The president used the phrase, "Spudnik Moment" in his SOTU speech in reference to JFK's rebuttal in that we would set a man on the moon at the end of that decade. it got me thinking, not only would it be impossible to actually do something major and momentous as setting a man on the moon, but in this social media climate the president would get torn to shreds by fox and other media outlets for even proposing them. personally i want something like the moon landing to happen. i would like to see the president get up on stage and say to the world that we plan to put a man on mars by the end of this decade, (we choose to go to mars in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.). if not space then something as momentous as it in comparison. something that will not only create jobs and money, but also unite us and show the world (and ourselves) that we are still capable at creating moments that we look back on in reverence for the accomplishments we made. that we are still capable of innovating solutions for our problems, and instead of spending all our time debating things that we still have the will power to actual do something about it. we are rotting from the center as a nation. we had a single moment of unity on 9/11 but our douchebag asshat of a president turned what should have been a world sympathizing healing moment into a clusterfuck war/fear/hatred mongering asscloud of suffering. i want the president to lead us for a change. i want the president to not just say what he wants us to do, i want him to dictate those things for us to do. if the hoover dam was proposed in today's world it would never leave the commissioners desk, if the highway project was proposed by Obama fox would call him a Nazi socialist and it would never even get started. if Obama proposed we go to the moon in this decade, fox would tear him a new one saying he is wasting money in space instead of spending it on things down here. nothing major can even begin to start because media has too much power and handcuffs the president from making bold decisions. whats sad is the president lets them. i say let him be bold, i say propose something major Mr. President. i want bold, i want action, i am so tired of all this talk about shit that never gets done.
Wiki Page of the Day (WPotD)
The Trump International Hotel and Tower, also known as Trump Tower Chicago and locally as the Trump Tower, is a skyscraper condo-hotel in downtown Chicago, Illinois. The building, named after real estate developer Donald Trump, was designed by architect Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Bovis Lend Lease built the 98-story structure, which reached a height of 1,389 feet (423 m) including its spire, its roof topping out at 1,170 feet (360 m). It is adjacent to the main branch of the Chicago River, with a view of the entry to Lake Michigan beyond a series of bridges over the river. The building received publicity when the winner of the first season of The Apprentice television show, Bill Rancic, chose to manage the construction of the tower.
I will never understand why companies make concept cars but never actually produce them. what is the point in spending millions of dollars to produce what would be an amazing product, but never actually produce them for consumers. like this Volkswagen XL1 Concept,
Sporting up to 300 MPG in a plug in diesel car. it will never see the light of day. why? because they do not have to make cars like this for them to continue selling cars. they can continue to make the same old shit year after year and people will have no choice but to purchase them. one of these days i will take the time to put together a complete rant of my feelings about the car industry.
Started drinking pop again. to be more specific, i started drinking Dr.Pepper at home again. to keep from everyone saying i am hypocrite let me explain in detail. it is not that i do not like pop in general, it is that i do not like High Fructose Corn Syrup. it is unnecessarily dense and provides no benefit other than taste. the body can not even digest it correctly. so i tend to stray as far away from that stuff as possible. very hard since almost everything is made with it. so companies have been releasing heritage and sugar only products for a while now and i hope they stay popular. Dr.Pepper has done this, they released a Heritage product which is Dr.Pepper without the corn syrup. instead it has regular sugar. i think it taste better, although that might be a biased opinion since i want it to taste better. i just hope companies continue to make this kind of product because if they do not then they lose me as a customer.
The wakemate product is kind of a weird thing all unto itself. It is one of those products normal people would scoff at and quickly label as gimmicky and pointless. However for me it is quite the opposite. I tend to be very organized and due to a small level of OCD I have, I tend to go overboard with recording and storing of information. For instance I have 6 duplicates of my family photos spread throughout a 20 mile radius. Some would call that overboard, but those are the people who bitch when they accidentally delete half their irreplaceable photos. For 3 years I kept a detailed log of everything I purchased in an excel spreadsheet. I had it setup for total debt and credit management for daily, weekly, monthly and yearly summaries. I also had binders full of receipts. A binder would have 365 slots for everyday of the year. This is just the tip of the Iceberg when it comes to the information I obsess about. I have cooled down a bit over the years and deliberately keep myself in a state of apathy towards certain segments of information in my life. It is a constant struggle but in order to avoid the hermit hoarder tendency I have it is essential. With all that in mind the ability to track my own sleep in a simple graphical manner pleases me at a very deep level, almost a type of indulgence.
I have been using this for about a week now and so far i am really enjoying it. it tracks everything, from time it takes to fall asleep to how many times i move during the night. it seems really accurate too. i conducted some tests were i got up in the night to walk around and get a glass of water and it recorded it as a time awake phase. the only issues i have is with the battery. when connected the amount of sleep time it can stay alive for is really finicky. i will connect it via bluetooth and it will say 21 hours, i will look away and then back and it will say 18. so i do not know what that is all about, but i have not had it die during the night so that is good in my book. one thing i would like to see them do to the site that shows the graphics is have a bar graph displaying the time frame of sleep, and show on it marks where things occurred, like deep sleep or movement. other then that i really like this system.
On to the news of the day not much happened to me personally but a whole hell of a lot happened in Egypt. just a crazy amount of revolt and revolution going on over there right now. they even turned off cellphone coverage and the Internet to the entire country because they were being used as organization tools for the protesters. one thing i find interesting about this whole thing is, it will be the first revolution fully recorded. what i mean is that in the past when something like this happened the only people who could afford to have equipment capable of recording video or taking photos were news stations and governments. so a government like Egypt would only need to censor up to 30 different small groups from spreading news that would tarnish them. now almost every citizen has a phone capable of video recording. so for the first time we will get a real glimpse unedited from within a revolt. no censor will be able to control the onslaught of media data that will fill the Internet when they put it back online there. we are coming into the 21st century when something like this will not be meticulously recorded with detail. quite an amazing thing.
Not really sure what i am going to do in minecraft next. kind of hit a phase of indecisiveness. last time this happened i ended up with a 1/3 replica pyramid of Giza so it is not really a bad thing. trying to help Steve with his building but failing hardcore since my only task is to get the minecart elevator to work and i can not seem to do it. it would just be so much easier if there was just an actual elevator in the game.
I was watching the news tonight while on break when i saw that they are putting a ballot up for vote on changing the gun concealment laws in Michigan to allow for weapons on school and church grounds. really? i mean seriously how is this even close to a good idea. i am sure most would say that "O well this is my second amendment, it is in the constitution nanner nanner". don't you think you are taking this 2nd amendment thing a bit to far? i am okay with you extrapolating an amendment meant to deal with large rifles people used to feed their families with 200 years ago, but distorting it into something having to do with guns designed solely to kill each other, no i am not cool with that. and seriously who the hell thinks it is a good idea to allow guns on school property. i do not give a shit if the constitution says you can bear arms, it is a stupidly terrible idea and should be denied on that sole fact. stop being assholes and forcing this gun shit down every ones throats when you are the ones with problems. you do not need a pistol. you do not need an Uzi or a bazooka. it is that fucking simple. they are all designed for the sole purpose of killing other human beings and by that logic should cease to exist.
Tonight was the state of the union address, and i was unable to view it since i was working. all i have heard from the Internets via twitter and other sources is that the tea party had a rebuttal to the SOTU speech. the link to the video of quite possibly the dumbest fucking lady on the face of the planet is here. i think i heard something about Americans being 21 generations old, and that the founding fathers fought tirelessly to eradicate slavery. also some historically inaccurate stuff about Lincoln. are you fucking kidding me? why is this lady allowed to leave her home, let alone run for office. just blows my mind how embarrassingly stupid our species can be.
As for the actual SOTU address, i have yet to watch it at any great length. i am happy to hear about Presidents Obama's plans for the digital infrastructure. linking 98% of the United States is a good idea. education is the key to a civil society. with more people connected to the Internet the ability for knowledge to be gained is increased immensely. so it may lead to a smarter population. even if it is slight. unless knowledge is like economics where the right get richer and the poor get poorer, the smart get smarter and the dumb get dumber. if that's the case then hope is lost for this species since natural selection is not really in full effect anymore.
Apparently polar bears swim up to 400 miles or around 9 days to find ice. i wonder what the possibility of them evolving amphibiously, or fins or something. would be an adaptation that would cause more bears to survive, so it is plausible.
Finished another audio book today at work. Rendezvous With Rama is rated as one of Clarke's best works. an alien spacecraft enters the solar system heading straight for our sun. no one is able to detect anything about it from outside probing. it appears to be a giant cylinder with capped ends about 50 kilometers long. they Cristen the craft Rama after the Hindu god. after sending out a mission to meet up with the craft they finally enter it and are amazed to find that it is hollow inside. the ship is a hollow rotating cylinder, providing "gravity" to the inner hull of the ship, .6 earth gravity that is.
Due to the time limit forced upon the crew because of the radical orbit Rama is taking they have to leave before it reaches para helion and becomes to close to the sun for comfort. as Rama nears the sun it becomes increasingly more active and over a time creatures begin to show up. odd creatures that have a biological built in battery system making lungs, and digestive organs completely unnecessary. and everything is in threes. all the creatures have either 3,6 or 9 legs. along with the animal triplicates all of the architecture is in triplets. after reaching the crews time limit they promptly leave Rama, but stay in a close enough orbit to view it glide through the corona of the sun and exit the solar system.
Overall it was a fantastic book and if you like hard scifi i highly recommend it.
I will be starting the next book in the series tomorrow at work, Rama II.
I finished the long and tedious work of designing our mine cart station in minecraft. the crazy intricate layout of the red stone and track underground is insane. i do not think i could possibly utilize that space anymore efficiently. i tried to take a screenshot but there is more underground than there is visible so it is pointless. the way it is designed is simple. there is a cart(pez dispenser) which brings out a cart, than the weight of the avatar sitting in the cart triggers a pressure plate which brings out a booster to boost it along the track out of the building. the receiving station is pretty much the exact same thing. there is supposed to be a really cool circuit to tell it when the avatar has left the mine cart, leading it back to the dispenser, but it just does not want to work and i am not a redstone expert. i made it so complex that it is impossible for me to find the fault. so now i just have a booster flying around the receiving track. the design came from this video. this is only part one of three.
Spent the day at a super fancy mall in troy Michigan today and had a chance to check into Gowalla a lot. one peculiar store we went into was a Sony store. i did not even know they existed. while we were in there we tested out the new PlayStation move. my review is that it is not very good, lol. the calibration before every game is annoying, tedious and utterly destroys the enjoyment. the sensor seemed to work moderately well, even though there was a very detectable delay between actions. worse than the Wii's delay making it very hard to get used to. controllers were Sony cheap black plastic. overall it felt very sloppy and cheap.
Moving on throughout the store we stopped by to check out the PSP Go. i was completely stunned at how incredibly cheap and flimsy that product is. it was so bad, it seemed like they literally spent 25 minutes designing and producing it. made out of the cheapest plastic i have ever seen, (milk cartons have better materials) i felt like i could snap the thing in half if i looked at it wrong. that's not even talking about the tortured interface and the more than pathetic Internet browser. overall felt very cheap.
Went over near the 3d TVs, put the glasses on and immediately remembered why 3D TVs are cliche and stupid. after that we walked over to the touchscreen computers where i typed this note out on the front facing monitor. so overall the Sony store sucks just as much as Sony does as a company.
Visited the apple store not only just to visit the apple store but also because Larry had them fix his iPod. got on the 13 inch Macbook Air and decided i should test it out on the thing i do most often these days, by booting up the browser version of minecraft. i successfully logged into my server i have running at home and played a bit with Steve. was really cool being able to remote access my server for the first time.
Went and saw The Green Hornet that night with Mark, Ryan and Joe. i thought it was very funny. although i am a pretty big Seth Rogen fan. some of the story line was predictable, but what is not these days. had some very funny dialogue parts along with some crazy action scenes. very satisfied with the first movie of this years movie release season.
Went ice skating today with my sister. i am glad to say that i did not fall one time and that i felt very comfortable on the ice, being that it was only the third time being on the ice in my life i was pretty proud of myself.
Played a board game with my parents when i got home. my dad purchased some old games from the auction house down the road so he was super excited to play one of them. he suggested the game sorry. I HATE SORRY. so stupid, it is the only game where one can make progress and lose it all at the end by the hands of a fellow player depending completely on chance. at least with risk or stratego if you lose with a lead it is all your fault. but in sorry everything is chance so i hate it. anyway we ended up playing password. a mimic of the old 50's TV gameshow and one of my favorites to watch, mainly out of nostalgia of a time i was not a part of.
I am going to start putting my minecraft updates at the bottom of my posts from now on. since they will probably be daily and they are the least interesting. while playing today Steve started his building project. a giant skyscraper with a ton of glass. should be very cool when it is all done. i worked on the global minecart track all day. i finally understand the redstone circuits. they all run on Boolean math and can be very confusing at first. i successfully setup two small circuits today, one that is a track switcher and another that allows a cart to be deployed. i ran out of iron before i could completely finish the whole track system, so now it is cycling back on the same track every time leading to there a limit of 1 cart on the track at a time. in the future my plan is to have 10 carts circling the world at all times so one only has to wait at maximum 10-15 seconds for a ride to show up. will be extremely convenient for everyone, especially when i add in the track that goes down to Joe's tunnel system.
Here are some pictures of our server at the moment. we are all very proud of it.
The world is happy place now. Steve and i FINALLY found a way for him to play on my server. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so now this brings the amount of people on the server to 4 since outside people can connect to it. Steve also said he plans on inviting some of his friends so the amount may be increasing. i am so excited to finally have a true minecraft multiplayer experience. also he showed me how to use the function keys correctly so now i can take screenshots and go into third person within the game. our next mini-project is setting up a rail system with a switching station with red stone so that one only needs to flip a switch at a grand central terminal and go anywhere on the map.
After the first night of using my wakemate i am happy to say i slept productively. i am still evaluating this product for its merit. i was looking at the leaderboards and apparently someone in Sweden got a 93 score. i do not know how one can sleep that deep. must be sedated or something.
When i got to work today i knew i was going to be an extra person so i was mentally preparing myself to have a terrible day, but when i got there my boss said that they had way to many people and that if i wanted i could go home. well i am not about to miss out on having another day off even though i am broke. so i went home.
While playing minecraft today i decided to visit the nether world, which requires me to restart the server with different properties. instead of letting me use a gate the server is dumb and forces me to manually change stuff. anyways i walked a bit in the nether and got a ton of glowstone, so i decided to get back to the regular world. when i restarted the server and rejoined it had spawned me somewhere completely random. i had no idea where was and i did not have a compass because i did not think i needed one. so i was lost...in a game as large as the earth. i walked for about 20 minutes southeast in the direction to where our house would have been. no luck so i had to restores from a backup at 12:03 last night. so i lost all the work i did last night between 12-6. lame because i had finished the floor of my pyramid and now i have to do it all over again. i am just glad Joe had not done anything in that time frame, it would have been real hard to break the news to him that i fucked it all up. but he is out of town at a funeral right now leaving the apartment to myself for these two days. which is awesome.
Received my wakemate wristband in the mail today. so tonight is going to be the first night i start tracking my sleep. i do not know how gimmicky this product is, but i guess i will find out. the concept is pretty cool. they use the technology hospitals and health care facilities use to monitor peoples sleep to track ones sleep at home. all in a nice little felt covered wristband. my review of the product will probably take about a week to formulate, but i am excited to see if it works. it is meant to wake one at their optimal REM cycle so that person feels refreshed and not groggy.
Saw a segment on family guy about Jurassic park the other night so of course that meant i needed to have a Jurassic Park marathon. which always leads to me checking on the status of the Jurassic Park 4. last time i checked it was just dust in the wind, but apparently it is a serious endeavor now. Joe Johnston the director of the third Jurassic park said he is going to start working on it right after he finishes Captain America. he also said that it would kick start a completely new trilogy that takes the series into a completely different direction. should be very interesting. i hope they find out the raptora are smarter than they had originally thought and that they are equivalently intelligent to humans and chimpanzees. would be interesting to watch a movie about a species 65 million years old that have the same potential as man. i know that is what they were leading on about in all previous 3 movies so it is only a logical step to show them in the next movie with a rudimentary civilization with tools and such.
Woke up early(11:00) and went to IHOP with Joe and josh. the crowd is completely different at noon then it is at midnight. very sharp contrast. i had to work a crap schedule today, got stuck doing rooms as an extra person. the only good thing about being an extra person is the chance of going home early which happened tonight. got home an hour early to attempt for the millionth time to setup a public minecraft server so my cousin can play with us. as usual it ended in tears. we have given up on trying to get this to work until the actual multiplayer is a finished product. the main issue seems to be the fact that i have no idea what i am doing. i am supposed to forward a port. so i follow all the instructions in the YouTube video but it still does not work. so i have no idea.
Apples quarterly earnings came out today. turns out their iPad profit is more than their entire laptop line profit. which is pretty amazing. it is only hair short of trumping their entire computer line. as far as i am concerned that is a pretty successful product. Tim Cook the COO of apple had a funny quote about how all the other tablets are bizarre. which is true i have had the chance to mess around with the galaxy tab, and i am honestly not impressed. it is nothing compared to the iPad. i honestly think it is as simple as these companies do not spend enough time and resources into developing individual products. no other company seems to understand that when you release a product, that is your product for the next year or so. that is what is wrong with the cellphone market on a whole. every other month a new android phone comes out that is not really a significant improvement over the last, which leads to the android that came out 9 months ago being obsolete and unsupported. it is a tragedy that companies do not work like apple. when apple comes out with a phone, or a anything really, that is their product for the next 365 days. so within those 365 days they are working on the next generation. when if you look at the android timeline they spend maybe 3 months on a phone.
I still have not heard back from US Steel up in Detroit. i was really hoping it would work out. i would finally be living comfortable for once. but no....so now i think i am going to start applying to places around here. i was looking on monster and there are a lot of drivers wanted. i do not know what this job entails(driving, duh) or how much i would make. i do enjoy driving when i have a reason to drive.
I got a credit card in the mail from American express the other day. i honestly do not know anywhere that even accepts that card, but i digress. the letter was in excited font to inform me that i had been chosen to have their oh so special card. so i opened it just to see how special it was and it has an annual fee of 95$. are you fucking kidding me?!?! who the hell would pay to own a credit card? and why would they act like it is some kind of privilege for me to have it. they are obviously sending these out knowing they will be getting a hundred dollars a year guaranteed.
Teefury is a site that hosts a t-shirt for one day only. a very cool site that helps artists because all the shirts are uploads from people around the world. the one today is awesome. it is a Mario-House mash up and i just had to get it.
I am working on a post that should clarify exactly how i feel about the video game industry. i have tomorrow off so i should have time tomorrow to work on it. i might even do a good EA post.
Had a good day off today. went to the pool hall with Joe and josh for a little bit. realized once again how bad i am at billiards. while we were there we also played ping pong, i went 2-2. after that we ate at applebee's, after we were seated i got up to use the restroom because my hands felt like i had bar all over them. i found a 10 dollar bill on the ground. i went back to the table and i was like "hells ya i found a 10" i got a total of three high fives. however after closer inspection of my total cash on my person it turned out to be my own 10 i dropped. so Joe reneged those high fives at once. the waiter was really cool and even commented on my einstein shirt. i got the fiesta lime chicken like i always do, delicious! after that we went bowling with Alissa at glass lanes. we wanted to go to miracle lanes were the games are only 99 cents each. but they are stupid and close at 9. i do not understand that at all. anyway i bowled like crap because my head hurt. know how one feels when they stand up to quick, well it felt like that but constantly. not a fun feeling. went back home and talked josh into getting minecraft. he helped a great deal with the Pyramid project.
I finished my pyramid tonight finally. i am so happy, it is definitely the most impressive thing i have ever done in a video game. what that says about me i do not know, and i do not care. i will have a video of the time lapse up tomorrow when i finish it. much to late to work on it now since i am getting up at 10 tomorrow for breakfast. however i do have some pictures of it finished.
Perspective of the House
From the top floor of the house
Josh and i stayed up a bit after Joe decided to go to bed. he helped me clear more than half of the inside floor area. the object is to make the inside a level surface requiring us to dig out at least 10,000 blocks in the process. overall it was an extremely successful night.
Watched the invention of lying last night. Now one of my favorite movies. Such a simple concept but Ricky did a fantastic job flushing it out into a film. The plot of the movie is man never evolved the ability to lie. So everyone tells the blunt truth, which leads to some very funny dialogue especially when Ricky goes on a date with a women clearly out of his league. Somehow he gains the ability to say something that is not so(a lie). Since no one knows what a lie is everything he says is taken at face value. He unfortunately says something about a man that lives in the sky and that people do not go to a world of nothingness when they die. Making him a messiah to the people around him. Essentially he invents religion. I highly recommend this movie, hilarious dialogue.
I do not know how they got so many people to participate in that film, but they all had small parts. Like on scene each from Jason bateman to John hodgman. It was crazy. Almost every scene had someone new. It almost seemed like Ricky said he was doing a movie and people lined up to be in it. One of my favorite parts was Steven merchants small bit. I was surprised that Karl pilkington was not in the movie at all. Seemed like something Ricky would do.
i have finished 3/4 of my pyramid in minecraft. i would have had to finished tonight, but i ran out of materials. so tomorrow when Joe gets back on we can get me the final amount so i can finish it. i just have to decide what i want the inside to look like.
Had the day off of work so i spent most of it just sitting in front of my macbook messing around. had to go to my parents house to change my headlight that went out. of course it was sub-zero temperatures while doing it. my dad did all the work i just held the flashlight, can not wait until i have a kid.
Went to the bowling alley with Joe and Jackie. bowled pretty good for not stepping foot in an alley in over 8 months. left early and went back home. Joe and i played some minecraft on our server and we both made quite a bit of progress. Joe has given up on his castle and has decided to assist me with my Pyramid project. he widened a tunnel underground 3*25*really long. mainly for materials for construction projects going on right now. honestly 90% of the work on this pyramid is clearing the work space on the map before the work actually commences. i finally succeeded in the starting of the outer framing. Joe came up with an idea that i should make it out of cobblestone steps instead of the blocks themselves. making the whole structure traversable abound its face. i had thought of this and disregarded it due to the immense amount of additional work it would create, but Joe talked me into it. the problem is for every 6 cobblestone blocks one gets 4 steps. so with a 60% return rate i am going to use a ton more material than originally calculated. i did the math and for my pyramid i will need 20,00 cobblestone blocks to create all the steps necessary. which is crazy. also i looked at the size of the Pyramid of Giza and mine is almost exactly 1/3 the surface area(not volume since mine will be hollow), which is pretty awesome. from where the top of the pyramid will be one can start to see the framing coming together around it. here is a picture of the progress. i will put together a time lapse video when it is all finished.
Day started off like any other work day. however it quickly went sour. i got stuck doing 6/7 Discharges, which is number 2 of of my most hated schedules. day went on until i get a call from dispatch saying i did not correctly clean a room. this happens all the time so i shrugged and made my trek back to that room from earlier. my boss was waiting for me when i go there because it was in his opinion not cleaned correctly. his actual words were that it had not been touched. the second i got in the room i was immediately pissed off. what had happened is in the time between when i did the room and when my boss made his way to check on my work, the nurses had piled a ton of random stuff in there. in all crazy manners of locations. so when my boss got there it looked like i did not even do anything. he started to talk about what was wrong with the room, when i cut him off and began to explain that none of this crap was in here when i left the room. to make a long story short i almost got screwed again by nurses putting crap in rooms after i clean them. because this is not the first time i have been blamed for a room being a disaster after i cleaned it. i have gotten in trouble and been unable to prove anything in situations when i left the room completely clean wand when my boss reviewed the room 6 hours later it was a mess. he asked a nurse that walked by and she admitted to putting all that in the room. so i was free and clear. however he also had my quarterly review in his hand that he briefly went over with me. all good things, however he stressed that i should stop listening to my iPhone when i work. apparently people have been complaining. i do not know who these people are or why they need to meddle in my business. i do not even listen to music while i work, i have been listening to audiobooks for the past 2 months while i work, so it is not like my music is too loud. so some asshole is complaining about me minding my own business and enjoying a mind opening experience while i work. that person needs to take a long walk off a short pier.
Later on when i was finishing up cleaning Hemo, i was taking out a trash bag from a can and it weighed literally 50 pounds. so when i looked inside i found this at the bottom of the bag,
I could not believe my eyes. who the hell just throws away not only 3000 pieces of paper but 3 perfectly fine binders. i stood there in shock/rage for what felt like a few seconds until i decided that since no one was around to ask who had done this planet-destroying maneuver that i would take it into my own hands. i shot a video that explains my feelings in total.
Another thing about this whole situation that pissed me off. do we not have this in a digital form on the computers? and if so why the fuck did you need to print the entire god damn thing out? it is just mind-explodingly stupid. GAHH!!1!
Found out my other headlight is out now. so tomorrow i have to go get another 25 dollar bulb and try and replace it in sub-zero temperatures. and it is not like i can just push a button and the old bulb pops out. NOoOoOo!!!! this is a GM product so in order to get the bulb out i need to be a damn surgeon with baby hands in zero gravity to get the damn thing out.
After i safely made it home with only one side of the road lit, i decided to play some more minecraft(of course, what did you expect). Joe is working on his castle to the northeast of our house, so i started building some random stuff to the southwest. i built some geometric shapes and the beginning of a statue. however i put all my efforts into building this mirror pyramid.
Woke up with just enough time to check on the Internets before i made my way to work. today was the day that made the Verizon iPhone an official product. we all knew this day was coming it was just a matter of when. a few things i have to say about the release. because the Verizon network is still using the CDMA chipset and radio frequency it does not allow for voice and data to be sent simultaneously to the device. which takes this multitasking beast of a phone down a few notches. i use this feature all the time. one thing i really want to know(and i am pretty sure this is a yes) is if one can talk on the network while using a wifi signal for the data. so if i get a call but i am in my own house on my own Internet connection will i be able to peruse the Internets at the same time. i do not see why it would be an issue other then it may cause interference. if that is the case, Verizon is a super FAIL for even still using CDMA technology(btw that is the reason why they have such a large 3g network, they have had a lot more time to build CDMA towers then AT&T has had to build their GSM). another thing i am totally confused about is how they are going to do product refreshes. apple always updates their iPhone in July or June. so the AT&T phone is on track to get an update this summer, but what about the Verizon iPhone? it will only have been 5 months old. so are those early adopters going to get burned when they refresh in July? or are they going to start a whole new refresh cycle for this model of the iPhone.
I really wonder what is going to happen to the android platform, since for the first time apple is actually directly competing with them. i fully believe the reason android is so successful is because of apples absence on other carriers. so now that has changed and i think the android platform will suffer immensely.
I am actually in a really good position when it comes to the my iPhone. my contract is up in august, so i have plenty of time to wait for the iPhone 5. so if they do not refresh the Verizon iPhone at the same time they refresh the AT&T version and they keep it a year behind i will just stick with AT&T. if they do refresh both i will be able to choose between carriers.
Continuing on my day, i had not realized just how incredibly horrible it was going to be outside. otherwise i would have left home a few minutes earlier. the annoying thing about driving on bad roads is, i am pretty good at it. it is just all the dumbasses around me who make stupid decisions that endanger things. like going 55 with 3 inches of snow and slush on the road. i understand you love killing the planet with you escalade but some of us do not have vehicles adjusted for this climate. one also would think the city would prepare for a snowstorm by pre-salting the roads, or at least warming up the plows. i mean seriously do they not get the damn weather channel at city hall. anyway the roads were bad.
On my break at work i decided to mosey on down to the break room because the cafeteria was too full of random people. it was all fine until ESPN came on(the default TV channel for some stupid reason) and showed some guy from some football team pulling a ridiculous amount of weight down a field. then they showed a truck trying to pull the same amount and failing everyone thought this was INFUCKINGCREDIBLE!!1! seriously, the 5 guys in the room flipped their shit. i think i am the only one who thought this was utter bullshit of a test. for one thing the guy has cleats on a turf stadium ground, and the truck has round rubber wheels on asphalt. of course the guy can pull more then the truck, the guy has what is called "Traction". the damn trucks tires are just going to spin and spin. there is no way the trucks ROUND tires are going to grip the FLAT surface. it was an absolutely ridiculous test. anyways, this ignited the room into a clusterfuck of football debating and yelling about some kind of Superbowl. apparently a regular bowl is not good enough(ignorance intended). seriously it was like being put into a cage with bears fighting over a damn chicken wing. the peach section was on the table so i decided to wait it out by reading up on the latest news detailing the life of an over sized cat who loves lasagna, and a guy who has real life adventures.
On my second break i was unfortunate enough to end up watching about 20 minutes of the show V. what a horrible show, sorry writers, but it is awful. they are aliens who have found a way to go faster then the speed of light and they are loosing a war against a race of people who merely 150 years ago stopped drinking the water they shit in. they are lizards, so are they cold blooded? if so there is no way they could have evolved large enough brains with only the energy of the sun to warm them. not only that but there is no way a space faring race could exist without compassion. hands down.
Was woken up by a text from alissa today, which is not a bad thing to wake up to. spent some time trying to figure out what i was going to do today. i wanted to continue scanning in old photos but because of old ignorant photo storage it is been made almost impossible. apparently before the year 1960 no one thought, "hey maybe i will want to look at this single photo instead of it permanently glued to this page in an album". this is apparently far to much to have asked of a person from 50 years ago. so i have a ton of photos i want to scan into the computer but am unable to because they are unremovable. trying to take them out tears the photo, and trying to scan the whole page is a disaster. so i honestly have no idea what i am going to do.
I decided that nothing was to be accomplished on this incredibly boring day so i just ended up watching robot chicken. took a trip down to Wendy's and got some food, forgot to ask for no onions.
Joe got home and was in the mood for some minecraft. so we fired up the server and jumped in. we accomplished quite a bit, dug an enormous hole, a super long tunnel, and he started work on his new castle/house. i can not wait until i get my cousin on this server with us, then we will be getting stuff done insanely fast. just digging this hole with 2 people went by really fast.
Joe decided to go to the store a bit after i got home, so we ventured out for groceries. joe picked the cart...let me rephrase that, joe picked the worst cart ima......ok still let me try one more time, joe picked THE CART FROM HELL!!1! this thing was an abomination. honestly i think it thought its sole purpose was to turn left. either that or it has some kind of fear of turning right. either way joe is now no longer allowed to pick out the cart...i put it in the roommate agreement.
Went to see the The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader today with my immediate family. we always go and see one movie together as a family once a year. movie was good as far as narnia movies go. i enjoyed it however the religious overtones were not subtle at all. aslan just comes and and says I AM JESUS in a scene. kind of funny. two parts in the movie i was dying from laughter. 1st they all had to get the 7 swords and bring them to the table of aslan to destroy the evil(the devil). they went through a ton of crazy shit to get them, dragons, sea serpent/kraken thing. when they got all the swords near the table the swords started glowing blue and i thought to myself, "well shit, now they have to deal with orcs!". the second time was when they were inside the evil lair island thing and they were told not to think of anything or the evil will manifest it. just then edmund said out loud, "o no....i am really sorry guys". everyone in my family looked at each other and almost in synchronicity said, "I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never ever possibly destroy us. Mr. Stay Puft!" i think we all kept hoping that a giant Stay Puft man would come out of the ocean and capsize the ship, unfortunately it was only a kraken.
Went back to my parents house to have some dinner. attempted to learn some piano whilst i was there, i failed. watched some aladdin which is among my top 5 favorite pre-pixar disney movies. came home and accomplished nothing really. dug a huge hole in my minecraft world while watching robot chicken(fantastic combination btw). also turns out my cousin is thoroughly enjoying his own minecraft experience which i am thrilled about. i was worried he would hate it.
Spent about 2 hours trying to figure out a way to set up a server for minecraft today. i talked my cousin into purchasing the game and i have no idea how he is feeling about it so far. we tried to setup a server so that we could play together, but apparently my internet skills are insufficient for such a task. *sad face.
Tried to start a major project in the browser free creative version but turns out java is even more of a piece of shit then i anticipated. crashes every 5 minutes, keeping me from creating anything notable. i could save it every time i do anything but who really wants to spend most of their time saving their work. what is really lame is when java crashes one cannot just refresh the page and try again. it causes some kind of infinite crash forcing me to have to restart my browser. so every 5 minutes i have to take 30 seconds to re-open everything. not worth it. i do not understand why there is not a creative mode built into the launcher app. apparently Notch is working on it or mentioned it at some point or something, i do not know, i just hope it happens soon.
Finished watching An Idiot Abroad which stars Karl Pilkington along with Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant. it is another installment in a long series of mock Karl shows. hilarious as always they send Karl to each of the worlds 7 wonders and see how he reacts to the culture surrounding the monuments. however the show does an excellent job of showing just how shitty most of the world is and why i may never go to any of these places in my life. for instance china's bathrooms are just holes in the ground with no door on the stalls. so basically you are just squatting in front of everyone. india was the same thing. apparently they are not advanced enough to invent doors for the bathrooms. i do not understand it. anyway the show is awesome and i highly recommend it along with the rest of the Karl mocking shows they have produced.
Went to subway with my sister to spend the gift card i got for christmas, afterwards we went to Meijer to spend the other gift-card i got for christmas. whilst at Meijer i realized it is very hard for me to spend 40 dollars on groceries. i honestly could not find anything i wanted that exceeded 20 dollars total. so i ended up getting some kickass unnecessary stuff. i bought a pack of Pokemon cards, i have to learn all the new Pokemon since there are like a million new ones. plus 150 more when Pokemon Black and White come out in a few months, which i will be spending the money to get. i also got a kickass die cast metal Recognizer from the new Tron movie.
Hells Ya!!!
So besides the curb that jumped out in front of us on the way there i made it home safe enough.
The Tron did not stop there, i soon realized that there had to be a badass Tron texture pack for minecraft and i set out on my electronic adventure through the internet to find my treasure. turns out it did not take very long...it was the first search result. anyway after taking 14 times longer then it needed to to install the pack(due to my inability to follow simple directions), i was ready to experience the Tron awesomeness. it did not disappoint, i even uploaded a video about it to my youtube page. bringing the total amount of youtube videos i have uploaded to.......1.
Started off the day like i always do, waking up 35 minutes before i go to work. just enough time to get ready but not accomplish anything meaningful at all(story of my life). it was one of those driving days when everyone is doing a swell job and then all of a sudden the world explodes and everyone forgets what they are doing and chaos breaks out. the guy in front of my stops to let an illegal Jaywalker go, then i go around him and get behind a van who is clearly never driven an automobile before since they were going 20 in a 40. after i get by that person someone pulls of a suicide pullout and forces me to drastically reduce speed for no good reason.the hospital was packed or at least the parking garage was packed so i had to park on the fourth floor on the exposed section, which is odd since the visitor traffic is being re-directed to the other garage while the main lobby is being worked on. so i have no idea where all the cars were from. if the amount of cars is directly related to only the people that work there then would not the amount of cars parking there stay constant? why does it fluctuate so much? this bugged me for a few minutes while i parked crooked next to a ridiculously large SUV. grunted to my colleagues as i walked to sign in as usual. my new boss was unnaturally happy to be at work. always bugs me when people are in that mood where everything they do just explodes rainbows and happiness. worked recovery all night which means i have 8 hours to do about 4.5 hours of work. not complaining about the work load at all i just fined it interesting that the load is set to accommodate old people that work there, so when i work twice as fast i have long intervals of nothing. of course my boss could always find me something to do. one of the only perks of working where i work is the fact that since i am environmental services i am practically invisible to everyone around me. allowing me to walk around with headphones in and not really cause any alarm or care. which is fantastic because i am able to zone out and work without distraction. i finished 2061 Odyssey three today making that 11 audiobooks i have finished in the last month or so. i started 3001 The Final Odyssey which will complete the "Space Odyssey Trilogy". after that i think i may either continue listening to Clarke, go back to the robot series of Asimov or start the Douglas hitchhiker series, i have not decided yet.
One of the weirder things that happens while i work is when i have my headphones in and i open a plastic bag to replace one in a trash receptacle, the bag cause static which then causes this cool crackling sound in the headphones i am wearing in my ears. it basically feels like static discharge in my ears. alarming at first and i am not sure if it is ruining the headphones or not, but now i am used to it. the first time it happened i thought my headphones shorted out, scared me a bit. so the static is traveling through the bag to my hand into my pocket and up the headphones and into my ears. apparently that is the fastest way for the electricity to ground itself.
The night ended normally with people being over polite while leaving work, signing out, and making my trek up the 4 flights to my car. the parking lot was covered with a light dusting of snow, uncleared from earlier. the lot was empty so i thought i would do some donuts around the light poles. highlight of my night.
I am going to attempt to start a new blog. I have been tossing about the idea of doing a Vlog but then I realized no one wants to see my face on youtube, besides there are plenty of handsome people already doing that, so why even bother. First off I have terrible grammar so that is a warning. I personally dislike most grammar rules maybe that is because most are illogical parameters only in place due to nostalgia. It does not help that I have grown up learning one of the most ass backwards languages on the planet. Goose and geese but not moose and meese. What stupid idiot decided on that one. I think it might be due to the fact that most of my english teachers tried to related english grammar to math equations. Clearly stepping out of their field of study they had no concept of just how stupid and offensive that was to math. 1+1=2 in math but in english the equation is more like ((1D+1R)/.9362518F)= something greater than 2.....sometimes. In grammar there are far to many inconstant factors for me to care about. Probably one of the reasons I failed at school so many times but that is for another post I suppose. Anyway this blog will hopefully be a daily, or something close to that, record of my experiences throughout a given time frame. This should be interesting.
