wife can be united in raising their children. One might also consider on Christ’s intercessory prayer in John 17:11,20-23. Are Christians to believe that Christ intended for everyone to become part of some mysterious being? I think he meant that we should be united in purpose, in loving and caring for one another, just as They are.
I hope that explains it. Also, I should say that although I’ve tried my best to accurately explain LDS doctrine, I certainly could be wrong somewhere. If any other Mormons are out there reading, please correct me if I’ve made a mistake. Thanks!
Posted by Ryan
January 3, 2008
I alluded yesterday, in mentioning that I spent the first day of 2008 in airports, that I’d been on vacation. I went to San Diego on December 28th to attend the final Rhythmic Arts Festival (RAF). RAF is basically a big New Year’s lindy hop dance party with competitions and workshops thrown in. I did three things while there (ordered by time spent on each): danced, slept, and ate. The main problem with dancing until 5 or 6 in the morning is that your body kind of tends to not have much time to do other essential things, like fighting off germs. So I have a sore throat with a cough developing and my voice is kind of gone. But, it was totally worth it.
I’d show you a nifty picture or two from the event, but I sorta can’t find my camera. I have no idea what happened to it. I’m guessing it found the unapparent wormhole in my room and is currently engaged, in some other part of the universe, in a wild make out party with all my missing socks.
As awesome as RAF was I don’t have the desire to go on and on about it. For whatever reason, the thought of describing all the details of a dance event makes me tired. Or maybe it’s that it’s past 4 AM and I’m still awake. Not sure which. Basically, I danced a lot with a lot of really awesome dancers. Also, the Loose Marbles were amazing. And, The Cheesecake Factory is awesome too. Finally, I need some new adjectives. I’ve used the words amazing and awesome way too much.
I was planning on going to bed early. Oh wait, that’s not true. I guess I never planned on going to bed early. I kind of sort of wanted to (having a sore throat and needing sleep), but didn’t really plan on it. I guess that’s why I’m still awake. Fail to plan and you plan to fail. I failed at going to bed early. But! I did read over half of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells! Great book so far (‘great’ is my attempt at a different adjective)! I can’t put it down (figuratively, of course, since I’m reading it via DailyLit). I also watched Zoolander, which is an incredibly stupid movie that I never should have watched. Yes, it has some funny moments, but in retrospect it wasn’t worth the $2.99 I paid Amazon (Amazon Unbox rentals).
I’m sorely tempted to finish reading the book, but the other voice in my head, the one that says “going to bed makes breakfast more enjoyable,” is winning.
Posted by Ryan
January 2, 2008
So I really am going to attempt this 365 day blogging thing. You might have noticed though that this, my first post for 2008, is happening on the 2nd. You’d think if I were to take this thing seriously I’d have posted yesterday. Allow me to explain.
1. 365 days is a lot. By missing the first day I am sending a message to myself that says “dear self, don’t stress about this. in fact, don’t even do it.”
2. I was basically in airports all day yesterday. There was wifi, but since I don’t have a VPN to go through I wasn’t about to login to my blog on an insecure network.
3. I could have blogged when I got home, but I was too tired to think.
4. I finally finished Mere Christianity. Oh wait, this isn’t a reason.
I really did finish the book though. It took me forever. I blow through most novels pretty quickly, but books like Mere Christianity are slower reading.
So the book is amazing. I had plenty disagreements throughout the book, but overall it was awesome. Most of my disagreements came from differences in beliefs surrounding the nature of God. I believe God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost to be 3 distinct individuals (though one in purpose and everything else), while most of Christianity believes them to be one being with three personalities (C.S. Lewis calls it the “Three-Personal God”). If you’re curious about my belief in the Godhead click here to read about it. If you want to learn more about Christianity I heartily recommend you get Mere Christianity.
Oh, and Happy New Year!
Posted by Ryan
December 27, 2007
I managed to do NaBloPoMo, I completely forgot about NaBoMoReMo until it was impossible to catch up, and now I’m going to attempt Blog 365.
Yes, 365 as in “365 days” of the 366 day leap year.
Yes, I am insane.
Yes, I will fail.
But! It’ll provide SOME motivation to post.
Or, you know, I’ll get so depressed at missing a week or three that I’ll end up deleting this entire blog.
Okay, that won’t happen. I don’t get depressed.
So maybe just really discouraged.
Or maybe I’ll just post this in July: “Oh! Blog Three-Sixty-What? Oops.”
Posted by Ryan
December 20, 2007
This is for the people who haven’t read this post about my favorite jazz band (currently anyway) and have thought to themselves, “selves, what is New Orleans Dixieland Jazz?”
Actually, I really just wanted to post this video, because it’s crazy awesome.
Cakewalkin Babies from Home m/ Eva Taylor:
Posted by Ryan
December 18, 2007
A month ago I posted a super confusing quote from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I’m now reading Through the Looking-Glass and came across this funny gem yesterday:
‘I’m sure I’ll take you with pleasure!’ the Queen said. ‘Twopence a week, and jam every other day.’
Alice couldn’t help laughing, as she said, ‘I don’t want you to hire ME–and I don’t care for jam.’
‘It’s very good jam,’ said the Queen.
‘Well, I don’t want any TO-DAY, at any rate.’
‘You couldn’t have it if you DID want it,’ the Queen said. ‘The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday–but never jam to-day.’
‘It MUST come sometimes to “jam to-day,”‘ Alice objected.
‘No, it can’t,’ said the Queen. ‘It’s jam every OTHER day: to-day isn’t any OTHER day, you know.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Alice. ‘It’s dreadfully confusing!’
‘That’s the effect of living backwards,’ the Queen said kindly: ‘it always makes one a little giddy at first–’
- Through the Looking Glass, Chapter V, Wool and Water
I really have nothing to say about this, other than it made me laugh… like this: hahaha!
Posted by Ryan
December 13, 2007
I woke up at 7:00 this morning. I read a little bit and then slept for 30 or more minutes with my head on the desk. I think “wow, I’m so tired. I should take a short nap. If i lay on back down on the bed* I’ll sleep for hours and hours. I know! I’ll sleep on the floor with a tiny blanket.”
Yeah.
So 4 hours later I wake up, in pain. Still on the floor.
Stupid idea. Next time I’m going back to the bed.
* I bet I even thought it just like that, messed up wording and everything.
Posted by Ryan
December 12, 2007
jQuery. I am in love.
Well, as much in love as you can get with a JavaScript library anyway.
Posted by Ryan
December 4, 2007
I’m so excited! I completely forgot about Christmas themes for Firefox! Last year I used Tinseltown. I tried X-Mas today, but the animated snow flakes were a bit too much so I’m now testing X-Mas Light. So far so good!
Mozilla Links is what reminded me about all of this. They’ve also linked to some Firefox Christmas desktop backgrounds, though that’s a bit too much for me. Firefox is a browser, not my life! Right now my desktop background image is reserved for the Amazon Kindle. Some people movie stars or cars as their background images. I put up nerdy gadgets I want.
Actually, I usually have some spiffy scenic photo as my desktop background. Like this.
I took this on Saturday while it was snowing. It was awesome.
And this post is going no where. The end.
Posted by Ryan
November 30, 2007
As if NaBloPoMo wasn’t enough, now there’s NaBoMoReMo.
At least it doesn’t involve posting every day. heh
NaBloPoMo was fun, but I’m glad it’s over.
Posted by Ryan
November 29, 2007
1. Go to bed
2. Read a book
3. Ask a girl on a date (it’s way too late at night, so it’s not a good idea, but technically it’s something I could do)
4. Drink some water
5. Go running around outside (too cold)
6. Eat ice cream
7. Work
8. Chips with cheese melted on top is good anytime, anywhere.
9. Write a list of things I could do and listen to Christmas music*. Oh wait, that’s what I’m doing.
10. Practice interpretive dance moves in my room to Enya’s Wild Child song.
Confession time! I’ve spent a lot of time on #10. I kid you not. One of these days I’ll get the VHS video I made and put it up for all to see.
* I’m listening to Swingin’ the Season by the Boilermaker Jazz Band. It’s the first real lindy hop-able Christmas album I’ve heard. The Boilermakers are awesome.
Posted by Ryan
November 27, 2007
You’ll have to go read what I wrote two days ago to know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not going to bother catching you up. Anyway, I stated two days ago that this idea of directing benevolence far away and malice close by extends beyond benevolence and malice. And then the examples I gave were basically about benevolence and malice. So I figured I’d provide an example that isn’t.
I recently heard a story about a guy visiting the Grand Canyon. This guy was talking to an Arizona resident about the canyon and the resident stated she’d never been to the Grand Canyon. The guy was shocked that, living so close, she’d never seen the Grand Canyon. It is, after all, one of the wonders of the world. The guy then admitted that he could understand it because he’d never been to the Statue of Liberty, and he’s from New York. The girl, as it turned out, had been to the Statue of Liberty.
The moral of the story is, of course, to go see the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty.
No really, the moral is to look closer. Go see cool things in your own state as well as going to see other cool wonders.
Posted by Ryan
November 26, 2007
There’s some hilarious commentary going on over on my post about ad blocking.
It’s sad how many people really don’t understand the difference between a right and a privilege. And how much they contradict themselves.
So they complain that their bandwidth is wasted. Really? Do these people go around thinking “okay this site right here is going to take approximately 10 KB of my monthly bandwidth. *click* 20KB!? What?!” Yeah right. If that were the case they’d be complaining about a lot more than advertisements. They would disable all images, css, and javascript, or just browse the internet with lynx.
The claim that advertisements waste their hard drive space is even more ridiculous. Hard drive space is super cheap and they control how much cache their browser uses.
I don’t know how these people expect to be taken seriously.
Posted by Ryan
November 26, 2007
Some time ago I read about the mechanics of sleep and ever since I’ve still slept in a lot.
Apparently you have to do something with knowledge or it’s of no use. Crazy.
No really, it has helped. I don’t remember the article I read, but it was back in July I think. I’ve slept in plenty of mornings since then, but I have noticed that waking up is significantly easier when I set my alarm to go off after 6 hours of sleep instead of 7, 7 1/2 instead of 8, etc.
So today I called a friend at 9:30 AM. He answered almost right away. He said he went to bed at 3:30 AM.
So, a sleep cycle is 90 minutes. 3:30 AM to 9:30 AM was only 6 hours of sleep, but it was right on the 90 minute cycle. He told me he was going to wake up at 10:30, and that I should call him then. Problem is, 10:30 AM was 30 minutes before the next cycle ended, so naturally he’d sleep right through his alarm.
I didn’t actually call at 10:30, but I figure he probably turned off his alarm when it went off and so by 11 when the sleep cycle ended he kept on sleeping. I tried calling several times around 12 PM with no answer. The next cycle should be ending right about now.
…
Dang it. No answer after 5 attempts. The sleep cycle can be 90-110 minutes. I’ll try again in a few minutes. This is fun!
Posted by Ryan
November 25, 2007
Today in church we were reading out of a talk from General Conference called Out of Small Things. In the talk, Michael J. Teh quotes from one of my favorite books by one of favorite authors.
The following advice, given by the deceitful Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood in C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, describes a common malady afflicting many of us today: “Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.”
This idea of benevolence being directed far away and malice being directed close by extends beyond benevolence and malice. When I think of being charitable I often think of donating to some large charity that feeds hungry people in other countries. While that’s incredibly important, I sometimes forget that there are people in my own neighborhood, perhaps even in my own family, who may be starving physically or emotionally. Likewise, I have often thought that to become a great business person or a great friend I need to do something really amazing. When people ask me what I do I want to say I build schools in some third world country or something, as if that’s what it means to be amazing.
Doing good things means you do good things, no matter where it is that you do them. Doing something good starts with your innermost circle of influence. It starts with your family and friends, and then on outward. If you never get to feed thousands and thousands of people? It doesn’t mean you didn’t save the world for someone.
Posted by Ryan
November 24, 2007
Waking up after 2 PM today caused the day to go by very quickly. Therefore, I justify posting this at 3 AM on 11/25/2007 and back dating it to the 24th.
An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
- C.S. Lewis
Oh well.
Posted by Ryan
November 22, 2007
Happy Thanksgiving to all you U.S. residents out there! To everyone else, I hope your hearts are filled with gratitude for what you have as well.
Gratitude is a mark of a noble soul and a refined character.
- Joseph B. Wirthlin, Sept. 2001
Posted by Ryan
November 21, 2007
I discovered something interesting today while looking for a quote from C.S. Lewis’ book The Screwtape Letters. The quote is about “Nothing.” What I discovered is that it’s really hard to find a quote when all you can remember is the name of the book and the word “nothing.” Or perhaps nothing has been put up on all these intertubes about that quote. Perhaps I’ll type it out myself when I have the book with me.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates
Posted by Ryan
November 18, 2007
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.
- John Quincy Adams
Posted by Ryan
November 16, 2007
I just saw these two quotes on a Facebook group and I can’t help but share.
The real reason I dance is because I want to explode.
- Bill Evans
I’m surprised I didn’t catch this one while reading the book:
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
Pride and Prejudice, chapter 3
Posted by Ryan
November 15, 2007
Believe in the victory before you even begin fighting. The opposite of this is called “WHY TRY Fatalism,” meaning why on earth would you try if you’re just going to fail? The problem with believing you’ll fail is that you’ll probably fail. Sneaky little bugger that whole brain power thing is.
I observe that there are far too many times, where far too many people who, knowing that they alone cannot do all that needs to be done, accept defeat before they even begin to fight, and instead of doing what they can…do nothing. The cumulative effective of these people with their premature sense of fatalism is a society in an unnecessary and accelerated state of decline and disrepair.
- Kirk Weisler
Reading that reminded me of this:
Victories attained by right thought can only be maintained by watchfulness. Many give way when success is assured, and rapidly fall back into failure.
- James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
Believe before you act and continue believing while you act. The result will be unbelievable. ha!
Posted by Ryan
November 14, 2007
Kirk: “Mr. Scott, do you always multiply your repair estimates by a factor of four?”
Scott: “Of course sir. How else to maintain my reputation as a miracle worker?”
I realized today that saving the world doesn’t mean doing some hugely important act worthy of fame or some huge prize. It’s doing some little thing for somebody that saves their world, even if it’s just for a moment or two.
Posted by Ryan
November 12, 2007
In my last post I stated that I hate my computer, and that it was due to crappy programmers.
I’ve changed my mind. It was a lack of food. I hadn’t really eaten anything today, so I ate.
And now I don’t hate my computer anymore.
The end.
Posted by Ryan
November 12, 2007
I hate my computer… and it has everything to do with this.
Posted by Ryan
November 11, 2007
The great thing about this whole NaBloPoMo thing (posting every day in November) is that there is no requirement stating your posts have to be a certain length.
So today I am posting a quote from C.S. Lewis. This quote, though I don’t have the source, is very similar to things he says in Mere Christianity so I don’t doubt he really said it.
“If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents – the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts – i.e. of materialism and astronomy – are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.”
- C.S. Lewis
And just because I like quotes:
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
- John Quincy Adams
Posted by Ryan
November 8, 2007
Not long ago, in a classroom not far from where I live, I was sitting in a class (how ironic, being in a classroom). In this class the teacher was teaching stuff I’ve heard before. I wasn’t ornery or upset or anything, but I was tired. Wishing I was still in bed, I didn’t think it was worth my time to review the material again. Then, I realized I had an awesome opportunity. I got to review the material again! I recognized that I didn’t know even a small percentage of what was to be learned from the subject. This change in attitude came quickly and when it did I immediately started learning. I walked away from the class happy that I’d woken up to go. It put me in a great mood for the rest of the day.
Don’t discount re-experiencing something you already know. There are people out there who are providing a point of view that you may never have heard before. That unique viewpoint may be just what you need at this particular point in time.
- Tony D. Clark, The Point Of View May Be New To You
In my example I was learning from the same person both times the material was taught. This doesn’t, however, mean that the experience could be discounted. I dare say that even if you listen to someone teach the same thing several times word-for-word, if you open your mind to learning, you will learn.
People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.
- C.S. Lewis quoting a “Dr. Johnson” in Mere Christianity, Social Morality
All of this does not mean, of course, that if you are the one teaching that you can be lazy and recite the same exact thing every day for the rest of your life and expect people to listen to you. heh.
Posted by Ryan
November 5, 2007
Two posts ago, while talking about DailyLit, I mentioned the following:
As soon as it gets closer to Christmas I’m going to read A Christmas Carol.
Well, it turns out that Saturday I was feeling sick and so didn’t go anywhere all day. I got pretty bored in the evening while reading A Tale of Two Cities. I wanted to read something a bit more exciting. So I started reading A Christmas Carol. I read 9 “parts” (DailyLit doesn’t email you a full chapter at a time, only parts of chapters) and went to bed. I had no plans to finish it quickly.
And then today I got on my computer and read the daily email… and then clicked the “send me the next part immediately” link 27 times to finish the book! ha ha!
I don’t like listening to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving, but I didn’t at all mind reading such an excellent a Christmas book.
I will, however, wait in wishing you all happiness in the aforementioned holiday.
Posted by Ryan
November 4, 2007
I’m not going to expound much on my thoughts in this post, only provide a few things to think about.
First, a quote about Mr. Charles Darnay from the book A Tale of Two Cities.
In London, he had expected neither to walk on pavements of gold, nor to lie on beds of roses; if he had had any such exalted expectation, he would not have prospered. He had expected labour, and he found it, and did it and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity consisted.
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Two Promises
This got me thinking about prosperity and about my own expectations. In discussing this with a friend this scripture came up.
Matthew 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
And finally, I thought about this talk by Joseph B. Wirthlin, Apostle in the LDS Church: The Abundant Life. Here’s a quote from the talk.
Those who devote their lives in pursuit of their own selfish desires at the exclusion of others will discover that, in the end, their joy is shallow and their lives have little meaning.
On a tombstone of one such person was carved the following epitaph:
Here lies a miser who lived for himself,
And cared for nothing but gathering pelf,
Now, where he is, or how he fares,
Nobody knows and nobody cares. 9We are happiest when our lives are connected to others through unselfish love and service.
Let us all reflect upon our own expectations and priorities and make changes where necessary.
Posted by Ryan
November 2, 2007
I have often felt as though I were on a teeter totter of which I had no control. A drawn representation of such a feeling might look like something like this:
Posted by Ryan
November 1, 2007
Don’t believe in miracles? I do, and I’m going to attempt to show you that they really happen.
How?
I’m going to try this NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) thing and post every single day this month.
This will be a miracle because the last time I got close to posting every single day for a month was back in January of 2005, as you can see from my archives page.
Prepare ye to be amazed.
Posted by Ryan
October 17, 2007
Lest the visitors from my sister’s site really believe I’m in love with Microsoft…
It’s really more of a dislike for Mac OS than a liking of Windows. I think Mac OS is ugly. I don’t find Windows particularly fun to look at either, but it does have the benefit of not making me want to puke.
I know it’s all just a matter of personal taste, so all of you Apple fanboys and fangirls can just let me have my personal taste, ok? Thank you. You’re so nice.
So why not Linux? Linux is cool. I’ve used Ubuntu, but as you can see in the right column of this page, I write software for Windows. Well, I should say I used to write software for Windows. I haven’t updated any of that software in a long time. I can’t bring myself to completely abandon the idea of writing more software for Windows though.
The main reason I stick with Windows is because I’m so used to it. I’m not a big fan of getting a system up and running the way I like it, especially when it’s a system I’m not already familiar with such as Linux or Mac OS. As proof, I probably need to reinstall Windows to get rid of junk*, but I don’t because it means I’d have to re-do everything. Yes, I have backups and all that, but if I were to re-do everything I’d want to do some things differently and I just don’t have the time for that.
* The speed of the machine is fine. Really. I don’t know what people do to their Windows machines that makes them run slower over time. People have to re-install Windows every 6 months?! I find that extremely hard to believe and I work my computer as hard as anyone I know. I’ve been running this installation of Windows for over 2 years now and the only time it slows down is when I’ve got gazillions of things open at once. Oh, and as new software comes out that’s been written for newer systems my computer will obviously be slower, but that’s not Windows related.
Posted by Ryan
October 17, 2007
Not enough time to fix IE 6 rendering at the moment…
Posted by Ryan
July 5, 2007
So-called philosophers, “men of the mind,” and many well intentioned people will tell you that if you “sacrifice” something, you aren’t really sacrificing at all because the outcome outweighs the sacrifice, making it not a sacrifice in retrospect. The idea is that once you’ve sacrificed something, you look back on what you’ve done, and plainly see how easy it was and that it was worth it. You chuckle at yourself for ever thinking it was a sacrifice. Some will lead you to believe this lie in order to get you to reject sacrifice.
You cannot rewrite history. If it’s hard to give up something, if it’s hard to do something, years from now it will still have been hard, but looking back you will be grateful that you did it, perhaps even amazed that it was so hard. You must not deceive yourself thinking that you didn’t really make a sacrifice. You did. It looks like it wasn’t a sacrifice in retrospect because you overcame it. If you had not overcome it, it would still look hard to you. It now looks easy because of your increased ability to do hard things. If you were faced with the same decision again, it would probably not be a sacrifice. I believe that’s why people think sacrifice isn’t really sacrifice, because if they were faced with it again, it wouldn’t be. But that doesn’t change what it was in the past.
So yes, sacrifice is really sacrifice. It is hard to give up something. It’s especially hard to give up something you love, which is good, for something better.
Sacrifice is absolutely essential to happiness. You have dreams and ambitions, perhaps dreams you’ve had since your childhood. In order to make those dreams a reality, you must sacrifice something. You must sacrifice your time and your energy to make it happen. Maybe it means you shouldn’t go golfing 3 times a week, or watch so much TV, or eat ice cream, or go to the gym as often as you do. Are those things bad? I do not think that those things are inherently bad, but if golf, basketball, dancing, reading science fiction novels, or other good things are keeping you from realizing your dreams, are those things bad to you? Are they things you must give up? Is that hard? Yes.
I do not mean to suggest that everyone has some hobby that they must give up in order to be successful and happy. Perhaps the sacrifice you must make is more simple, such as going to bed early and waking up early (though that’s not so simple and easy for me). Perhaps your sacrifice will be to live in a small one bedroom apartment in a city you don’t particularly like while you start a new internet company. My point is that there are things we all must do in order to be happy, and that those things are often really hard, but they must be done.
For a bit of a religious perspective (if you’re not religious, read and interpret as you wish), here’s a quote from Susanna Wesley, mother of John Wesley:
“Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself.”
— Susanna Wesley (Letter, June 8, 1725) (Mother of John Wesley)
The notion that sacrifice doesn’t exist, or that one doesn’t have to sacrifice something in order to gain something beyond what they currently have, is wrong. All it does is cause problems. Since I’m posting this on July 5th, the day after the United State’s Independence Day, I’ll add that if Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and the other Founders of this country had not sacrificed their lives (time, money, effort), the world would not be what it is today. It would be far less.
Sacrifice is essential to happiness in this life, and if you believe in an after life, in the world to come. Go and say thanks to someone who has done something for you, someone who sacrificed their time and energy that your life might be what it is today.
Posted by Ryan
July 3, 2007
My two favorite times of day are early morning and late at night, when the world seems the most at peace. I especially like it when the air is cool with a light breeze.
Posted by Ryan
June 22, 2007
You’ve probably noticed that sometimes, it’s really hard to want to work. You may really struggle with wanting to work on Fridays and Mondays. But then once you start to work you find that work really is, in fact, as painful as you thought it was going to be so you go to the water cooler to drink more water (or just to stand around). Because, if you drink lots of water you’ll eventually have another excuse to postpone working! Whoo hoo!
Why is it hard to start working? Actually, it’s hard to start just about anything.
For example, it’s really hard to start an automobile these days with a hand crank.
Stopping things, on the other hand, is often easier. But it depends on what you’re stopping. I’m told that it’s really easy to stop mowing the lawn to go watch some sports game. Stopping a bad habit though, is hard.
So why are some things hard, and others really easy?
Because continuing what we start is what makes it easy or hard. It’s really easy to stop mowing the lawn to go watch a game because watching the game is easy. If watching the game was hard, we’d keep mowing the lawn.
I wasn’t kidding at all when I said “once you start to work you find that work really is, in fact, as painful as you thought it was going to be.” It’s funny, yes, but it’s funny because it’s true.
It’s easier to change when you have a realistic view of what it actually means to do it; which is to understand that it’s going to be hard and that you’re in it for the long run.
The tasks themselves never become easier, it’s only our ability to perform the tasks that gets better. That sounds like a quote I’ve heard.
So let’s say, for fun, that you’re the Colorado River (see? you can tell this is going to be fun already!). The above picture isn’t of the Colorado River, but it is a river! Anyway, let’s pretend you’re the Colorado River before the Grand Canyon existed. You are looking ahead at your life, not wanting to try to carve out the Grand Canyon because, really, that would be really hard. But, you eventually start and your suspicions are confirmed. It is really hard, but you keep at it. You keep at it for about 6 million years. Is it still hard to carve out the Grand Canyon? Yes. Has your ability to complete the task improved? Yep, you really have no other choice at this point.
So understand that, no matter who you are or where you live, life is going to be hard. Don’t let that hold you back. Who knows, maybe 6 million years from now you’ll be famous too!
Oh one other thing, rivers tend to take the path of least resistance, which means they go off cliffs. And for some reason they are okay with that. But cliffs are not okay for people. Unless of, course, you’re attached to something like this.
Posted by Ryan
June 13, 2007
So if you didn’t know, I’m on a swing team. Currently we are called the Salt Lake Jitterbugs, thought that’s likely to change, or not. Website coming soon. Anyway, on Monday of this week we performed at Capitol Theater in Salt Lake City. The occasion was for “From Past to Future: The Israeli Experience.” An Israeli folk dance troupe, Havazalot Netanya Dance Troupe, came to Salt Lake City and performed. And we were the opening act.
Yeah, I know. A swing dance performance was the opening act for an Israeli folk dance concert? I don’t think anyone would match the two up normally, but one of our team members happened to be involved with the people putting this thing on. I thought it was pretty cool: two cultures, two types of dancing. We only danced once, as the opening dance to start it off. It was really fun.
My favorite part! So this routine we performed starts out with the girls on stage with us guys off stage waiting. The girls do a short routine and then we come on and the girls go off, and then the girls come back for the last part of it. While the girls were doing their part I was on the opposite side of the stage, across from the Israeli dancers. It was really fun to see them all start groovin and bustin moves back stage to the music our girls were dancing to. I’m not sure why it was my favorite part, other than perhaps that I just enjoy watching people enjoy music, and I could tell that they were enjoying it. It’s even more exciting for me to see a bunch of dancers enjoy music, especially when they’re as good as they are.
During intermission I overheard someone telling someone else that while they were good dancers, the BYU folk dancers or something like that were a lot better at the Israeli folk dances. He did say that this troupe had more real soul and energy, but the BYU dancers have better technique, are more together, etc. etc.
Whatever. My opinion is that the dancer with the most soul, energy, and true love for the dance is the better dancer. I don’t have anything against any of the BYU dancers and I’m not saying that they don’t love the dances they do and have a ton of energy, but it’s different. The BYU dancers are good, but I have a hard time believing that they’re better than this particular group of dancers just because they’re more together. I’d probably think they were too stiff, too together, overly choreographed, overly trained, and lacking what makes a dance real… at least in comparison. As an example, there are people who would say that they’re really good at swing dancing, but ask anyone who’s any good at lindy hop and they’ll tell you that they’re not.
Only the skilled can judge the skillfulness, but that is not the same as judging the value of the result.
- C.S. Lewis Preface to Paradise Lost
So I’m not skilled in Israeli folk dances. I’m not sure the person who was saying that stuff is either, but he certainly knows more about it than I do. I do though like to think that I am skilled at lindy hop, so I think I can judge the skillfulness, at least on the surface.
What I do know for sure is that I thought they were great. Full of energy, passion, excitement, skill, and endurance. They must have been exhausted by the time it was over.
So what is perfection? To me, when it comes to dancing, perfection is skill combined with visible passion and the Havazalot Netanya dancers had both. Are there dancers “better” than them? Probably, but who cares? That’s not what matters. Too many people get so caught up in “perfection” that they forget to enjoy what they’re experiencing. I participate in a weekly public speaking club, Toastmasters, and I see the same thing there. People who are so concerned with “what a public speaker is” that they miss a lot of really good speeches.
Always strive for perfection, but don’t let it keep you from enjoying life’s simple pleasures.
Posted by Ryan
June 7, 2007
In my last post I said I’d be especially tired if I didn’t go to sleep. Well, turns out I was wrong. I’m not very tired.
Posted by Ryan
June 7, 2007
So I’ve been all sorts of productive today. Sort of. When I say that I really mean that I’ve put off a lot of important things in order to do other, perhaps less important things. Are they really less important though? I’m not sure they are.
Have you heard of DailyLit? It’s so incredibly awesome. I discovered it a week ago? Two weeks ago? I don’t remember, but I am loving it. Basically, you can read a book in your email or in an RSS feed. The idea is that people don’t want to take the time, or don’t have the time to sit down and read a book so you can have them send you pieces of the book everyday, or weekdays, or whatever! I signed up to get emails every weekday of the books A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. It’s got to be one of the coolest ways to read a book. I often don’t feel like I can justify picking up a book and reading it, but reading a short email is easily justifiable. Each e-mail contains a link to have the next part of the book sent to you immediately, which I took advantage of a great deal tonight while reading both books. Anyway…
Yesterday and today I’ve been occupied with updating this website, along with Learn4Liberty. I haven’t done much aesthetically; I’ve mostly been cleaning up crap, finding and installing wordpress plugins, getting distracted with reading a bunch of stuff I found off of reddit, coming up with ideas for websites, etc.
In the process of doing all this updating I realized that I didn’t have an about page for this site. I was linking to the about page on ryanware.com, but that’s not all that helpful if you, say, actually wanted to learn something about me as an individual. So I started writing about myself, which I’ve never really enjoyed.
From my About Me page:
I’m really good at sleeping in. I have been known, at least twice a week, to push snooze on my alarm clock for anywhere from 1-5 hours. If sleeping in was a lucrative profession, I would be the Bill Gates of it. I wrote a little alarm program for my computer, which I use to blast music from my speakers at the time I desire to wake up. My sister, who also loves to sleep in, told me “that’s the loudest alarm I have ever heard.” The alarm does remarkably well at getting me out of bed. In fact, the speed with which I usually jump out of bed is akin to that of a butterfly attached to a bowling ball dropped from an airplane. What’s even more remarkable is that I turn the alarms off (after typing in 1-2 passwords) only to get back in bed. I am improving though! Really! It goes in cycles, but I am improving.
So a few weeks ago I was doing really good at waking up. I was a waking up early machine. I set my alarm and BAM I was out of bed and I stayed out of bed! It was great. And then I started staying up really late working on a deadline. Then I went on a dancing adventure to Denver. And then to Seattle. And now I’m back to sleeping in really late and staying up really late. Case in point: it’s now 3 AM as I write this.
So where does the “oh crap!” moment come in? So while I was writing that section about sleeping in I realized that tomorrow (err… today) is Thursday. And on Thursdays I wake up at 5:30 AM to attend a weekly Toastmasters club meeting. I’m not even tired yet! Okay, maybe I’m a little tired, but I certainly will be very tired by the time 5:30 rolls around. Especially if I don’t sleep, and even more especially if I do sleep. crap.
So of course I had to write about it, instead of going to bed when I realized that I was going to wake up so early.
But seriously, check out DailyLit. I’m addicted and loving it.
Posted by Ryan
June 6, 2007
Me: i’m gonna go play ultimate frisbee!
Her: nice!
Her: i love that game!
Her: i didn’t think you played anything athletic…
Me: dude, lindy hop is athletic
Her: no, it’s not.
Me: is too!
Her: dancing is not a sport.
Me: so what… I get tired when I dance therefore it’s athletic. I am an athlete.
Her: whatever
Me: okay maybe not an athlete, but it’s still athletic.
Her: uh huh
We’ve had this argument several times, and she still refuses to see my side of the story. I think she’s blinded by my obviously superior arguments.
For those who don’t know what lindy hop is, from wikipedia:
Lindy Hop is an African American dance that evolved in New York City in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was an organic fusion of many dances that preceded it or were popular during its development, but was predominantly based on jazz, tap, breakaway and charleston. Lindy hop co-evolved with jazz music and is a member of the swing dance family. It is frequently described as a jazz or street dance.
I’m an avid “lindy hopper,” and like to go to events and competitions all over the USA (perhaps someday I’ll go out of the USA for dancing). Most recently, I went to Seattle, Washington for a camp called Camp Jitterbug. The photo is from that weekend. Anyway…
As I mentioned, I’ve argued several times with this friend that lindy hop is plenty athletic. I still think it is, but after going and playing Ultimate Frisbee last week, I’ve decided that lindy hop isn’t all that athletic after all. I thought I was gonna die running around on that green stuff called grass. Okay, I still think dancing is athletic, but it’s different. Very different. After nearly dying on the field I’ve determined that I’m in what experts everywhere would call “so out of shape you should be dead.” No, actually it’d probably be more along the lines of “moderately out of shape.”
Dancing has been, for the last few years, practically all of the physically demanding activity that I’ve done. I’ve hardly done anything else. I’ve played basketball a few times, gone on a few hikes, but mostly I’ve sat in front of a computer and gone dancing. Had it not been for dancing I doubt I’d have been able to make it across the field even once. Of course, had I not been dancing all the time maybe I’d have gone out and done other things.
Dancing is great, and regardless of what anyone else says lindy hop is (or at least can be if you dance fast enough) quite athletic. Maybe it’s more like aerobics. heh. I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s really fun. But I also need to get out more and run around under the big blue sky. It’s really bright out there, but I hear you get used to it…
Posted by Ryan
June 5, 2007
If you have a simple UPS battery backup system of some kind you’re probably familiar with the beeping noise it makes when there’s a power outage or surge or whatever. Those dang beeps can get pretty annoying if they beep for too long. Now, take that little speaker out of your UPS system and dunk it in water, cook it in a microwave, and drop it out of an airplane. Okay, so a speaker put through that probably wouldn’t work at all, but if it did I’m pretty sure I know what it’d sound like. It’d sound exactly like the little speaker in my UPS system.
I’m pretty sure the battery in this thing is completely worthless. Normally, one would just get a new battery, but in this case I’m gonna go for a completely new UPS backup thing all together. I don’t want to hear that dying robotic cat noise anymore.
It’s been making the horrible noise for quite a while. In the past I’ve removed the battery, re-connected it, and plugged it back in and it works until the next time the power freaks out. There’s been a pretty steady wind going all day today (which I love, I love the wind!). A few minutes ago the power surged three times (I’m guessing due to sudden increase in wind or something), which apparently was more than enough to destroy my poor UPS battery backup once and for all. Now when I plug it back in, the horrid “I am a dying alarm speaker, let me die in peace” noise starts immediately and will not stop. Time to finally let it go.
My dear UPS battery backup, I will not plug you in again. Rest in peace.
Any suggestions for battery backups? I don’t need anything crazy.
Posted by Ryan
May 9, 2007
So for the past 3 weeks or so I have been waking up between 5 AM and 10 AM. I’ve finally trained myself to wake up and stay up when my alarm goes off. But, it only works if it’s a certain song being blasted out of my computer speakers. I still don’t wake up to my normal alarm clock and there’s been two or three days out of the 3 or so weeks that I’ve slept in. Last night, for example, I only set my alarm clock, too lazy to setup the alarm on the computer. So this morning I apparently turned it off in my sleep and slept until about 12:30 PM.
Lesson: once you have a way you can wake up early, stick to it.
I’m pretty excited though about this whole waking up early thing. I can now set my alarm for whenever I want and I know I will wake up. That is, as long as it’s that one song on my computer.
The song is “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” by Sufjan Stevens, on his Songs for Christmas album. Go figure.
Posted by Ryan
May 2, 2007
The weather has been either really hot for the past week or so. Today it’s 79 degrees at my house, but the wind is blowing and it feels oh so nice. I would love to work outside, but if you’ve ever tried taking a laptop outside in broad daylight you’ll know that it just won’t work. Having an open window, however, next to your desk is awesome. In the winter it’s no fun because it’s so cold, but right now with the wind blowing it’s great! It’s almost like being outside, except I can actually see what’s on my monitor.
Posted by Ryan
April 11, 2007
The index page seems to work fine, but when I go to any other page on this blog it dies after showing the header. I’m not sure why, but will try to fix it soon.
Edit: Weird. Now it’s working. Will it stay like this? Only time shall tell.
Posted by Ryan
March 20, 2007
Woke up this morning at 6 AM, promptly went back to sleep. Woke up at noon.
Should have stayed up at 6 AM.
Another day, another try.
Fishing was fun, by the way.
Posted by Ryan
March 17, 2007
Thanks to one of my visiting nephews I woke up this morning at the amazingly early hour of 9 something o’clock.
Amazing.
I’m going fishing.
Posted by Ryan
March 17, 2007
It’s currently about 4 o’clock in the morning and I’m not a bit tired (funny, I just yawned after typing that). You might think I should be a little tired, but then you might ask “wait, what time did you wake up?” Ah! That is a good question indeed. You see, on Thursday morning I woke up at 6:00 AM to go to my weekly Toastmaster’s club meeting. I went to bed Thursday night, err, Friday morning at 1:30 AM-ish. 1:30 AM is hardly a late night, “I should be able to wake up at 10 o’clock, no problem!” Well around 9 AM one my nephews (visiting for a few days) came into my room and woke me up, informing me that breakfast was ready (having family visit is great!). I rolled over and went back to sleep. At 10 AM my alarm went off and I got right out of bed, I paid a visit to the restroom and on the way back to my room (or was it on the way to the bathroom?) my sister commented “that is the loudest alarm I have ever heard.” You see, I have a little tiny and very simple application that I wrote to play an MP3 at a certain time of day. I turn the volume on my speakers and computer up just about as loud as they’ll go and set anywhere from 1-40 songs to blast me awake. Yes, I really have set 40 songs to play before. Not all at once, of course, but in 1 minute increments. So anyway, I got back in bed and went back to sleep. I remember answering at least 2 phone calls and just rolling over and going back to sleep after I hung up. At 3 PM I got yet another phone call, this time from someone I didn’t want to know that I was still sleeping so I tried really hard to sound awake. I thought I’d pulled it off, but later in the evening I told her that she’d woken me up and she said it sounded like it to her, but she didn’t think I could have been sleeping at 3 PM…
That’s the longest I’ve slept in a really long time. And here I sit, at 4 o’clock in the morning, completely awake.
Actually, talking about it being so late and still being completely awake seems to be wearing on me. I’ve yawned at least 2 or 3 times while writing this. This is good, very good. I’m waking up early tomorrow (before noon!).
Posted by Ryan
February 15, 2007
Back in August 2005 I bought a Dell 700m Inspiron notebook computer. It’s been absolutely great.
After much prodding and convincing from several friends I finally installed Ubuntu on my laptop. The installation was super easy and I’ve now got a dual boot running on it.
As Windows tends to do, Windows has been getting rather sluggish lately. No, I don’t have any viruses, spyware, or other crap on here, but it’s just not as fast as it used to be. I’ve been wanting to re-format for a while, and now that I’m getting more into Linux I’d also like to allocate more space to it. Dell has a hidden system restore partition that takes up about 4GB. On a small laptop with a 80GB hard drive that’s a pretty good chunk. I didn’t get a Windows XP installation CD when I bought my laptop, but if I’m gonna be re-formatting and blowing away the system restore partition I want to have a way to re-install Windows again. Say what you will about Windows, but I like it. I’m far from being a complete linux convert, though it could happen some day.
Anyway, I called up Dell Customer Service and after waiting on hold for 10-15 minutes (not bad at all I think) I was talking to a very helpful woman with what sounded like an Asian accent. I told her what I was doing and that I was hoping to get a Windows XP installation CD. After running me through some standard procedures and asking some questions (my name, service code, etc.) she said she was mailing out the installation CD along with copies of all the other CDs that originally came with my laptop. Oh yeah, she also said that if they don’t arrive tomorrow that they should be here by Monday. Dang! How’s that for customer service?!
I am happy. My next computer will be a Dell.
Posted by Ryan
January 25, 2007
Akismet has just released version 2.0 of their beloved spam filter for WordPress.
Akismet has caught 16,560 spam for you since you first installed it.
Thank you, Aksimet!
Compare this to my stats back in October! I really think I would go insane without this plugin.
Posted by Ryan
January 16, 2007
I have accounts at multiple banks and one credit union. At one bank I signed up for their online statements. It works great! It’s much easier to get PDFs instead of paper mail that I’ll save, but may never look at. The credit union claims to have “E-Statements,” so I signed up (free, of course). Have I got any actual statements? No, but I’ve gotten promotional emails for their other products and services. Lame. “Hey sign up for our online statements that’s really just spam!” I don’t remember seeing any small print or check boxes asking if I was okay with spam, but apparently it was there somewhere. Or they’re just plain deceptive.
Posted by Ryan
November 23, 2006
I spent way too much time on this seemingly simple little game!
Was it worth it? I think so.
Found via Joe Beda.
Posted by Ryan
November 22, 2006
Here’s an idea: leave the internet alone. De-regulate as much as possible.
More regulations != more freedom.
The internet is fine. Leave it alone.
Posted by Ryan
November 6, 2006
I have a Dell Inspiron 700m, which I love. It has a Synaptics touch pad. Everyone once and a while it freaks out though and acts like someone is holding their finger on a portion of the touch pad so no matter how you move the mouse around, it automatically jumps back when you lift your finger off of it. The older version of the Synaptics software had a “reset device” button that fixed it. The newer version doesn’t though. So I just get to wait for it to go away. Argh.
Posted by Ryan
November 3, 2006
If someone else comes up with an idea for something, and you get the credit for it, for goodness sake let everyone else know that you didn’t come up with the idea.
I thought of this while reading this article: Nine Things Developers Want More Than Money. A few months ago, a friend of mine gave a fellow developer a good idea. The next day when the boss saw the work he praised the developer up and down and showed everyone the work he’d done. The developer said nothing about where the idea came from. This developer would still have received praise for the implementation of the idea had he simply said “it was his idea, I just implemented it.”
*gets off soap box*
Posted by flickr
November 2, 2006
I love taking photos while I’m driving. Many people may find that absolutely horrifying, but it’s one of the few times I ever actually think to take pictures (the other being on the dance floor). I put the camera strap around my wrist, keep my eyes on the road, stick the camera out the window and push the shutter button a few times. I usually check the LCD screen to make sure I’m getting what I’m aiming for, but I don’t always. I never let the camera take more precedence than driving. Anyway, I really like this shot. Very orange and pretty, yet the orange ends abruptly on the right to dark clouds, which is rather cool I think.
Posted by Ryan
November 1, 2006
Since October 1st I’ve gotten approx. 7,778 emails. 326 weren’t spam.
I hate spam.
Posted by Ryan
October 23, 2006
I have hundreds and hundreds of bookmarks. I use approximately 5 on a regular basis. I type the URI for everything else. If I didn’t have the bookmark, I’d type those too.
There is the occasional moment where I use my bookmarks to find something I once found years ago, but it seems it could be more efficient. How? Not sure.
Posted by Ryan
October 21, 2006
I upgraded the RAM in my laptop today to 2 GB instead of 1.25 GB. Everything is running noticeably faster. I’m always impressed with newegg.com and their shipping.
Posted by Ryan
October 20, 2006
What’s worse than waiting for much anticipated packages? Leaving home and having them arrive shortly after you’ve left.
:(
Posted by Ryan
October 20, 2006
From the Akismet website:
We can’t stand spam.
Who can? You have better things to do with your life than deal with the underbelly of the internet. Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.
From the Akismet stats page:
259,612,545 spams caught so far
1,719,297 so far today
92% of all comments are spam
For me, Akismet has caught 664 spam comments since I installed it.
Thank you, Akismet!
Posted by Ryan
October 18, 2006
I hate HTML, XHTML, and CSS. Or rather, I hate having to code any of it. To me, it’s tedious and boring to work with them. Blah.
Posted by Ryan
October 1, 2006
Seriously, I could spend all day looking at photos on Flickr. I just spent the last like 4 hours doing just that. I had to make a very conscious effort to stop.
Posted by Ryan
September 12, 2006
In this post, I wrote:
Consider this a public declaration that I will read at least one book a month and post a review either here or on learn4liberty.com. Most likely I’ll post a portion of my review here and the whole thing on learn4liberty.
Consider this a public confession that I haven’t followed through with this yet.
Yet. Yet’s a funny word when you look at it all by itself.
I will do what it takes to follow through with my declaration.
Posted by Ryan
August 17, 2006
I just heard Kirk Weisler, the author of The Dog Poop Initiative on the radio and I must say that I am impressed. I have added it to my amazon wishlist (along with something like 9 other books I added today).
I think I have something like 70 books on my amazon.com wishlist. I do plan on reading them all, but I think I should probably read the books I have now. I have 6 books that I’m trying to read right now.
Consider this a public declaration that I will read at least one book a month and post a review either here or on learn4liberty.com. Most likely I’ll post a portion of my review here and the whole thing on learn4liberty.
Posted by Ryan
August 12, 2006
Steve Pavlina has a good article on 8 changes he’s experienced since giving up TV.
Growing up my family didn’t watch much TV. I’ve always had people telling me how weird they think I am for not watching TV. Personally, I think they’re weird for wasting so much time infront of the tube. Earlier this year I started watching Myth Busters on a regular basis. First of all, the only TV I’ve ever regularly watched are educational shows. I found after a short period of time that I was watching more and more TV. Instead of watching just Myth Busters I’d watch whatever was on before it, and then stay up late watching whatever was on after it. I even started watching TV on Saturday afternoons instead of going out and socializing or working or something. I decided again that TV wasn’t worth my time and quit. Since then I’ve probably watched a total of 45 minutes of television in the last 4 months. I have watched DVDs and been to the theater maybe twice to see movies (Nacho Libre and X-Men III).
Quit TV. You’ll be far more productive. At least give it a try.
A friend and I have started a new website, Learn4Liberty.com. We haven’t given the website a design yet (it’s got the default wordpress theme) and we haven’t posted much on there yet, but I posted about turning the TV off and our brains back on in a little more detail than I did here and thought some of you may enjoy it.
Posted by Ryan
July 9, 2006
I went fly fishing again on Friday and on Saturday. I need to do this every week!
A brown trout I caught:
Posted by Ryan
July 7, 2006
I went fly fishing yesterday for the first time in almost a year! Much needed enjoyment was had. I need to go more regularly.
Posted by Ryan
July 6, 2006
A few weeks ago I joined Toastmasters International, a public speaking club (basically). I’ve given several mini speeches they call table topics. They give you a random topic and you have to speak about it for a few minutes. Not too hard, depending on what the topic is! Today I gave my first formal speech, the “ice breaker.” The ice breaker is supposed to be about “you.” I didn’t really feel like giving an autobiography so I decided to title my speech “the power of decisions in my life.” I may or not post my notes on here. I may or may not start a podcast. If I do I’ll include mp3s of my speeches.
So far I’ve enjoyed it a great deal, I’ve always wanted to learn public speaking. I do fairly well I think when I actually prepare a talk/speech, but when I’m called upon to speak at random I don’t do so well. I’m excited for that to change.
Posted by Ryan
June 26, 2006
Starting now, whenever I say “I’ll do it sometime” I really mean “I’m doing it today.”
Posted by Ryan
June 8, 2006
I found this wonderful gem today:
The two most annoying habits when you are first learning to date are boys that think it is funny to poke a girls side and girls that think it is funny to take a guy’s baseball hat off his head. I hope those traditions stop soon.
It’s really quite true. Please, help these traditions meet their end.
Posted by Ryan
May 4, 2006
This article by Steve Pavlina on how to wake up right when the alarm goes off is the best article I’ve ever read on the subject.
I can’t wait to try it!
Posted by Ryan
March 14, 2006
So I got an iPod Shuffle for my birthday from some friends. I’ve stayed out of the iPod craze mainly because I didn’t think I would ever use one. I only listen to music while on the computer, or in the car. Even in the car I tend to listen to talk radio a lot more than I listen to music lately. Now that I actually have an iPod I still don’t think it’s all that useful to me when it comes to music. I do get most of my music off iTunes, but I don’t really want to listen to music anymore than I do already (on the computer and in the car). Who knows, this thing may change all that, but generally speaking I enjoy skiing, hiking, walking around, etc. in silence or talking to other people. That is, unless I can listen to educational or other entertaining non-musical things. Hooray for Podcasts! Oh the heavenly podcasts! I’ve been collecting some for some time now, but didn’t ever listen to them because 1) It’s too much of a pain to burn them to CDs, and 2) I couldn’t listen to them on the computer while working and actually work at the same time (too distracting). So I’m quite thrilled I can listen to all the podcasts I’ve been wanting to listen to for so long.
Oh, it’s the 512 MB version of the iPod Shuffle. I was amazed that 17 hours of podcasts would fit in 512 MB. I can see how if I was using it for music I’d want more space, but for podcasts I don’t think 512 MB will ever be too little.
Posted by Ryan
March 12, 2006
Why does my Snickers candybar have a URL printed on the inside of the wrapper, yet the URL does not work? The URL is www.mobseen.com
I’m confused.
Posted by Ryan
March 12, 2006
24 years old today. Bring on the cake and ice cream!!
Posted by Ryan
February 17, 2006
Joining in the brrreeeport posting fun started by Scoble. A few days ago he posted about the misleading numbers search engines (such as Google) seem to show.
When I search Google for “brrreeeport” I get “about 23,400″ results from Google. If I click through to the end of the results it only goes to page 40 (394 results). That page says “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 394 already displayed.” When you click the link to show more of the results it allows you to go to page 98 (977 results).
What the heck, Google? Yahoo shows 1,830 results. How on earth can two search engines have such a huge difference in numbers? Makes me wonder how many pages they REALLY have indexed. Google claims something like 8 billion. Yeah, right.
Posted by Ryan
February 16, 2006
Back in September I said I needed a smaller car because of the cost of driving an SUV. Well, I did get a newer vehicle and it does have better gas mileage*, but it’s not any smaller. :-P
I have a tendency to be a very spontaneous buyer. Not the smartest thing in the world, but I can at least say I’m not overly stupid. I bought my laptop with about 5 minutes research. I bought a new digital camera because I saw a good deal, even though I didn’t need a new digital camera (at least I’m selling the old one though). I’m really happy about the camera purchase though (well, I’m happy with all the other things too). The Canon SD400 takes much better dancing pictures than my Pentax Optio S5i did. Videos are also larger. Newegg rocks.
Anyway, my boss leased a truck through the business and so was selling his previous vehicle. He asked if I wanted to buy it. I originally said no, but after asking a few more times I drove it once and that was it. It’s a silver 2003 Toyota Tundra. Yes, I’m nuts! So much for smaller! haha
I’m nuts, but I’m happy. I like the Tundra a lot. It drives beautifully, has low miles, and I like trucks.
* = The gas mileage is a little better. The Tundra gets 14/17 MPG, and the Ford Expedition got 12/16 MPG.
Posted by Ryan
February 16, 2006
I just saw Google Reader this morning. It’s been a while since I’ve really kept up with the whole feed reader world so I really don’t know how it compares to what’s out there nowadays, but it’s pretty cool. I doubt it’ll get me back to the days of reading lots of feeds. What would it take for that to happen? I’m not really sure. I haven’t really liked anything I’ve tried enough to really use it. The only one I’ve stuck with is Thunderbird’s simple implementation and that’s only because I use Thunderbird for e-mail.
Posted by Ryan
February 11, 2006
Google video has got a cool NBC recap of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic games.
Posted by Ryan
January 27, 2006
A good old worthless, but funny (so maybe it’s not worthless!), flash animation or whatever.
I present to you: singing horses. Click on the horses.
I think the best part about it is that it’s funny and doesn’t get stuck in your head! Or even if it does, it’s not as bad as that banana song.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming…
P.S. WordPress 2 is cool.
Posted by Ryan
December 31, 2005
Last year I posted my resolutions for 2005. I said I’d post mid-year about them. Well, I didn’t. So here it is.
I had resolved to… and how I did:
Improve my writing style
Not so much. Lost interest in it early on in the year.
Improve my work ethic
This I was able to improve, although not as much as I’d orginally hoped. I do feel though that when I focus my efforts I can get a lot done. I find it easier than before to apply myself to work. That’s good. I still have a long way to go though.
Wake up early
hahahaha. There was a time when I did pretty good with this. I actually did it for a while. I like it a lot. I went to bed early, got up early, worked hard and I got a lot of work done. I usually got more work done by noon than if I’d slept in until noon and worked until 3 AM. So why don’t I still do that? Well… I’m lazy? haha No really, I was doing good until I went to the Denver Lindy Exchange and stayed up until 5-6 AM every night for the entire weekend. In general, the swing dancing every weekend really messes things up. I don’t stay out that late every weekend of course, but late enough to mess things up.
Okay okay I have no excuses.
Compliment people more
Improved a little bit, but not like I’d planned.
Finish and release huge web project (currently only in planning stages)
ha. Didn’t ever start. New jobs got in the way.
Learn how to write complex Firefox and Thunderbird extensions
Nope.
Move out of my parent’s house (shhh! don’t tell my mom!)
Nope.
To be determined
This goal means that I am to keep an open mind to new opportunities that come my way, even if they could mess up my current goals for ryanware.com and other projects. Each new opportunity must be weighed against my current projects and goals before jumping either way. To not keep an open mind towards new opportunties could prove to hold me back, instead of helping me advance. So I will try to keep an open mind to new opportunities that come my way.
This is really the only goal of mine that I actually applied. New job opportunities presented themselves throughout the year, and I took them. As you can see from reading how I did on the other goals, the things such as my writing style, web projects, and mozilla extensions took back burner. For now.
2005 was a good year. I have no regrets or complaints. For 2006 I’m not going to bother with resolutions that I know will end up like 2005’s. Suffice it to say that I’m going to strive to improve myself in every way and help others out along the way. I’d like to get involved with service organizations and travel to foreign places (or around here) and help out.
I wish you all a happy and prosperous new year!
Posted by Ryan
December 31, 2005
I hope everyone had a happy holiday season! I started feeling sick on Christmas, but overall it’s been a good week. Lots of family and fun.
Happy New Year!
Posted by Ryan
December 2, 2005
No, not my wedding. One of my best friends got married today (err… yesterday). Kinda odd. I’m not one to really care much that I won’t see him or anything. I work with him and so we still do stuff all the time. He’s been dating this girl for the past year and a half so it’s not like much is changing anyway. Now they just live together.
Anyway… it’s interesting how life changes and progresses.
Posted by Ryan
November 13, 2005
Thankfully, wordpress stops it all. Hey spammers, pay attention! Your posts aren’t going through! :-D
Posted by Ryan
November 1, 2005
I got approx. 5,500 e-mail messages that qualified as spam in the month of October.
What was your spam count?
Thunderbird 1.5 is already worth it’s weight in gold (again) to me *. I love being able to tell it to trust spam headers from the server.
* Nevermind the fact that Thunderbird doesn’t technically “weigh” anything…
Posted by Ryan
September 8, 2005
I’m looking into getting either a smaller SUV or a hybrid vehicle of some kind.
Why? Because I filled up the gas tank yesterday and it cost $74.
Holy crap!
Posted by Ryan
August 25, 2005
I got an e-mail this morning from “Automatic Money” saying I can start a website in 3 hours! I’m so excited about this opportunity. I’ve always wanted automatic money. I think I’ll send them my credit card number! Oh! And all my bank and personal information!
Who do these people think they are?!?!? I’m so @#$%^ sick of these idiots!
Posted by Ryan
August 16, 2005
I’ve been a subscriber of Lockergnome since 1998, minus two years while I was on an LDS mission. My software was even featured in it. As you may know as time went on, Lockergnome got big and Chris Pirillo stopped writing all the newsletters. Even though it wasn’t Chris Pirillo very often, at least having someone write an article made it feel more like the old Lockergnome. While some of the information in the newsletters became old news to me as I learned more I always enjoyed the things the editors had to say. About a year ago or more they decided that Lockergnome be more of an RSS type feed, like an aggregator. At least the Web Developer newsletter anyway. No more editor comments or articles. And? I haven’t found any interesting information from it in a very long time. It’s really boring. Also, the info that does get in the newsletter is always about 3-4 days behind other sources. I’m unsubscribing.
Posted by Ryan
August 10, 2005
I bought a Dell Inspiron 700m a little over a week ago. Got it yesterday. I love it!
Specs:
- 12.1 inch wide screen.
- 2 ghz pentium m
- 1.25 GB RAM (got the laptop with 256 and ordered another gig from newegg.com)
- 80 gig hard drive
- a/b/g wireless card
- CD and DVD-R/RW
Two guys at work bought the 17 inch monsters. See photo of my laptop in between theirs (inbetween their two computers at work).
Posted by Ryan
August 7, 2005
Just uploaded a bunch of photos to my flickr account. Pictures include Camp Hollywood pictures, family reunion pictures, other dancing pictures, and other misc stuff.
Posted by Ryan
August 2, 2005
Finally! We got cable internet here at home. We’ve had high speed wireless for the past year and a half or so. The wireless was fast, but not very reliable in bad weather and just in general recently. The cable got installed yesterday. Whoo hoo!
Posted by Ryan
June 28, 2005
Whoa, where did the time go? I haven’t posted in a long time.
Anyway, Google Earth is the coolest thing I’ve seen all week. Yes, it is Monday*, but it’s still saying a lot. It’ll probably be the coolest thing I see for a while. Check it out.
* = heh. So I hit the “Publish” button and realized that today is Tuesday.
Posted by Ryan
June 10, 2005
I logged in to Yahoo mail today and apparently I have been given the sneak preview for a new design. They must be testing to see how users like it.
Check it out (click to enlarge):
As you can tell, Yahoo has decided that their new design should look and act like a website from 1995.
I’ve logged into another Yahoo account and it’s perfectly normal. So WTFreak happened to mine? Clicking to view inbox (which has messages in it) shows me no messages at all.
Anyone know why? It does it in Firefox, Opera, and IE.
Posted by Ryan
June 9, 2005
Here’s a reason not to hit the snooze button anymore: Sleeping too much can reduce life expectancy, according to a February 2002 study in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The study found that people who sleep more than eight hours per night had a significantly higher death rate than normal. But late-night-party-goers shouldn’t rejoice: researches say that sleeping less than four hours also increases death rates. People who sleep between six and seven hours per night were shown to live the longest.
So does this mean I can mix it up? Over sleep some nights, and stay out late dancing others?
Posted by Ryan
June 2, 2005
It’s time to put the goal aside until further notice. I have decided that I like getting up early, but going to bed at 10 is not going to work. Going to bed when I’m tired and waking up early will work though and I’m planning on sticking with it. Checking my e-mail and staying away from forums until 7PM is a little extreme when I wake up so early. Not checking until 2-4 PM is a bit better.
I never thought I’d say it, but it actually is possible for me to be a morning person. I still doubt it’ll ever be easy, but it IS worth it and it IS possible.
If I can do it, anyone can. Seriously.
Posted by Ryan
May 26, 2005
I just spent the last hour on Google Maps in Satellite mode.
First I traveled across the USA for fun. Then I noticed satellite maps were available for the whole stinkin’ world. You can’t zoom in very close on most of the world, but it sure was fun anyway.
Today, I traveled to (to name a few):
Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Australia, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Madagascar, the Antartic, the North Pole, Russia, the Phillipines, New York, London, San Francisco, etc.
I think I should go do something a bit more productive now.
Posted by Ryan
May 24, 2005
After 8-10 years of using WinZip, and opening thousands and thousands of archives, and creating hundreds if not thousands of archives I have registered WinZip. That’s right. I actually bought a license.
When I first started using it, I didn’t actually have any money to buy it so I just figured I’d use it until I did. Well, after using it a while one gets used to pressing I agree, Use Evaluation copy, or whatever the button said as the versions changed. I stopped noticing it. This happened with a few other never expiring applications as well (Edit Plus for example, which I finally registered a few months ago).
I no longer have any unregistered and expired software on my computer (that I use anyway, I guess there could be some hiding around that I’ve forgotten about).
:-D
Posted by Ryan
May 24, 2005
Whoops, I let yesterday pass without posting about this.
Things continue to go well with my trial period. I really do like waking up early. Going to bed early on the weekends has proven, however, to be a stupid thing to try for someone my age. I’m still doing pretty dang good though considering all the dancing I do.
Posted by Ryan
May 17, 2005
Last week I said I was going to start going to bed early, waking up early, and change my e-mail and forum habits. I also said I’d post on Monday’s about how I was doing with it. Well now that it’s Tuesday I figured I might want to do that.
Overall it’s going very well, considering how hard it has always been for me to wake up early. I must admit though that going to bed early really makes it a lot easier. What a concept!
Wednesday ended up getting messed up. The reason for this being that one of the local lindy hoppers (swing dancers) was assigned to go to Iraq on Saturday. He was originally going to go in a few weeks and we were planning a going away dance for him. So when his leave date was moved up suddenly so was the going away dance. So I drove an hour and a half to dance for about the same amount of time and then drive home again. I got home at 1 AM. I was so tired. I don’t think I managed to get up on time, but I don’t remember what time it was anymore that I actually got up.
I also stayed up late Saturday watching a movie* and slept in a little later on Sunday morning. That was my own fault though, with no excuses.
I think I’m doing pretty good so far.
* Don’t ever rent “Westender”. My friend and I rented it, only to stop it after 15 minutes. We then watched “Regarding Henry” with Harrison Ford. That was pretty good.
Posted by Ryan
May 9, 2005
After reading Steve Pavlina’s 30 Days to Success I’ve decided to do a 30 day trial of my own.
For the next 30 days I am going to:
* Go to bed before 10 PM each night, before midnight Thurs-Sat.
* Wake up by 5:30 AM each morning, 7 AM on Saturday.
* Give up e-mail until after 7 PM.
* Give up forums until after 7 PM.
I will post updates on here about how I’m doing with these things once a week.
Crap, I just realized that the going to bed and waking up are going to be thrown completely out of whack by the Denver Lindy Exchange at the beginning of June (lots of swing dancing for a weekend, including dancing until 4+ AM). I’ll just have to pick it back up after I get back. So maybe I should say this is a 24 day trial. Then, I imagine I’ll have to do another 30 day trial to get back into the habit, if I end really wanting to keep doing these things.
Posted by Ryan
May 9, 2005
Every once and a while I will add some URLs or whatever to a wordpress post and just save it as a draft. I have a tendency to forget about most of them. So I’m cleaning out my drafts. I’ve discared most of the junk, but am posting a few items for your pleasure, or something. I didn’t actually go to any of the links (except the blog map thing). I just guessed on the titles. :-D
Dude Study – doh! I checked this after posting and it’s no longer to be found. Oh well. The other two I’m leaving intact.
National Wildlife Photography contest
Mystery link – I don’t know what this is just by looking at the URL and am not going to bother finding out. So uh, enjoy!
Posted by Ryan
May 2, 2005
Dave Winer turned/turns 50 years old today. Happy Birthday, Dave!
Posted by Ryan
April 26, 2005
Some of these, while new for me, may actually be old. Like the Wired article “the long tail” for example. I’d heard about it, but hadn’t read it yet. :)
- Firefox Aardvark Extension – One of the coolest extensions ever for web developers.
- Napoleon Dynamite Soundboard – SWEET!
- taskTHIS! – Simple, but cool task management, showcasing Ruby on Rails.
- YaGoohoo!gle – Google an Yahoo results, side by side.
- The Long Tail: “Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching – a market response to inefficient distribution.”
- Start a fire with a can of soda pop and chocolate
- Guess the Google – Fun game with google images
Posted by Ryan
April 23, 2005
Since I hardly post anything ryanware.com related I’ve decided to change the name of this blog. Any suggestions?
Posted by Ryan
April 14, 2005
Catching up on some blog reading, I came across a post stating “I forgot to mention I got a new digital camera last week.” and realized, “Hey! Me too!” So now I’m telling you about it!
I’ve wanted a digital camera for a while, but hadn’t done anything about that desire. So the day before going to D.C. I decided to splurge. I wanted something small and I wanted it quick. I didn’t have time to get a better price online and maybe even a better camera. So I ran to Costco with a card-holding friend and picked up their smallest camera. Seriously, my qualifications and research consisted of “hey! it’s small”. Okay, it wasn’t that bad really. My friend has had the Pentax Optio S4i for a while now, and he really likes it. I got the Pentax Optio S5i, which I must say I have been very pleased with. Very small, easy to use, produces good pictures (I’m not a pro people, don’t tell me how the quality isn’t good. It looks superb to me!)
Anyway, now I really will be able to post at least a picture a week like I stated before.
Posted by Ryan
March 28, 2005
I just finished watching The Incredibles. I watched about half of it, then another part of it, and finally went out and rented it today and finished it off. This is going on the list of one of my favorite movies, which list is a post for another day.
Oh, I think the “Guaranteed in Stock or it’s free” promise by Hollywood Video rocks. I tried to rent it on Saturday, but they didn’t have it so I got it for free today! whoo hoo!
Posted by Ryan
March 25, 2005
I’ve read numerous articles about how cutting back on your e-mail usage can save you loads of time. It was one of those things I believed, but was reluctant to do because frankly, it’s easy to check my e-mail. It’s also easy to visit a forum or two and waste some time. So today I closed Thunderbird, deleted shortcuts from the desktop and quick launch toolbar leaving only the shortcut in the start menu. Then, everytime I wanted to check my e-mail or read a forum I put a mark down on a piece of paper. In a short amount of time I had 10 marks on the paper. 5 for e-mail, 5 for the forums. With my average time spent doing e-mail and reading forums I figure I saved at least 2 hours. Maybe more. Wow! It does work. I’m making this permanent. Marking a paper will probably not stay permanent, but cutting back will!
Efficient Email, by Steve Pavlina.
Posted by Ryan
March 10, 2005
… that I had a job working outside.
Winter seems to be coming to a close around here and it sure is nice. I love winter, but springtime is always welcome. So refreshing.
Hmmmm… I need to go skiing one more time before it’s too late.
Posted by Ryan
March 2, 2005
What?! It’s March already? How did that happen? And it’s already the second day of March. Well, 4:20 AM on the second day, but still!
Recent happenings:
- I crashed a server with mod_rewrite in .htaccess
- I went swing dancing
- No seriously, I went swing dancing! ha!
- More detail: Dan and Tiffany, instructors from Denver, came to SLC to do some workshops. 11 1/2 hours of workshops! This was last weekend. They’re awesome! They wore me out. After several days of no sleep I finally recovered by sleeping until 11 AM this morning. Now I’m going to bed past 4 AM just to get up at 9 AM and start the behind-on-sleep-schedule thing all over again. Blast it all.
- Beth got engaged (see photos section, I’m too lazy to make a link). She used to comment on here. Not anymore. Now I know why. (Congrats Beth!)
- I skipped two days of swing dancing (Monday and Tuesday of this week) because my shoulder is hurting from all the workshops and dancing over the weekend (with the dances it was a total of about 17 hours of dancing in two days). I hurt my shoulder several years ago while shopping. Yes, shopping! I’ll expound in greater detail another day. Perhaps later today.
- I’ve been doing a lot of contract/freelance web design and programming.
- I ate a banana split today.
- Two actually.
- Did you know a banana splits naturally into several slices if you push your finger or tounge or something down the middle of it? I had forgotten about that until today! (No I won’t tell you how many slices it splits into. You’ll have to try it.)
- My friend left his laptop at my house.
- I hope he calls and says “you keep it”.
- That’s not very likely though.
- Because he needs it for work in a few hours.
- haha
- If it weren’t 4:30 AM I’d go make another banana split.
- That reminds me of the banana phone!
- I should end on that note.
Goodnight. Ring ring ring ring ring ring! Banana Phone!
Posted by Ryan
February 24, 2005
The power supply fan on my computer went out a few days ago. I didn’t notice until my room started to smell “hot”. I put my hand on the computer case and the thing was nice and toasty! Way too hot. I quickly brought it out from it’s little compartment, opened the case, and put a fan up to it. Luckily, there wasn’t any damage. At least not that’s evident right now anyway.
A few days later I’m still working like this. I have a clip-on fan attached to my chair, blowing underneath me and into the computer. It’s making things a little bit colder than usual. heh.
The power supply fan is not completely gone. It just spins really really slowly. I think I’ll just grease it instead of buying a new one. But I’d actually have to stop working to do that, which I’ll put off until it gets too cold to work (late this evening no doubt).
Posted by Ryan
February 18, 2005
I have a really bad habit of coming across cool links, setting them aside, and posting them after the rest of the world has posted about them. Oh well. Here’s two cool links I came across within the last week or so.
Forget takeout, eat a print-out – I wish there were more restaurants that let you eat their menus!
NameVoyager by The Baby Name Wizard – This is a lot of fun. Type in a name or click on a name and it shows how many babies per million were given that name. It dates back to 1900 and goes to 2003. Very nice. Oh yeah, it’s a Java applet so it might take a while to load depending on your computer and connection.
Posted by Ryan
February 15, 2005
I’m upgrading from Wordpress 1.2.2 to Wordpress 1.5. There are a few slight problems I’m dealing with. Be patient. Thanks.
Update: Okay… all seems well. The “Show Comments Here” is disabled since I don’t have time to get it working right now.
Posted by Ryan
February 15, 2005
I got a haircut on Saturday. I was so used to my long shaggy hair. I’m not liking this new haircut at all. I’ll try to get a picture sometime soon.
Posted by Ryan
February 14, 2005
A little over a year or so ago (I really don’t remember) a local grocery store started offering discount gas prices depending on items you bought in the store. You can get 1 cent off each gallon up to 15 gallons or 15 gallons of free gas (if you buy A LOT). The most off I’ve ever had was 18 cents I think (for 15 gallons).
To get the discounted gas, your store receipt has a barcode on it you scan in or manually type in at the pump. Up until a few months ago you could walk up to the pump, scan the ticket, insert your credit card, lift and insert nozzle, select gas type and away you went. The only problem was if you didn’t use the full 15 gallons. You had to keep your receipt and use the barcode again next time.
A few months ago (4? 5?) they decided to “upgrade”. The upgrade was great in that now your gas receipt has the barcode and how many discounted gallons you have left printed on it so you can throw away your store receipt. However, now I have to push “yes I have coupon” then scan the barcode, then push “Pay at pump”, then insert the card, then wait, then select type of gas I want, then lift nozzle, then fill up. Did you notice the difference? With their upgrade they slowed the whole process down, forcing you to select what you want to do with each step, instead of knowing what you want to do by what you do. If you try to do it the old way it doesn’t work. Did that make sense? It’s not really a big deal, and there could be a very good reason for it. I just don’t see the reason.
This story would be better if I had a good example of some software I’ve recently upgraded that was more of a downgrade than an upgrade, but alas, I do not have a recent example. Some old examples I can think of are the iTunes 4.whatever it was that disabled the iTunes downloader program. Or was it iPod downloader thingy? I don’t remember. Many have complained that new versions of Winamp became less and less useful to them.
Software vendors! Stop downgrading or disabling functionality with new versions unless there is a dang good reason to do so. If you have to do this, please let us know that it has happened and the reason behind it.
Thanks.
Posted by Ryan
February 12, 2005
When Google does something they usually do it very well. Sometime within the last week I tried out Google Maps. My first thought was “oh great, another map thing”, but after using it for a few seconds I became extremely impressed. I played around with it for a long time. I love the real time map dragging. I was able to “drive” to a friend’s house just by dragging. So cool. Check it out if you haven’t already.
So why did I take so long to post about this? The normal excuse of course! I’ve been too busy. Seriously though, between working three jobs, swing dancing, and procrastination I’ve managed to become way too busy. I recently bought Time Management from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern (audio download) from amazon.com/audible. I never would have read the book had I just ordered a real copy. I’ve already listened to it 1 1/2 times with it on CD. I drive way too much. I’ve spent over $80 in gas so far this month, and the month isn’t even half over! Anyway, I’ve really been enjoying the book. The problem with listening while driving though is that it’s very hard to write notes, so I don’t. I’ll probably listen to it over and over again until it sticks, or until I get a new book to listen to. I really like books on tape/cd.
Anyway, I hope to be able to take control of my time and have time for all the important things I need to get done! If anyone actually reads what I write here, what do you do? What have you done to take control of your time? Please comment.
Posted by Ryan
February 6, 2005
I just found a nifty site that lets you create a travel map that shows the states or countries you’ve visited. The site is: www.world66.com. I definitely need to travel more. This year I will for sure be adding, Virginia, D.C., and Colorado. The other places I plan on visiting this year I’ve already been to. Maybe I’ll get some other new states under my belt as well.
Here’s the map of my travels (I’ve only driven through Oregon so maybe I shouldn’t count it.):
Found via: Living a Story to Tell
Posted by Ryan
February 3, 2005
My cell phone now says “Cingular” on the main screen instead of “AT&T”.
Posted by Ryan
February 2, 2005
… or the night as the case may be.
These few quotes were collected from Adam Curry, Steve Pavilina, and some other places I don’t remember.
“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.” – Goethe
“It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.” – John Andrew Holmes
“The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.” – Robert Frost
It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men will do when they don’t have to. – Walter Linn
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. – Elbert Hubbard
Posted by Ryan
February 1, 2005
Do you work better when you have expectations to meet? I don’t. My work ethic is great when I have my own project that I can work on whenever I want to work on it without pressure. I love adding features that I want to add when I want to add them. I’ll work like crazy under these circumstances, working in 20 hour long blocks of time. Give me an expectation or deadline and I’ll stop working. I’ll browse blogs, forums, or anything to avoid working. I’ll go drive around town pointlessly. I’ll go sit in a parking lot waiting for a friend to get off work just to hang out. I’ll go buy food. I’ll shop for electronics. The exception to this is when it’s a “real job” where I have to go in and work on their computer on a time clock. I still work better without all the deadlines and expectations, and I won’t waste my employers money browsing the internet, but I still won’t work as hard.
However, if I am given a deadline or expectation and I somehow manage to get my heart into it I’ll work just as hard. The hard part is getting into that mindset. That place in my mind. Zen. Happy places. The Zone. Whatever you want to call it.
I think I was just born to be self-employed.
Posted by Ryan
January 31, 2005
Well I’m not a hunchback, but sometimes I feel like one. I need better chairs to work in. I not only hunch over the keyboard, but sometimes I manage to raise my shoulders up as far as I can as well. What on earth for? I don’t know. It happens, I noticed, I relax, it starts over.
Posted by Ryan
January 20, 2005
Okay so I wasn’t going to talk about blogs anymore. I lied. Just for this post though. I had to finish a thought.
So people talk about them, and they talk about them a lot. I guess I shouldn’t complain. People still talk about websites all the time. They still talk about web browsers, text editors, other applications, the super bowl, cereal, iraq, and britney spears… among other things. We all talk about all sorts of things that are old news or whatever it may be. That’s just human nature. So keep talking away! This is how things progress. I’ve just read the word “blog” one too many times tonight. Maybe I’ll start using “weblog” instead.
Some chocolate milk sounds good right now.
Posted by Ryan
January 20, 2005
Remind me to never again get behind on the forums, sites, and blogs I read.
Also, remind me to keep track of all the interesting things I come across if I do get behind again. If I would have kept track of it all I’d have tons more links than the measely two I’m linking to:
Free RSS to HTML PHP Script
Security tips for web developers
Oh yeah, I also need to remember where I found the information.
One of the blogs I read tonight mentioned that the number of blogs out there now is something like 8 million. Upon reading that statistic part of me thinks “wow, that’s great” and the other part says “who cares?” Allow me to explain. For me, it’s kind of like cell phone service providers like Verizon and Cingular saying how great it is that you can talk to 30 something million people for FREE! Wow! That’s great! I’m going to sign up so I can talk to 30 million people for free! Think of all the money I’ll… wait. I have a total of 99 phone numbers in my cell phone. While I realize that there are people out there who rely on their cell phones for a lot more than I do, I probably only talk to 10 out of the 99 people on a regular basis. I also have NO idea who has Cingular. Do I ever go over my minutes? Well, not anymore. :) It’s been months since I’ve had any problems with minutes. Also, most of my talk time is after 7 PM or on weekends anyway when it’s free (it was 9 PM when I would go over minutes). I do have free mobile to mobile for Cingular/AT&T customers. But do I really care that my provider has 30+ million subscribers? In a sense, yes because it means they’ve got a good service and I can probably rely on them. However, I find their marketing ridiculous. No one would be able to talk to 30 million people, even if it’s free. Duh. I suppose if the marketing works then great, but as for me I think it’s a bit silly.
I realize that doesn’t apply very well to the growing number of blogs. I really just wanted to complain about wireless provider marketing. I think the growing number of blogs is great, and completely expected by me (although I was still surprised by the number). Google has 8 billion plus web pages indexed. Sure, those are all individual pages which make up larger sites, but is anyone surprised anymore by the growing number of websites out there? Why are blogs different? Okay, so they are different because they’re relatively new. I’ve just read one too many posts about blogs lately. I get so sick of reading about blogs. Blogs blogs blogs. Get over it already! They’re here! They’re useful! Let’s talk about something else! Okay, allow me to start by not talking about blogs anymore! Ready? Ok. </end rant>
I must say I’m impressed with my cell phone coverage area since the Cingular/AT&T merger. Post-merger I had connection problems ALL THE TIME. I still have my fair share, but usually only in weird locations that any cell phone would probably fail.
It’s now almost 2 AM and I am planning on being in downtown Salt Lake at 5 AM to swing dance for one of the local news station’s morning show. I should get SOME sleep I guess. Crazy? Yes. Loving it? Yes.
Posted by Ryan
January 16, 2005
I guess I was tired this morning. I got back from Idaho (working for my sister) late Saturday night. I set my alarm for 7:30 so I could manage to get to church at 9:00 (I’m very slow in the morning). I woke up at 10:30. Crap! I once again turned my alarms off without knowning it or something. Maybe someone enters my room and secretly turns them off for me. Or puts plugs in my ears. I don’t know. Anyway, I went to church late (church goes from 9-12) and then decided to go to the church of a friend. He ended up not being there today, but I was quite surprised by someone else. Back in like 1999 or something one of my friends moved away. I think I may have seen him briefly in 2001, but that was it. So today I was sitting in my friends church (which happened to be the church I attended growing up) waiting for the first meeting to start, I glanced behind me and saw someone who looked very familiar. I turned to the buy next to me, another friend, and said “that looks like so and so”. He said “it is so and so”. Well whaddya know! I had no idea he and his family had moved back to Utah. Not only that, but they moved here sometime in 2002. I had no idea. Crazy. He first saw me from behind and kind of to the side and didn’t recognize me until I stood up and said who I was (visitors introduced themselves). It was fun talking to him again. I also saw several other people I hadn’t seen in years. At the end of the meeting the Bishop, who I know, told my friend and I that we had to meet 10 people before we left and that most of them better be girls. I like meeting people, but am not always the best at introducing myself to new people without a good reason, as I’ve said before . So anyway we did it, and it was easy. Why is it that I can’t always do that? It’s so much fun when I actually do it. I will admit it’s getting easier, for which I am very happy.
Idaho is cold.
Posted by Ryan
January 13, 2005
It’s finally time for bed! It’s 4:30 AM. I’ve been awake for about 19 1/2 hours. I worked for approximately 17 of those hours. I’m hungry. My head is starting to hurt. I know I am tired — no, exhausted, but I can’t stop thinking. So I’m writing this to force myself to go to bed! I am going to bed! Goodnight! If I’m not awake by Monday please send me an e-mail. Because uh, I’ll somehow know you sent it and wake up? Better yet, just post a comment on here.
Goodnight.
Posted by Ryan
January 11, 2005
Oh the weather outside is frightful
But the computer is so delightful
And since I’ve no place to go
Let It Rain! Let It Rain! Let It…. RAIN!?!?!?!
It’s January! Let it snow! It’s snowing in the mountains, but here in the valley it’s raining. It feels more like March weather outside.
Posted by Ryan
January 10, 2005
I’m posting this way late in the day, but if you’re reading this, Happy Birthday to Will and also to Beth.
Posted by Ryan
January 7, 2005
I’m only 50% nerdy! Or maybe that should be “dang, I’m only 50% nerdy”.
Posted by Ryan
January 1, 2005
Up until yesterday the computer I use most often had a measely 256 MB of RAM. I finally decided I’d suffered with that for long enough and added another 512 MB to bring it up to 768 MB. Much better… for now.
Posted by Ryan
January 1, 2005
My first post of the new year. I hope you have a great one!
Posted by Ryan
December 31, 2004
You know those Christmas cards we all receive which tell a little bit about each family member and what has happened to them in the past year? They give me hope. The reason for this being that I realize that my life isn’t the only boring one. ;) Or maybe it’s that my life is boring. Oh well. Whatever the case may be, I thought as this year draws to an end I’d like to reflect a little bit on what has happened to me this year. You’ll be thrilled, I promise.
Luckily for you, you won’t be as thrilled as you could have been. I was going to write something for every month, but it soon got way too long (see the month of March). So I’m just going to give some highlights.
February: One of my good friends made me go to a Valentine’s party at the local community college. I protested loudly at this idea, especially since it cost me $10 and cost him nothing (he had a free pass), but went anyway. It was that night that I started to learn how to swing dance. We then went swing dancing the following night. And then the next week, and the next week, and the week after that and oops! I’m getting into March.
March: and the next week and the next week… okay I’ll stop. I turned the ripe old age of 489 minus 467. Over spring break I went to San Diego with a group of friends. There were 13 of us I think? We left on the 16th and came back on the 20th. We stayed the first night in a hotel casino called Whiskey Pete’s just outside of Las Vegas. The only thing good about that place was the fact that it was cheap. Of course, the second hand smoke probably took a good 31 years off my life so it might have been better to stay somewhere else. We arrived in San Diego on the 17th and enjoyed a nice evening on the beach. Too bad it was cloudy and windy. Uh oh, this is sounding really negative. First I lose 31 years of my life and then the beach wasn’t sunny! Well, just because it wasn’t sunny doesn’t mean we didn’t have fun. We had a good time swimming and playing volleyball. We then went to Old Town San Diego or whatever it’s called and had dinner at a cool Mexican restaurant. We then stopped in the Mormon Batallion visitor center (read more about the Mormon Battalion). The next day, the 18th, we went to Tijuana Mexico. This was my first time out of the good old USA. Me diverti mucho poder hablar con los mexicanos y aun mas divertido fue cuando ellos hablarian sin saber que yo y dos de mis amigos podian entenderles. Creo que gaste demasiado dinero en Tijuana, pero para que quejarme? Claro, no debia haber tenido presa comprando gafas de sol, pero ya ni modo. La historia de las gafas de sol: al entrar en Tijuana un hombre trato de venderme gafas de sol por $20. Yo le dije que no. $15, no. $10, no. $5, no, pero tal vez regrese luego le dije. Al salir de Tijuana pasamos por el mismo hombre y yo le dije que compraria los lentes por $5. El problema aqui fue que yo tenia prisa y el lo sabia. Yo le di un $20 y el dijo “$6 dolares”. A mi, con mi prisa, no me importaba ya y le dije algo como “whatever”. El me dio los lentes y mi cambio y sali corriendo. No fue hasta luego que conte el dinero para encontrar que habia pagado $12 por mis lentes baratos. Hasta este momento habia estado defendiendo a los Mexicanos puesto que conozco a muchos personalmente y son personas muy honestas. Pues, los que conozco son honestos y millones mas tambien, pero este no hombre no lo fue. :) Unos de mis amiogs se quejaban que todo lo que hacian los Mexicanos en Tijuana era para estafar. Mientras sabia que no todos son asi, ya no me caian bien todos. :) Yo le perdone por haberme estafado, pero la proxima vez no confiare tanto en personas que no conozco. Ya ni modo, a lo mejor el necesitaba el dinero mas que yo. No fue mucho.
Okay, back to English. After leaving Tijuana I don’t recall going anywhere else but back to where we were staying to watch a movie (Pirates of the Carribean). The next day, the 19th, we went to the San Diego LDS Temple and then drove to L.A. (well, near it anyway) where one of our friend’s sister and brother-in-law live. After eating at an In and Out Burger joint we dropped our stuff off and drove up into the mountains to go hiking. We were to hike to a waterfall and go swimming. Our friend’s sister was our guide. We somehow got off the trail though and our short hike turned into a really long hike. But don’t you fear. We didn’t get lost and eaten by bears or anything. We eventually made it to the waterfall and had a good time swimming. I need to scan these pictures in to post on here (I really need a digital camera). As it started to get dark we decided we better head back so we wouldn’t get lost again and freeze to death. We took the real trail back. We ended up being quite happy that we got off the trail on the way to the waterfall. The trail was boring and really quick. :-P
When we got back to the place we were to sleep we had a funny experience. One of my friends had bought a guitar in Tijuana. While we were hiking, the brother-in-law who stayed home decided to fill a plastic bag with powdered sugar and shove it in the guitar. So when my friend picked up the guitar to play it he noticed something inside after a few minutes. What the? Drugs! Or so everyone thought. Well, most everyone. From where I was standing I could see our friend mouthing to his brother-in-law “he fell for it”, laughing, and giving a thumbs up. It caused quite a stir and was really quite funny to watch. How did that much drugs get across the border through the scanning machines? etc. etc. etc. They eventually flushed it all down the toilet. I have no idea if anyone still believes it was really a bag full of drugs, I know the friend with the guitar doesn’t anymore. :) The next day I and two friends drove home while the rest stayed to go to a theme park. We called them half way home and asked how it was going. They’d been on two rides and were in line for another. We’re glad we didn’t stay.
Whew!
July: ULX 2004! ULX stands for Utah Lindy Exchange. A Lindy Exchange is basically a big huge swing dance that crazy swing dancers in big cities organize. People from all over the USA and world attend these things. An entire weekend of swing dancing! The dances usually go from 8 PM – 4 AM. It’s great. ULX 2005 is in January.
Also in July was our annual family reunion in the Uintah Mountains, Utah (Flaming Gorge is in the Uintahs). The actual family meeting part is boring, but we always go up a few days early to go fishing, raft the Green River, cliff jumping and sometimes water skiing on Flaming Gorge. Always a good time.
September: Started this blog! What? This shouldn’t be a highlight? Why are you reading then?!
December: Christmas concerts, skiing (was going to go again today, but other things got in the way), I learned how to tie my shoes the right way (!! you only think I’m kidding), and other fun stuff. The Phantom of the Opera movie was good, but I wouldn’t say it was a highlight and since this is supposed to be highlights I suggest you forget I said that. :)
That’s all for this year! I could have gone on and on, but I’ll be surprised if people read all of this already. :)
I’m looking forward to 2005! I wish you the best! See you next year!
Posted by Ryan
December 28, 2004
I’ve thought of an addition to my goals and resolutions: Apply to my life everything I supposedly know from my “connection, communication, and life” articles (Part I and Part II)! :-P
Posted by Ryan
December 27, 2004
My resolutions/goals for 2005 (the less personal ones anyway):
Technorati: Read the resolutions of other bloggers.
I like to write, but I need a lot of improvement. People often get lost or confused when I write something long. Then again, some people get confused when I write something short! I don’t want a NEW writing style, but to polish what I already have. The people who suffer through read my stuff all the way through usually say they enjoy it a great deal. I’d like to increase the audience that can enjoy what I write. Feedback in this area is greatly appreciated.
The problem (for me) with being largely self-employed is that I’m lazy if I’m not getting paid. Yes, I realize that that’s a pretty good oxymoron. It was a tough one to come up with. What I mean is that I work better when someone comes to me and says “I’ll pay you X dollars to ____.” Or “I’ll pay you x dollars per hour for ____.” But when I do my own thing I take longer to get the job done. I waste too much time. It’s really dumb because working for myself there is no (theoretically) limit to how much I can make if I put my mind to it. Yet I waste time because it takes a little bit more effort?? Or what? Maybe I need to figure out what it really is that slows me down. Well whatever the cause, I am striving to improve my work ethic.
Posted by Ryan
December 26, 2004
Crossings
I came to the swift, raging river,
And the roar held the echo of fear;
“Oh, Lord, give me wings to fly over,
If You are, as You promised, quite near.”
But He said, “Trust the grace I am giving,
All-pervasive, sufficient for you.
Take My hand — we will face this together;
But My plan is — not over, but through.”
- Lee Webber
Posted by Ryan
December 24, 2004
Things learned at the mall today while standing in line:
Finishing my shopping today (I actually finished), I ended up in line between two Discover Card employees. One worked in retention and the other worked in collections. The one in collections was the one who didn’t stop talking. She started off about how she’d been to the mall last night and wasn’t able to get what she needed. Then she started talking to the guy infront of me about his phone with the cool bluetooth wireless headset and their cell phone services, then somehow found out they both work for Discover Card. I didn’t really mind the lady talking the whole 20 something minutes I was in line (long line just for gift certificates). It wasn’t so boring that way. I did find out that people that are really behind on their payments (starting at I think 90 days) can get on some hardship plan of some kind even though the collections people can’t tell you that. The retention guy said people should just call to cancel their accounts. He said they get them on really good plans with 0% interest for life. Or So he said anyway. I don’t have a Discover Card so I can’t personally verify this, but if it’s true, how’s that for a Christmas bonus? :) Dishonest? I know I’d probably feel guilty (unless of course I really did want to cancel the card), but I’ll let you decide.
Anyway, this has been a weird Christmas Eve post. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas! Don’t forget to do some rockin’ around the Christmas tree for me (dancing).
Posted by Ryan
December 23, 2004
That’s right, I did. I had a blast skiing, but failed to take my camera with me. Of course, I could have stopped skiing, taken my skiis off, walked in those horrible ski boots to the car, retrieved the camera, walked back in the horrible boots, and been on my merry way, but I didn’t think it’d be worth it. The skiing was too much fun.
The snow was good. The views were breathtaking. So very beautiful. I love the views high up in the mountains. :) The weather was frigid (6 degrees fahrenheit in the parking lot, who knows how cold up on top of the mountain), but it was nice and sun-shiny. I’m hoping to go again next week. Probably to Brighton.
Posted by Ryan
December 23, 2004
I’m on the slopes of Snowbird today! I hope to get some good pictures to post on here later. My friend and I are doing a half day 12:30-4:30. While I hope all the swing dancing I do has done something for my endurance, I’m guessing since this is my first time skiing this season that my legs won’t last very long and I’ll be crawling to the car by 3:00. Oh well. It’ll still be fun.
Posted by Ryan
December 22, 2004
Not yet anyway. I think some people would have it that way, but I’m not too sure what I think about it. Not that it matters since my head seems to think that computers == internet. Read on.
The Internet is a lot like electricity. No, I’m not saying anything about how it moves around on wires. I mean it’s like when there’s a power outage. Even though you know there’s no electricity you still flip the light switches when you enter dark rooms (or maybe I’m alone in this). When my Internet connection goes down it’s the same thing. I know the Internet is down, but I still try repeatedly to use it just as I try to flip light switches when there’s a power outage.
The power company came yesterday and was supposed to be turning off our electricity so I prepared to shut everything down when all of the sudden the Internet stopped working. I didn’t realize I had plugged the hub into another power strip so when that computer was turned off it shut off the hub putting an end to the Internet. I moved the plug to another location, but lo and behold the Internet had decided not to work. Well, there’s a reason for this involving the hub, a router, and MAC addresses and if you really want to know about it you can e-mail me. The purpose of this is to tell you my little story. Yes, another little story. Not the little story I just told. So anyway, the power company never did shut off the power. I worked for a while without the Internet, but then decided maybe I should clean things up a bit around here (translation: I was looking for a flow chart and spec sheet I had hand written). I then came across a quote I thought would be good to post this coming Sunday. So I thought “I’ll just enter it in now and set the post time for Sunday.” I sat down at the computer to do just that when I remembered the Internet wasn’t working. Do’h!
It gets worse. After remembering I couldn’t access the Internet I still wanted to at least write a note for myself reminding me to post the quote. About this same time I thought about the light switch power outage comparison and thought I’d write a note about that for later as well. So I got a piece of paper and started writing “The internet is a lot like electricity” when I realized that I was sitting infront a perfectly functional computer that I could type a note on. I felt what I will call a “stupid sensation” which is probably very similar to what executives of large companies must feel after they have an interview with the press. ;)
To me, the Internet and the computer are one. If the Internet is down my mind tells me that the computer is useless. So maybe someday when they really are one I won’t even notice the transition. As for now though, I’m just glad I can use the Internet again.
Be sure to check back Sunday for the quote. :)
Oh, and I still haven’t found the flow chart and spec sheet.
Posted by Ryan
December 15, 2004
Hace tiempo desde que dije que escribiría en español de vez en cuando. No lo he hecho, así que me parece bien por este instante. Solo hay un problema: no tengo nada que decir. Mi mente está tan vacía como un vaso depués de un partido de fútbol. Normalmente, si no tengo nada que blog o no escribo nada o escribo algo un poco tonto. Tal vez sea el escribir en español cada vez que esto me pasa lo que me pueda ayudar.
Si hablas español, favor de corregirme si me equivoco.
Cómo aprendí español: Serví una misión por mi iglesia, La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días, por dos años aquí en EEUU en el estado de Ohio. Primero, fui a un centro de capacitación donde me enseñaron el español y cómo ser misionero. Estaba en ese centro por dos meses y por supuesto no aprendí a hablar muy bien. Fue el usar el idioma cada día por el resto de los dos años (también con estudio casi cada día) que me hizo poder hablar bien.
Y con esto concluyo mi mensaje: ¿Es “blogando” una palabra real? ;) Ah, no me importa.
¿Preguntas? ¿Comentarios? ¿Chistes (limpios)? ¡Dime!
See comments for translation.
Posted by Ryan
December 13, 2004
Just in case you were wondering, my Saturday was great! “Why?” you might venture. Well let me tell you!
Saturday morning and early afternoon were normal. Towards the end of the afternoon I went to a local mall (I added the word local for clarification purposes) to swing dance! The swing dance was held by the USDA. No, not the meat thing. USDA also stands for Utah Swing Dance Association. The term “USDA Approved” takes on a whole new meaning now, doesn’t it? I heard they thought about USA for Utah Swing Association, but the word “swing” also means other things so they decided against that. Not to mention it seems like USA is a popular acronym for something else? hmmm… Anyway, the purpose of the dance was to attract the attention of holiday shoppers to get them excited about swing dancing! The USDA is starting 5 week lessons in January and wants to get the word out.
Swing dancing always brightens my day, but it only got better from there: After hurrying home to clean up, I had the privilege to go on a date with a beautiful young lady! We went out to eat at a place called Kneaders. Kneaders is a bakery/sandwich & soup shop thingy. It’s great. I have no idea if they’re just in Utah, but if you ever get the chance to eat there I would recommend it. The atmosphere is fun too. I like couches in restaurants.
After eating we went to see The Forgotten Carols. If you haven’t seen, or even heard of The Forgotten Carols I strongly suggest you check it out! I was going to describe it in my own words, but an editorial on amazon.com explains it just fine:
From Publishers Weekly
Surely the most innovative holiday book this season, McLean’s slim debut novel, which began life as a musical, includes a CD with eight songs by the author that are integral to the story. When straitlaced nurse Constance Chamberlin is assigned to care for elderly “Uncle John” in his mansion during the Christmas holidays, the dour young woman has reason to think that her patient has deep psychological problems. His constant cheerfulness, intense candor and compassionate attitude make him appealing. But John insists that he is 2000 years old, and that the ornaments he puts on his Christmas tree were given to him by people who played a small part in the Nativity. The innkeeper who turned away Joseph and Mary, the shepherds who followed the star and an angel are among those commemorated in “the forgotten carols” that John plays for Constance. Of course, John isn’t what he seems, and Constance almost loses her newfound faith until she understands his gift to her. A mixture of whimsy and inspirational message, the story just manages to flow faster than treacle.
Even though the editorial uses the word “treacle” (which I classify as one of those words that “I will probably never use”) to describe the story, it really is a great story that flows faster than most liquids and all things solid. So again, if you’ve never heard or seen it before I recommend you do so.
But wait! It gets better! After the show with everyone trying to leave at once the parking lot was flowing a lot like treacle. So, we decided to dance while it cleared out. Turn up the big band music and watch out! Another couple even started dancing with us. It was great. After the cars cleared out (and then a few more songs) we went on our jolly way.
So now you know why my Saturday was great. It doesn’t get much better than swing dancing, being with an amazing girl, a great show, and more dancing (with an amazing girl)!
Posted by Ryan
December 10, 2004
Yes, this is a post about shaving products.
For years I used Gillette’s Mach3. It was great. When I saw the Mach3Turbo I didn’t believe it could actually be better. It looked the same except for little dots on the blades. Besides, the turbo razors were more expensive. Last December I think it was, Gillette sent out a sample turbo razor in the mail. I tried it and lo and behold it was much better.
So why am I posting this?!
Most guys I know use a razor blade for 2 weeks and throw it away (even guys with a lot less hair than I… not that I’m incredibly hairy or anything). I always used the Mach3 razors for a month or more. After that though they were too far gone for me. The Mach3Turbo, however, is different. I’ve only used two since this same time last year! They may cost more, but since they last so much longer it makes it worth it.
A couple of days ago my trusty Mach3Turbo felt a little too old so I used a brand new plain Mach3 razor. Logic tells me that a brand new razor would work better than a 6 month old razor. Unfortunately, this was not the case. It felt like it tore my face off. Well, maybe that’s stretching the truth a bit, but you get the idea. I’m truly amazed at the engineering of the Mach3Turbo. How it lasts for so long is a mystery, but I don’t mind.
uh… so why did I post this? I have no idea.
Posted by Ryan
December 9, 2004
We’ve heard it before and we’ll hear it again that one of the best ways to cheer yourself up is to help somebody else. Often times though, we really have no idea of the impact we may have had or didn’t have. We may never find out either.
I mentioned in my last post that it felt like this was going to be a very long night. Well, it has been. For a bunch of reasons I don’t feel like going into on here, I was feeling a bit down. Anytime I’m feeling down I have a tendency to over evaluate (I blame it on growing up without brothers) where I am in life. Tonight’s main thought seemed to be “Am I really doing any good?” Of course, evaluating where you are in life can be a positive thing, but if you’re over evaulating and worrying too much about something you’re not going to get anything done.
Some of the most rewarding moments in life are those moments when you find you helped, inspired, or cheered somebody else up. Even if it really wasn’t that big of a deal, it does make you feel better.
So anyway, Renee over at Down the Avenue just posted To The Dance & The Blogosphere in response to my response to her post Swingin’ Again. I had no idea my response would inspire her, but I must say it has cheered me up significantly.
I love the blogosphere and the amazing opportunities that it provides to make new friends from all over the world. Not that we didn’t know before, but the blog’s reach is definitely not limited to corporate blogging, web standards evangelism, and other geek related things… although that’s what blogs get news coverage for. I believe one of the biggest reasons blogs have caught on like they have is because they are so personal (how could a site called “Big Pink Cookie” not be personal?). I read that recently and wish I could remember where it was. Oh well. Yay for blogs and the blogosphere.
P.S. Believe by Josh Groban from the Polar Express sountrack is a good song.
Posted by Ryan
December 8, 2004
It feels like it should be 4 AM, but it’s only 9 PM. This is going to be a loonnng night.
Posted by Ryan
December 8, 2004
While this isn’t exactly anything new, I’ve been thinking about it a bit lately and thought I’d share my view on it.
It’s easier to be honest when it’s over something big.
I think most of us consider ourselves to be honest. It’s kind of like driving. I am an above average driver while the rest of you are all below average. In fact, you stink! Get out of my way you below average scum bag! To you however, I am the scum bag and you are above average. I’m not saying I think everyone else isn’t honest. I’m just saying I think we all believe ourselves to be more honest than we actually are.
If you consider yourself to be an honest person, what exactly do you think that means? Does it mean you are honest about everything and anything no matter what? Are you honest most of the time? Are you honest unless it’s something that doesn’t seem to change anything? Are you honest except for when a lie makes you look better?
How many times have you let a misunderstanding or even a blatant lie pass by because it was seemingly insignificant? Or even told a small lie not thinking it was a big deal? How many times have you driven away from a store and realized you paid less than you should have, but didn’t worry about it because A) it was a very small amount. B) it was the cashier’s fault. C) the ridiculously rich CEO of the company could learn what it feels like to lose money. or D) it’s President Bush’s fault (everything else is, why not this?). Guess what? Being honest isn’t always about who you hurt. Often times the only person you will hurt is yourself. That isn’t to say that hurting others is okay though. What I mean is that that even if you don’t care about hurting someone else, you still hurt yourself.
How many times have you been dishonest about something big (business decisions, really big juicy lies)? Chances are you’ve been more honest about big things than small things. I know a guy who told me about a business decision he had to make that could have saved him tens of thousands of dollars, but would have been dishonest so he didn’t do it. While that was probably a hard decision to make I somehow think it would be an easier decision to make than 10 cents at the grocery store.
If you’re honest about $40,000, but can’t be honest about 10 cents are you really honest? Or are you more afraid that you might get caught over the $40,000?
Right now you may be thinking “I understand this perfectly fine, Ryan. What’s your point?”
I guess my point is this:
While the big things can cause problems at work, in relationships, or other things how often is it the big things that cause problems for us? Seriously. When was the last time you were dishonest about $40,000 dollars? When was the last time you told a small lie? I believe we get so caught up in the big things that the small things are overlooked and our problems don’t get solved.
This can, of course, extend beyond just honesty. Honestly, how big of a deal is that your 2 year old kid spilled his juice? He/she doesn’t deserve getting yelled at. What about if your kid wrecks the family car? What is more important? That your kid is okay after his car wreck or that he wrecked the car? I’ve been in a few car wrecks (only one was my fault) and am grateful that my parents did not yell at me and tell me how stupid I was for doing whatever I did or didn’t do. Their first and last concern was always “is everyone okay?” I can honestly say that I have learned more from my parents not yelling at me than if they had yelled at me. When people yell at me I, like most everyone else, get defensive and don’t pay attention to whatever that person is saying. If my parents would have told me how stupid I was to get in a car accident I would have wanted to go wreck another car. Maybe that’s just me though. :)
Solution:
“Small things” need to become “big things” in our minds and in our hearts. If we can make small things big things, the big things will take care of themselves. If you’re honest about 10 cents at the grocery store, are you going to have a problem being honest over $40,000? Well, maybe, but it’ll still be easier than if you’re not honest about 10 cents. If you yell at your two year old because they spilled their juice are you going to be able to act even remotely sane if your teenager wrecks the car? If you can be honest over small things I am willing to bet you won’t have a problem when/if big things come around. Also, if you can suppress your anger/irritation over the small things I am willing to bet that when something big comes up you’ll be less likely to end up in jail with the police looking for your spouse in the land fill.
And so I challenge everyone, including myself, to pay closer attention to the small things. Make small things big things in your mind and in your heart. Take some responsibility! Feel guilty for once over something small! Apologize for yelling. Tell the truth about yourself. Go pay the cashier at McDonald’s that extra 25 cents you didn’t pay. You’ll feel better, I promise. It’ll get easier too. George Bush won’t get blamed for everything and will so be happier. You’ll be happier. Those around you will be happier. What could be better?
Do you agree? Do you disagree? Do you have a harder time over big things as opposed to small things?
Posted by Ryan
December 7, 2004
Surviving Christmas is a terrible movie. I personally think movie critics have seen way too many movies. I almost always enjoy movies that the critics rip apart. I have to agree with the critics on this one though. The plot (a millionaire rents out a family for Christmas) had so much potential and they blew it. There were funny parts, but overall it wasn’t very good IMO.
The Polar Express wasn’t terrible. It was better. It was just different. It had some good parts. I need to read the book now.
I went to see Surviving Christmas with a guy friend. I went to see The Polar Express with a girl (I’ll give you one guess who it was). Needless to say, the company made a difference in how much I liked each movie. :)
Those would be the only two new Christmas movies I’ve seen so far this year. As for older movies, I saw Elf last week for the first time. I guess since that’s only a year old it could still be considered new, but for my purposes here it’s not new. While the beginning and end were rather odd I thought the rest of it was absolutely hilarious. I recommend seeing it if you haven’t already. Actually, I recommend it even if you have seen it.
Has anyone seen Christmas with the Kranks yet? Is it worth going to see?
If you look at the word surviving long enough it looks like it’s spelled wrong.
Posted by Ryan
December 2, 2004
So it’s not any warmer here in Utah. :-D Haven’t had much of a chance to do anything besides setup another computer here at home and go swing dancing this evening.
The MSN Search (beta) blog linked to me (about the MSN Search beta search plugin).
Posted by Ryan
December 1, 2004
Sorry in advance for this random rambling post. I’m in Idaho right now and am rather bored without my computer. It’s also cold. Very cold. Kind of like Antarctica, but not quite as warm. Okay okay so it’s not that cold. Utah gets this cold too. It’s only 22 degrees fahrenheit.
So why am I in Idaho? Well, I got a frantic e-mail yesterday from (get this) a frantic sister. She wanted computer help. In the past this hasn’t been a problem since she used to live 15 minutes from me. However, as I mentioned before, my sister and her family just moved to Idaho. They run an online business and were having troubles with their computers here for some reason. So after a quick stop home to get some clothes I drove 3 hours to No Where Land Idaho. I think the drive is supposed to be closer to 4 hours, but I somehow made it in 3. Oops (okay so it wasn’t an accident). ;)
I got their e-mail working again, fixed the colors on my sister’s new laptop (Adobe Gamma is a great program), and am now moving files from her old computer to this one (the laptop). It says only 158 minutes remaining. Great.
Rock & Roll.fm classic rock hits radio on iTunes is my new favorite online radio station. Why? Because they play lots of the classic rock you can swing dance to of course!
While we were getting the colors to look right on this monitor we hooked up another monitor to compare the two together. For those of you who don’t know, with two monitors you basically have two desktops. The mouse just keeps on going over into the next one. Anyway, that monitor isn’t connected anymore. A few minutes ago I thought the mouse had stopped working. It turns out I just forgot to tell Windows that the other monitor wasn’t plugged in anymore so it was still acting like there were two desktops. The mouse was on the other monitor. Do’h! Even though I feel stupid, I’m always relieved to find out it’s not something more complicated. So then when I disabled the other monitor everything went black on this one as well. Sheesh. Suspending the computer and bringing it back fixed that.
I don’t know how long I’ll be here. I may go back home later today. Maybe tomorrow. If I end up staying here tonight I’m going to go swing dancing at BYU-Idaho with another one of my sisters who goes there. We’ll see. Oh, I really don’t have anything against Idaho.
Misc. stuff:
New Netscape embraces Firefox, IE – New Netscape browser promotes the use of tabs, scrolls RSS headlines in the toolbar and lets you switch between the IE and Mozilla Gecko engines! This sounds cool. Here’s a screenshot.
‘Blog’ top word of the year – Merriam-Webster said Tuesday that “blog,” defined as “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks,” was one of the most looked-up words on its Internet sites this year.
The Web Developer toolbar extension for Firefox and Mozilla was updated a little over a week ago. The new version, 0.9, totally rocks. My favorite extension got even better!
Microsoft uses Firefox for screenshot of MSN Search.
Posted by Ryan
November 29, 2004
I’d like you all to know that I went to bed before midnight for the first time in probably a year last night. It was 11:56 PM when I went to bed, but it was still before midnight! I’m amazing.
More useful posts coming later.
Posted by Ryan
November 28, 2004
If you’re not religious (or Christian) you may wish to skip this post.
Since today is Sunday I figured it’d be a good day for a spiritual thought post! I was trying to decide what I could post about, but was still undecided when I checked my e-mail today. A good friend of mine who might want her name to be kept anonymous on here (Beth) sent me this. I hope she doesn’t mind me posting this on here. :)
Nights like tonight are what remind me of driving home from Seattle that one year. Slick, snowy roads which are so deceiving. You can stand inside and watch the white slowly build on the lawns and then the streets and it all looks so innocent, clean and peaceful. Yet tap the brakes a little too hard, and you’ll be on the neighbor’s lawn! That didn’t happen to me tonight though. I was safe enough. I drove slowly, but I was safe. It’s just like Satan though – it shows us how beautiful and good things can be spoiled at the wrong turn or by not being careful. We learn from our mistakes, though and then we make it safely through.
How true! The challenge all of us have to be “… perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) is not an easy one. Especially with how deceiving Satan can be in making seemingly innocent things so harmful to us. We all fail miserably to be perfect, but like Beth said we learn from our mistakes so we can make it safely through this life. Thanks to Jesus Christ, we’re not stuck only learning, but can receive forgiveness for our mistakes as well. So whether we slide into the neighbors lawn or off a bridge we can learn from our mistakes, repent through Christ’s sacrifice and then not do it again!
Thanks Beth!
Posted by Ryan
November 25, 2004
I may be posting a little late, but Thanksgiving isn’t over yet! I want to wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving! Even if you’re not a U.S. citizen you still have things to be grateful for. So make sure to take a few minutes to reflect on those things.
Some things I am thankful for:
Posted by Ryan
November 24, 2004
Eric Cheng’s Photography
Norway – Glacier and Fjords
Favorite quote of the day from one of Eric Cheng’s entries (Underwater photography :: Guadalupe). The post is about diving with great white sharks: “Some females are so fat that their nose and jaws look tiny when they approach straight on. Some of the sharks are fat, too.”
:-D
Both found via Gadling.
Posted by Ryan
November 22, 2004
Nothing gets me kickin’ like… what?! Great lyrics, aren’t they? The song is Comin Home To You by Johnny Boyd (former lead singer of Indigo Swing). Follow the link on the song title to listen for free (Real Audio format). Anyway, I’m not sure what the point of this was other than the fact that I thought the lyrics were funny. I know nothing gets me kickin’ quite like a basket of chicken! Well, either that or double fudge brownie ice cream!
Posted by Ryan
November 20, 2004
It’s 2:50 AM right now. I have to wake up at 6 AM. It’s gonna be a crazy day and here I sit. I should be sleeping. I’ve got a wedding to go to. If I have time I’ll go to the luncheon thing they have afterwards. Then I’m going to help my sister move. I hope the moving won’t take too long and I’ll be able to make it to swing dance workshops starting at 2 PM. There are a bunch of workshops from 2 – 8. I guess if moving takes too long I can always just catch the later ones. The social dancing then starts at 8:30. It’s gonna be fun. It’s the Salt Lake City swing something or other Fall Festival! Workshops, competitions with large cash prizes, lots and lots of dancers… what a great way to spend half a day! Unfortunately, I won’t be participating in the competitions. I really want to, but don’t have a partner. I could always find one tomorrow, but it would have to be someone I’m already really comfortable dancing with. Anyway, it’s gonna be a fun day. I better get to bed!
Posted by Ryan
November 18, 2004
Has anyone else noticed that the large majority (as opposed to the small majority?) of bloggers and active forum users are Democrats? Actually, most media seems anti-republican, and not just here in the USA. While I don’t read as many blogs as Robert Scoble does (I don’t know how that guy has that much spare time!), I do read a lot and am constantly looking for new ones. One thing I have noticed though in my reading is that almost all bloggers are Democrats. It’s extremely rare to find a blog whose owner is Republican. Why is this? Do Democrats (maybe I should say liberals?) have more out-spoken personalities and so go into journalism, start blogs, etc., etc.? Are more Democrats more likely to be geeks? Are more Democrats better off financially and can afford to have their computers and blogs? Were all the blog owners, online forum users, and journalists the world over so surprised that Bush won the election because most of the media out there is pro-Democrat?
A few quick searches on google revealed:
1,010,000 results for blog democrat.
2,190,000 results for blog republican.
Am I just really good at finding blogs whose owners are Democrats or are the “blog republican” results all the Democrats complaining about Republicans? :-D
I have no real data to back up this theory of mine other than a really convincing “it seems like it.” Has anybody else noticed this? Or am I completely wrong?
Thanks for reading.
Posted by Ryan
November 17, 2004
This is old news, but after reading this I really wish I would have kept all the spam I’ve received over the years! This looks like a lot of fun.
A visual history of spam (and virus) email
Posted by Ryan
November 13, 2004
From the weekly box office leaders listed on movies.com:
This Week – Last Week – Film Title – Weekend Gross – Theaters – Theater Average – Weeks in Release – Total Gross
#19 – #15 – Napoleon Dynamite – $367,689 – 271 – $1,356 – 22 – $42,429,616
It’s finally on its way out. I’m thrilled it’s been in theaters this long. 22 weeks in release and 42 million dollars. Not bad! Not bad at all for a cheap film made by a BYU student!
So yeah, I love Napoleon Dynamite. It isn’t, however, the type of movie I could watch over and over and over. I think I could probably only see it once or twice a year, but I love it all the same. I don’t think there are many movies that can compete with the number of one liners this one has. My favorite: “I see you’re drinking 1 percent [milk], is that because you think your fat? Cause you’re not, you could be drinking whole if you wanted. Anyway, I have all your equipment in my locker. You should probably come get it since I can’t fit my num-chucks in there anymore.” :-D
If you haven’t seen it yet, go see it! A weird/wacky sense of humor is required.
Posted by Ryan
October 27, 2004
I’ve tested this website in most modern browsers. However, I don’t have access to a Macintosh computer very often so I’m not sure how it looks on those web browsers. If anyone out there using Safari, IE for Mac, or whatever else there is please let me know if it looks okay.
Posted by Ryan
October 26, 2004
I can’t wait until this arrives! What could be better than a T-Shirt advertising my addiction to Firefox? Well, okay so it doesn’t exactly advertise my addiction, but it does advertise the browser!
The order you placed at 6:03 PM Wednesday, October 20, 2004 has been shipped.
Shipped on 12:25 AM Tuesday, October 26, 2004.
Items Shipped:
Firefox T-Shirt – Large – White
$16.95 x 1 = $16.95
Now all I need is a “Vote for Pedro” Napoleon Dynamite t-shirt!
Posted by Ryan
October 23, 2004
It was when I wrote this anyway…
I don’t normally post on Saturday’s, but I liked an e-mail I wrote to my sister this morning so thought I’d post it. As a bit of a side note I’m considering making another blog for all my personal ramblings like this so the Ryanware Blog is more ryanware.com specific. Any opinions on the matter? I haven’t made up my mind (hence why I said “considering”) so your opinion could help sway me. Also, the weather has been rather unusual here in Utah over the last week (it’s been raining a lot). My wireless internet connection doesn’t work very well in this weather! Argh! Anyway, on to the e-mail.
My alarm went off at 8:45 this morning. Yes, on purpose. HAHAHAHAHA! What was I thinking? Anyway, my second alarm went off at 8:45:10 so I didn’t get to sleep very long after pressing snooze on the first one. After pressing snooze on that one I thought “just stay up. you can do it.” and I had a moment there where only by sheer will power was I able to get back into bed! Whew! Just kidding. It’s funnier that way though. I actually stayed up even though everything inside of me (and a few other things I’m sure) was screaming at me that I’d die if I even tried to take another step away from my bed. I almost got back in bed at least 30 times. I went to the bathroom (stumbling) only to hear my third alarm go off at 8:47. :-D I have three other alarms I could set, but I don’t like to annoy myself too much. It’s kinda funny actually, one of the alarm clocks is this little spaceman dude coin bank clock with alarm thing. The AA batteries in it are AT LEAST 5 probably 7 years old and it’s still going and keeps the correct time! I just had to reset my almost a year old Timex alarm clock with CD player and other neat-o functions because after having it for the last 10 months it was 26 minutes off!! 26 minutes! And it’s plugged in, has a backup battery and can probably communicate with extra-terrestrials should it need to! Hail the little spaceman dude coin bank clock with alarm thing!
I need to get to sleep earlier. Either that or sleep in more.
Posted by Ryan
October 20, 2004
I hate spam. I hate it a lot. I have never purchased anything from spam. I will never purchase anything advertised in spam. Or from any company that spams for that matter.
While I hate spam viciously I’ve noticed something quite useful about it. Here’s the scenario:
Work late, perhaps until 3 AM.
Wake up the next morning, perhaps at 8 AM.
(I chose these these hours because the amount of useful e-mail I get between these hours isn’t very high.)
Check my e-mail.
No e-mail.
What?!?! No e-mail? How could this be? It’s completely plausible to have not received any useful e-mail in the few hours I was asleep, but where’s the spam?
There are only two explanations to why I don’t have e-mail:
A quick call to the system admin or a quick test reveals that my assumptions are correct. No, spam was not eliminated from the world — my e-mail isn’t working.
Thanks, spam, for helping me discover a problem a little bit sooner than I otherwise would have. I still, however, hope you die a thousand deaths. No, make that 3 million deaths… after being tortured ruthlessly for at least 5 days straight.
Posted by Ryan
October 4, 2004
I’ve been home for one year today!! For those of you who don’t know…
“What? Translation please!”
I left on an LDS Church mission on August 1, 2001 and got home October 4th, 2004 after touring the mission a bit with my parents who came to pick me up. As LDS missionaries you can call home twice a year (Mother’s day and Christmas), write letters and e-mail (on public library computers) once a week, work a minimum of 63 hours a week (we’d usually work much more than that), cannot date, have another missionary as your “companion” every day all day, and a number of other things. All without getting paid! It’s completely voluntary. Each missionary has to pay his or her own way. Families and other people can and most often do help pay, especially for those without the ability to pay for it on their own. No one in the church HAS to go. It is strongly recommended for young men, and lightly suggested for young women. No matter how much I don’t like to admit it, girls are born with most everything guys learn on missions. Which is why I think it’s not as strong of a recommendation for them. :-D
Some think 2 years sounds like a long time to leave home and not get paid a single penny, but it really hardly seemed like 2 years to me. I served in the Cincinnati, Ohio mission. Which covers northern Ohio, a small part of Indiana, and a lot of Eastern Kentucky. I was one of the 20+ Spanish speaking missionaries in the mission. I spent about 1 year in Ohio and the other year in Kentucky. These are the cities I lived in:
No, I did not know Spanish before August 1st, 2001. :) Well, I did know agua, casa, and yo quiero taco bell, but that was it. I learned Spanish starting in the Provo, Utah MTC for the first 2 months, and then in Cincinnati from people and books! Studying for an hour each morning, reading the Book of Mormon and Bible in Spanish, and talking with people all day long really does a lot! No he tenido muchas oportunidades para hablar Espanol aqui en Utah durante el ano pasado, pero todavia leo el Libro de Mormon y la Biblia en Espanol… lo cual me ha ayudado recordar casi todo lo que habia aprendido en la mision. Tambien llamo por telefono o escribo correos electronicos a los que conoci en Ohio y Kentucky. Voy a tratar de escribir en este blog en Espanol de vez en cuando. A ver como me va. :)
Anyway, I can’t believe I’ve been home for a whole year! Time flies so fast! I used to think old people were weird to say it feels like their marriage of 40+ years has felt like nothing. After all, 3 months of summer seemed like an eternity with endless possibilities for fun! :-P I’m only beginning to understand, but at least I’m understanding, right? Right.
Posted by Ryan
September 28, 2004
I posted that I was on vacation, but I haven’t said anything about it since!
It wasn’t long, but it was fun. We arrived in St. George, Utah late Thursday night, unpacked and went swimming, ate dinner, watched School of Rock. Funny movie. Slept.
Now this is the good part… for as long as I can remember running more than 500 feet without stopping and resting has been what I like to call “cruel and all too usual punishment for people in gym classes.” So when my girlfriend’s brother suggested we wake up early and, of all things, go running I was literally floored when I heard myself say “sure.” The alarm went off early. I laid there for a while. When D (short for “girlfriend’s brother”) didn’t immediately get out of bed it gave me hope. But alas, my hope was vain. He eventually got up and we went running along with another brother and sister-in-law.
I had warned everyone before hand that I probably would pass out and die before we even got out of the Condo, but they didn’t seem to believe it. Somehow, neither did my body. I made it out of the Condo, down the steps, and for what was probably 1-2 miles. I still pinch myself every few minutes to make sure I really am still alive. I guess [tag]swing dancing[/tag] has me in better shape than I thought!
The rest of friday consisted of swimming, eating, playing pool and ping pong, shopping, and watching Singing in the Rain at the Tuacahn Ampitheatre. For as long as I can remember I have had a strong dislike for musicals, but for some reason unexplainable to olympic athletes I enjoyed it thoroughly! It was really well done. I was impressed. Even though olympic athletes can’t explain it (only because there aren’t any that know me) I think I have come up with a reason for me liking it. Remember how I went running that morning? And I didn’t die? Remember that? Good, I’m glad you remember it because I sure like thinking about it!
On saturday we went swimming again. Most of the family then packed up and hit the road by 11:30 AM. We went to Las Vegas for a few hours with a brother and sister-in-law. I hate Las Vegas. I don’t gamble, I don’t drink, I hate shopping, and I don’t party like it’s 1999. So basically there’s nothing fun for me to do there. The fountain show at the Bellagio was pretty sweet and some food place had really good, cheap, big hot dogs. We left Vegas about 4PM ish I think and got back home about midnight.
t’was a fun vacation. Good times. Olympic athletes the world over should be proud of me.
Posted by Ryan
September 24, 2004
I’m on vacation in St. George, Utah, USA this weekend enjoying the nice weather and the Tuacahn Amphitheatre!
Well, at least I hope it’s nice weather! You see, I’m writing this before I’m actually there. The forecast says it’ll be great. So I’m crossing my fingers!
Posted by Ryan
September 14, 2004
Some of you may have noticed that my site has been down a lot lately. After trying everything imaginable with the software and easily removable hardware, the problem was finally solved by moving everything over to a completely new box. Well, I hope it’s been solved and won’t happen again anyway! I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Posted by Ryan
September 13, 2004
I have a bad habit of sleeping in on days I don’t have to be anywhere at a certain time. Need to be somewhere at 4 AM? No problem. 6 or 7 AM? No problem. Don’t need to be anywhere at any specific time today? 6 AM? HAHAHAHAHA! 10 AM? HAHAHAHAHAHA! 12 PM? That’s more like it. Well, today wasn’t that bad, but I did push snooze every 5 minutes for an entire hour before I got up at 9:30.
I try, I really do. I set anywhere from 2 – 4 alarms in my room. My watch, my cell phone, a CD player, and another little alarm clock. All to no avail. I need an alarm clock built into my bed that senses my weight and doesn’t turn off until I get up and stay up for 10 minutes.
Posted by Ryan
September 8, 2004
We work for hours, days, months, and years to reach our goals. We put so much on the line. All too often we depend on something seemingly insignificant for everything to be worth it. I’m not saying NASA didn’t think the parachute system was worth thinking about, on the contrary, I’m sure they worked hard creating and testing the thing a whole lot to make sure it would work as planned. But when someone like me thinks of something like a space probe I don’t think about a parachute. Parachutes seem simple, but when a $264 million mission relies on a simple parachute it kind of puts things into perspective. I just hope NASA can get enough out of Genesis that the mission will be considered “worth it”.
Space Probe Fails to Deploy Chute, Slams into Earth
How does this apply to the kinds of things I do? Software development? Swing dancing? Eating? Okay maybe those last two shouldn’t be in the list. Then again, a lot goes into eating (chicken, egg, farmer, sell, purchase, cooking, blah blah) and we all hope that when we swallow, it’ll go down the right tube. :-P See? It applies to everything. Anyway… I don’t think the only ones who can learn from this are the folks at NASA. Of course, while it teaches us about working hard on preventive measures I think we also need to think about “What if this fails?” None of us like thinking about that, but what if? If I put everything on the line for one project to go big and it doesn’t, am I finished? Living in the streets? What if? What if everyone hates my blog? I’d just have to live in denial, posting for my own pleasure (which I guess is what I do anyway. no big deal).
Posted by Ryan
September 8, 2004
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away…
Okay so that should probably be “A few years ago about 15 miles from where I sit…” Ryan didn’t like math. It was too much work. Too many headaches. The word math made Ryan cringe. Ryan stopped caring. Ryan avoided it like the plague. This was before Ryan got interested in programming. Ever since then though, Ryan has had this “fear” of math. Most people (everybody) are quite flabbergasted (isn’t that a great word?) when they find out that Ryan is not very good at math. “But you’re a computer guy!” True, but believe it or not Ryan is not good at math.
Okay enough of that third person stuff. I recently decided I’d probably be good at math and actually like it if put myself to it. So I bought a couple of books to help remedy the situation. I’m starting over at the beginning with a nice refresher course I can plow through quickly to help get my mind ready for the other stuff. Wish me luck.
Posted by Ryan
September 3, 2004
As I mentioned in my previous (and first) post, I’m pretty new to CSS. Up until a couple of weeks ago I had only used CSS to control a few things like fonts and links. My first attempt at using CSS to control everything besides the actual layout can be found at UtahLindy.com. You see, one dark and stormy night I decided to learn more about CSS. I wanted to create something useful instead of some random test page I’d delete and forget about. I don’t run utahlindy.com, but I know the guy who does. So I decided to use that as my toy. After I was done I made a crappy image for the header and sent it to him. What you see on there now is what I created… besides the image. Bryce created a new one, thank goodness.
Oh, by the way, the couple doing the cool trick in the image is my girlfriend and I. :)
Posted by Ryan
September 3, 2004
When I first heard of blogs I thought “Blog? that has to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of.” The more I heard about them the more I loathed them. But wait! I only had a vague idea of what they were. Once I started experiencing them I got addicted. Some people dream about being in movies or being some big pop star. Me? I dream about blogs. Today one of my dreams has come true. I have a blog. What took me so long? I didn’t realize how easy it actually would be. WordPress made the whole process extremely easy. I love it!
Sorry for the boring UI at the moment. I only got really into CSS a few weeks ago. I’ll get my own UI up as soon as I can.
I do have an about page, but since this little section down here exists I should probably use it.
Basically, I love to read. I love to dance. I love to travel. I am fluent in both Spanish and English.
Also, New Orleans Dixieland Jazz music is pretty much the best music ever.
I'd like to thank the establishment and also, Wordpress.
© Ryan Martinsen, 2010.
All rights reserved.
