Change in the Couch...

I use to be religiously anal with my mail. Everything was opened, sorted and answered in a prompt and timely manner. Over the years, as my finances became increasingly paperless and my mail directly became more meaningless, it just started building up. It got so bad, I would pick up mail, throw it in a pile and it would remain unopened for months. Not the best way and more than one important piece of correspondence was misplaced. I couldn't just throw it all away, because I'm paranoid about identity theft and the amount of personal information in mail is staggering. So it just accumulated in piles in boxes, unopened and unread.

Well yesterday, I'd had enough and went out and bought a heavy duty shredder from Costco. I spent the next 3 hours opening and shredding mail. The shredder got so hot, it shutdown automatically and I had to wait 20 minutes for it to become cool enough to be used again. During the course of said shredding, I found two strange envelopes from my employer. They looked like the pay stubs I normally get informing me how much was directly deposited into my account that pay period but slightly different.

Upon opening them, I found two uncashed pay checks from December 2006. Thinking back, I remembered how during that month we switched over to a new time system, and direct deposit was disabled for two pay checks. They had laid there in those mail piles for TWO YEARS. I don't live pay check to pay check, and somehow had misplaced and forgotten them. Now they probably aren't valid anymore, even though there is no expiration date on them, but my company still owes me that money. I'll go talk to payroll on Friday and get them reissued. But basically I just found a few thousand dollars in my couch. What a crazy Tuesday...

A Clean Slate...

So in keeping with my whole get everything done before the end of the year which I've neglected for the entire year, I wiped my computer's OS last night. At first I tried to load Vista, but after seeing how full of fail it was (it couldn't or wouldn't detect my main storage hard drive) I deleted it (and two hours of work) and just reloaded XP.

Normally I like to reload my OS every 6 months or so (it's been over 1 1/2 years), clearing out any unnecessary programs, and more importantly any hidden spyware, adware and viruses that may have accumulated in its memory. For those who don't know, that's why your computer slows down over time. It becomes overburdened with junk in its memory. You could say, it's a digital version of emotional baggage.

The best solution, in my opinion, is simply nuke the entire system and start over. I keep my OS on a separate drive so the solution is fairly painless for me. An hour or two of reloading all my essential drivers and programs and I'm back in business, though it helps to be computer literate to deal with any unforeseen technical problems. If only we could deal with our own baggage as easily. Having problems getting over a traumatic event? Just format that brain and reload. Wouldn't that be nice?

Reading Profile...

One good thing about coming back into work is I'm reading the columns again. For some reason I can't find the motivation to read, or blog much for that matter, at home. I've always preferred to do it on the go, in the moment as it were, or from work where I do the majority of my current events reading (and thinking I suppose).

Anyway, on to the point of this post, it turns out that Karl Rove wrote a WSJ column about how many books Bush, who famously doesn't read newspapers (or security briefings warning about impending attacks), has read during the course of his presidency. However, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post isn't impressed.

As might be expected, most of Bush's books have been biographies and histories. Biographies are usually about great men who often did the unpopular thing and were later vindicated. As for histories, they are replete with cautionary tales. That might explain how the 1961 classic, Hugh Thomas's "The Spanish Civil War," made it onto this year's presidential reading list. Had Hitler (and Mussolini) been stopped in Spain, much misery would have been avoided. Substitute Iraq for Spain and you have, for the president, some reassuring bedtime reading.

Burn? I think so. I read anywhere on the order of 20-25 books a year. In my hay days I read a book a week. I can read a "classic" in a sitting. And a 400 page book is like a teaser. A real book starts after 600 pages. I wonder if our reading lists give an insightful view into our personalities. Considering I read nothing but political commentary, historical fiction, and science-fiction/fantasy, I wonder what mine says about me.

Holiday Hibernation...

One of the hardest things I've always found was the transition back from the holidays. Much like the adjustment of coming back from a great and distant vacation, the mind has problems adjusting. We get use to going to bed late and waking up whenever our bodies tell us it's time. Our brains are no longer in work mode, thinking about work things. It's just time to eat good food and do as little as possible. Or is that just me?

This year, instead of the normal week off between Christmas and New Years, I decided to divide up my work holiday break into two four-day weekends with a three-day work week squeezed between them. I did this for several reasons: to help ease the adjustment back into a regular schedule, because we have a deadline Tuesday next week which I need to make some serious progress on, and if I work during the "shut down" I can use those days later on during the year, like say during an extended trip to Europe or snowboarding in Colorado. w00t!

But coming into work with no one here, while nice for it's lack of distraction, is not very motivating I must admit. Oh well...

X-Mas Dinner...

Sometimes words are unnecessary :) Mmmmm... Hope you guys had some good food and quality time with the loved ones.

Merry Christmas...

Hopefully everyone is spending Christmas surrounded by friends and family. Here's hoping everything you wished for is waiting beneath the tree tomorrow morning. Merry Christmas all!

Silver Screen...

My brother just sent me this trailer. It's a new movie by Tim Burton but I've never heard of it. The trailer looks amazing and there are definitely some heavy weights in the cast. Check it out below.

Blow to the Ego...

So a 9-year old Indian girl is now Microsoft Certified. Feel bad about your self if you don't even understand Windows.

Below the Fold...

Tom Friedman cries about how much America's infrastructure sucks and how instead of investing in invention and engineering new technologies and products, we invested in creating more and more creative financial schemes. And we all know how that story ended.

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.

I think though the problem is not only where we emphasized our efforts, and one could make some pretty effective arguments against the amount of IQ actually on Wall Street considering our current financial woes, it's that intelligence and discourse have actually become things to be reviled in America. If you're too smart, you're an elitist. Heard that before? Yes, we should feel bad about actually be curious about the outside world and taking the time to actually learn a thing or two about it, like say where other countries are on a map. Here's to hoping the country takes a drastic course correction on Jan. 20th.

Social Phases...

There have been times in my life where all I wanted as to be surrounded by people, with no greater joy than getting to know someone new, and others where the thought of having to endure the inane small talk of strangers just makes me cringe in apprehension. In high school it was the latter, then it college the former. For the last couple of years, it's been decidedly the latter.

It's probably a reaction backlash from my trip to South America, like so many things these past two years, where I spent literally everyday having to meet and get to know strangers, only to eventually leave them. I think I've been suffering from social fatigue, but maybe, just maybe I'm better now.

I went to Steve's Gay Sweater Christmas party last night and for the first time in a while, being in a large social situation didn't feel taxing or annoying. I'm not the type of person spends a lot of time looking backwards. I've just never seen much value in it. Yes you want to reflective but dwelling in the past has never worked out well for anyone.

But if I had to choose between the two phases in my life I seem to be cycling through, I'd go with the social rather than the anti-social. Being anti-social might be the easier path, and there are times where it's fine to be so, but ultimately we are social creatures and those times in my life have always been the happier, more fulfilling ones.

In addition, the best times in my life were also accompanied by large dose of the writing bug which has returned full force recently. So I hope it's a portent of things to come. New year, new phase, the ink dries and pages continue to turn.

File This Under: Lulz...

Norad tracks Santa? Starts in 30 minutes!

In My Playlist...

Got the All-American Rejects' new album, When the World Comes Down, over the weekend and it's been logging some serious playtime in my iPhone as I try to figure out what to make of it. My initial impression is that it was designed with mass consumption in mind and isn't quite as good or original as their self-titled first album. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm sure the cries of selling out have already started.

There are definitely some catchy tracks on there like Track 7, Another Heart Calls, a duet with the lead singer and a female vocalist but there are also some decidedly generic pop rock songs as well. I'd say the Amazon rating is probably close to the mark.

I used many of AAR's older tracks in my Warcraft raiding videos and listening to them always brings back those fond memories. For now, it makes for a nice new addition to my ever growing playlist. I got a bunch of other new albums over the weekend which I'll explore more in depth as I give them a more thorough listening to.

Spotlight...

I was watching NextWorld on Discovery Channel the other day and saw, what I consider a very ingenious idea, for solving our unsustainable food production problems of the near future. A company called VeriticalFarm, one among many, proposes that we build hydroponic skyscrapers in cities to grow produce all year round locally.

When I hear of stuff like this, I think of the green revolution that our President-Elect talks about that will reenvigorate American industry, create millions of new jobs, and make us the world leader again in technology, or maybe that's wishful thinking. The cynic in me thinks that the nay-sayers will keep true change from taking place with their doom and gloom, and it will be another country that steps up and leads the charge. This would be one case I would be glad to be wrong.

I, Nanny...

Yesterday I wrote about Ergo Proxy, an anime I had recently finished watching. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humans live in bio-domes, are cloned in artificial wombs, and depend on artificial intelligent machines (androids) for many basic, day-to-day functions. Well it turns out that at least one part of that story might not be so sci-fi after all. In a Wired article, I just discovered that robot nannies are now available.

Models now on the market range from the Hello Kitty robot — "perfect ... for whoever does not have a lot time to stay with child," proclaims a vendor — to NEC's PaPeRo, which tells jokes, gives quizzes and uses radio-frequency identification chips to track kids. In another generation, these sophisticated machines will likely seem quaint.

Personal service robots are more common than industrial robots — an estimated 5.8 million are now in use, five times more than in industry — and people are happy to use them for tasks once fulfilled by people. One survey of public attitude towards robots found that many people were willing to to use them as babysitters — more people, in fact, than would use robots as priests or massage therapists.

Of course, while the technology is definitely cool, it does raise a lot of interesting ethical questions we'll eventually have to tackle as robots get more advanced and more prevalent in our daily lives. Man, these are crazy times we live in.

Biting the Bullet...

So I finally bit the bullet and paid for my first iPhone app last night. After thoroughly researching and reading what must have been a hundred reviews, I shelled out $4.99 for the game Orions: Legend of Wizards.


Think Magic: The Gathering meets Risk. I've always been fascinated by TCG games but was never willing to invest the money in them. They were quite popular when I was in high school, and I remember several of my friends playing daily during lunch, until all card and dice games were permanently banned (oh noes, gambling bad!). I was more a table top, D&D kind of nerd. Anyway, certain things, because of their tedious rules and maintenance, lend themselves very well to computers and TCG definitely falls in to that category. The developer is obviously a TCG lover himself.

It's funny, I debated with myself for a good long while whether or not to actually buy this game. But in retrospect, it's only 5 bucks. I guess I was worried about that slippery slope other iPhone owners have warned me about. The app store is evil they cry. Things are so cheap. A dollar here, two dollars there. It quickly adds up. I'll have to be careful.

But I wanted a new game since I beat Tap Defense on Hard and an update looks a long time coming. I considered Fieldrunners or 7 Cities, but wasn't really in the mood for another tower defense game. And a man can only take so much Sudoku. Mainly I wanted something that would have high replayability, and with it's random duel feature, I could theoretically play it forever.

I played my first duel on Easy last night and prompty got my ass handed to me by the computer. And I haven't even touched the campaign mode yet. Yeah... it's going to be a good long while before I can beat this one. Luckily the holidays are coming up :)

From the Kitchen...

I've always wanted to make a mustard potato salad, don't ask me why, I just like mustard ok? So last night I boiled up some golden potatoes and made some from a recipe off of foodtv.com, of which there are surprisingly few I might add. The recipe actually called for two different types of mustard, dijon and grainy mustard, and it turned out ok except I'm still trying to decide if I like the amount of vinegar it called for. I should have taken a picture but side dishes by themselves don't lend themselves to photos the way entrees do. Oh well, maybe next time. Been trying to stick to my make something new every week and I've found it's a lot easier if I don't shoot for the moon every week like how I started a few months ago. It's about baby steps.

Not Your Childhood Cartoons...

Just finished watching Ergo Proxy and it was definitely one of the best thinking animes I've ever seen. Any anime that requires lengthy paragraphs at the end episode explaining all the historical, philosophical, and religious references isn't your standard fare anime which got me thinking about something else.

Last week, at a coworker's Christmas party, my friend asked me why I still watch anime. His question is one I've actually heard quite a few times over the years, and demonstrates a common misunderstanding of exactly what anime is.

When non-anime people think of the medium, I believe the common perception is that of cartoons, and all the childish connotations that go along with them. But they would be drastically wrong, not that some don't fall into that category.

The truth is that anime is as diverse as any modern mass media format. It would be like seeing a reality TV show on FOX and thinking that it is representative of all American programming. Like actual TV shows, some anime of course caters to a younger audience, while others are geared for a much more mature and higher educated group often delving into areas left unexplored by American television such as the metaphysical (Ghost in the Shell), political intrigue (Patlabor) and the psychological (Ergo Proxy). To tackle these ideas in the States, you usually have to shell out $10 to see a multimillion dollar movie.

Honestly, in a time that regular TV is dumbing down their plots in order to cope with the ever shorter attention spans of Americans, most of the anime I watch is smarter and more complex than the majority of prime time programming. With that said, some of anime is decidedly childish but then again, so are many of the modern plots on television today. And it would suck to be serious all the time anyway.

Facelift...

With a renewed commitment to publish my sometimes revealing, though usually inane, thoughts once again, I decided giving the site a much needed visual update would help commensurate the effort. I've also figured out how to update blogger from my iPhone, so as of now, my short lived LiveJournal page shall be coming to a quick and sudden end, much like its beginning. While LJ is a much more social blogging community, Blogger offers something it simply can't match: access from work. Unfortunately LJ is blocked by WebSense.

How We Got Here...

A long read but an interesting one for those interested in at least one view point on how we, as a country, got to where we are. No surprise really who the NYT chooses to blame for our current economic woes:

For much of the Bush presidency, the White House was preoccupied by terrorism and war; on the economic front, its pressing concerns were cutting taxes and privatizing Social Security. The housing market was a bright spot: ever-rising home values kept the economy humming, as owners drew down on their equity to buy consumer goods and pack their children off to college.

Lawrence B. Lindsey, Mr. Bush’s first chief economics adviser, said there was little impetus to raise alarms about the proliferation of easy credit that was helping Mr. Bush meet housing goals.

“No one wanted to stop that bubble,” Mr. Lindsey said. “It would have conflicted with the president’s own policies.”

Warcraft Goes Mobile...

Dang, this makes me wish I had gotten an iPhone 3G sooner. I just found out that they have apps for the Warcraft Armory, Warcraft Talent Calculator, and Warcraft Loot lists for the iPhone. That would have probably been pretty damn useful/a big damn time waster before I quit. Nerdy, I know, believe me.

Speaking of which, it's been what now... 2 or 3 months since I quit? Surprisingly no shakes, headaches, or other prominent withdrawal symptoms. I guess it's true, when it's time, it really is. While I still miss the people, more than I care to admit, I definitely don't miss the heavy time requirements. Besides, with my heavy work load and winter activities gearing up, I highly doubt that schedule would have been sustainable for much longer anyway. Feels good to be free.

The Price of Procrastination...

Every year I tell myself I won't wait till the last minute to do my Christmas shopping. That this year, it'll be different. I'll make my lists and do all my shopping online so I can avoid the crowds and lines at the malls, but it never turns out that way. It's always, oh I'll do it next weekend, and then the next weekend after that until the entirely too predictable event occurs: it's the weekend before Christmas. So this past weekend I was forced finally from necessity to brave the malls with all their overly large decorations, brass band CDs playing carols over the loud speakers, and throngs of other fellow procrastinators frantically dashing from store to store.

But after two days of some pretty hardcore shopping (for a guy mind you), I managed to make a considerable dent into my list. I got stuff my sister, her hubby, my brother, most of my friends, and my niece. I have a few others, but I think my sister has got me covered on the majority of them. I even managed to get a few nice things for myself, which always helps ease the pain (and cost) of spreading Christmas cheer. One good thing about procrastinating till the last minute is 50% off all holiday decorations, which means I got enough lights for my little condo for just eight measly bucks. Kinda scary, but the lights have chemicals on them that are known carcinogens. They were probably made in China. Happy holidays.

An Earlier Age...

Earlier this week, I remembered back to my band days of high school and today I discovered, to my infinite happiness, that gmail now allows you to log onto AIM which of course reminded me of my early days of employment with lazy days of furiously clicking keys as I chatted my days away.

While I probably don't have as much free time at work as I did as a lowly software quality intern, a few minutes here and there to converse with my distant friends will be a nice occasional distraction. Before they blocked it from work, AIM was the primary way I kept in contact with people. Hopefully with it's subsequent return, I'll be able to as they say, KIT, better than before.

So here's to AIM, helping people waste time at work since 1997. Happy chatting.

Flashback...

Our brains can be such a wonder at times. On Monday, I drove home in the early hours of the evening during a brief respite of the downpour which has engulfed San Diego this week. As I cracked my window slightly, letting a current of frigid air, scrubbed cleaned by hours of rain, into the car cabin, I caught the scent of exhaust of the two city buses in the lane ahead of me. The memory the smell triggered hit me almost like a physical force, throwing me back in time over a decade, to a time I spent most of my weekends traveling in a caravan of such buses from school to school all over Southern California.

I could vividly recall the sound of large diesel engines idling and the cacophony of hundreds of voices, some urgent, some casually preparing for the coming performance. My skin itched from the stiff pressed polyester of the uniform and prickled where exposed to the brisk autumn night air. In the distance, the muted staccato notes of a drumline could be heard warming up. And through everything, that smell. The smell of exhaust and fuel of dozens of internal combustion engines mingling in the air.

And as fast as it came, it left, fading like a person walking into a thick fog who's hard edges were quickly diffusing into the white background. I hadn't thought about that time in years but for that brief second, it might as well have been yesterday.