Unsuspected Thoughts

I feel weird saying this, but I think it's a good point. As a political issue, I agree with Ashton Kutcher that we should stop sending stuff to Mars. There's a lot of things much much closer that we could be working on. Stop sending stuff to Mars.

Minor Freakouts

Every now and then I begin to think that I may have beaten this thing. I look back on the last few weeks and I see success, and I think it's finally over.

In moments of clarity I know that this thought is a lie. I am lying to myself because the truth is almost too hard to face, but the truth doesn't care if you're going to acknowledge it, it will still be there and it will still be true. It is perfect in its justice because it is impartial as only an abstract concept can be.

The truth that I've been lying about is that it is never over. If I can draw strength from known that every day that I get up and live my ideals I am winning I must accept the fact that I will always be fighting.

When I begin to forget that truth is when I become weak. I have gotten through enough now that it doesn't seem like a big deal, and then I'm breaking the second rule.

Know thy Enemy

It is when I'm weak like this that I find myself being critically hit by the foe. The tower of iron will collapses upon itself, and I am reduced to the creature I once was. It passes, usually quickly, but these freak outs, as they're known, are grim reminders of the war that I must keep fighting.

Let us return now to a more practical example.

Last night/This morning was registration day. An ancient college ritual that dates back to the days I spend in the halls of Lander. It's a very simple ceremony. If you're the kind of person who can wake up early then you awaken at four a.m. I have years of experience with the alternate method which is simply to stay up until four a.m. At four a.m. I begin lining up my schedule for the next quarter, and I return at around 5:30 so that I can hit "accept schedule" and let the "Your registration period has not started yet" screen refresh itself over and over again until six when the registration actually begins.

This is also another tradition that goes along with this one. It's the tradition of being hamstrung by restrictions on classes that were not visible on the course catalog. For example, of the four classes on my list three were listed as "Psych Majors Only," and one was listed as "Freshman only during priority I registration period."

There is a scrambling, a reorganizing, but I'm the kind of person who has backup plans so I wasn't caught too off guard.

This is when my freak out began. I need to get into that major. I need to get into it. The process is reviewed with the manic energy of a caged animal, and I'm reminded of something I've known for a long time now. It's a numbers game, and my numbers aren't great. In desperation I claw at opportunity, looking for some lie to tell myself, but I know the truth and I've gotten strong enough that I won't let myself forget it. Mania collapses into catatonia, but I breathe deeply, and I think as clearly as I can.

This is bad, but this is truth. It isn't going to change. I can say all I want that I've gotten better, but the numbers hold the pure simple beauty of impartial truth. And that truth makes a simple potent demand of me. You think you've changed? Prove it.

And I got up. I packed my supplies, and I began studying. It's not enough for me to be convinced of this dawn. I have to prove it to the truth.

Misc

-I once sent a text message from my brothers cell phone. His has a feature that guesses at the word your typing while you type it, which really speeds up the process. I made a note of it as a good idea, but not one I really cared about. Now that the person I spend the most time communicating with via telephone is someone who can get texts and not calls in her apartment it seems much more important that I get this feature.

-Life was a lot easier when I was a depressed isolationist wreck. I'm really glad that I'm not any more, but sometimes I miss the simplicity of it.

-I understand normals a lot better then I used to. It worries me sometimes because I fear I may be slowly becoming one.

-My car may be with me for a while longer. It may also get sold as a soft top non convertible. The conundrum continues.

-I've gotten bored of WoW again, so I canceled my account and uninstalled it, but without an activity like that around I realize how central that kind of time sink was to a lot of my relaxation/time killing activities. It seems almost dumb to be watching hulu on a second monitor when I'm not doing anything on the first.

-I'm also departing from WoW because WOTLK hits Thursday and I need to be as far from that as possible for a number of reasons.

-This is my one thousandth blog posting. It seems like I should've done something more for such a milestone.

Niche Marketing

In general I don't spend a lot of money on clothing. Nearly everything I own can be divided into the category of "Jeans" or the category of "T-shirts," and until about a month ago I was fine with that.

Having a life immensely complicates things.

When I do go out to buy clothing I usually go to Rochester because I have a way of buying things from them without spending any money. The charges go to my mom, and it's how mooching off your parents works in the 21st century.

In theory this means that I should go there and get whatever I feel like getting and not worry about it, but in practice I shop there less and less because they're thieves. I understand that when you run a big and tall shop you mark things up. You have access to a niche market, it's basic capitalism. The problem is that I have access to the internet, and I know how markups are supposed to work, and they're not supposed to make a casual wear shirt cost more then two weeks worth of food. I admit that I'm not nearly as price conscious when it's not my money, but there's a line whereupon a purchase begins to feel morally wrong.

Brain Poison

I'm begining to think that TV might be poisoning my brain. It's a weird kind of poison. Certain situations and phrases have become tied to scenes that play in my head every time they come up.

Every time someone says something is fine a line from Southpark plays in my head reminding me that it'll be "Fine just fine."

Every time the word douche bag comes up there's a proc chance that the "look at that douche bag" scene from metalocalypse will

Thats not even the worst part of this poisoning. It's contagious. I acquired one from Kevin a while ago, and now periodically while driving Hank Venture's voice will remind me that "I'm Driving! I'm a Driver!"

It's maddening.

The Ease of Thievery

I think a lot about why it is that I've acquired so many things through differently legal internet channels. A lot of it has to do with the very simple proposition that my options are seeing these things illegally, or not seeing them at all. Given how much money is worth to me they simply aren't worth the amount they're charging.

Netflix and Gamefly have helped a lot with this, with a fast enough turn around time they can divide the effective charge by as much as twenty times.

However, there is in the end the simple matter of ease. The most recent Futurama movie came out a few days ago, I was alerted about this roughly an hour ago, and the process set forth.

I could go out and purchase it, as I have with the previous two, but that would mean spending $30 ish dollars. I have a netflix on the return part of it's journey already, so I moved it to the top of my Netflix queue. If I was lucky then I would get it sometime next week.

This is when the obvious occurred to me and I simply got a torrent for it. A torrent which claims to have over 2500 active seeds, and more then 4,000 total peers. I've paused every other torrent on my list, up and down, to try and get the damn thing to use more then one percent of it's peers, but it's still going to take a few hours.

Which is fine. A few hours, for free. It's better then a few days for little, which is still better then Thirty dollars. Piracy is just easier.

Politics

Okay, it's election day, and I could say a lot about politics, but I want to stay positive. In politics that's incredibly hard for me, but there's on issue I support that has had a ray of light recently.

Public transit is something that I'm a big supporter of. So when the South Lake Union area set up a Trolly I was a fan. It's disputed heavily whether or not it's a good idea to have it, and the central issue for this is whether or not anyone will actually use it. There are those who do use it though, and they have the world's greatest political bumper sticker. It reads:

"I ride the S.L.U.T. both ways"

God Bless America.

Misc

-It seems like I haven't written in my blog much recently, despite how much I've been writing recently. Most of my recent writing has been on my whiteboard, which has come to fill the role that my other private blog used to, and I have wonder about the implications of this.

-I had kind of an odd night Friday. A bunch of cupcakes came over to my apartment, and sang a bunch of songs. There was a reunion tour of N.A.M.A.I.H.A., which consisted of them playing just one set which rocked the audience. Then the cup cakes went walking off, and shortly after other people went walking off in search of food. I went to sleep at that point, but it does make me wonder what happened to those cupcakes.

-I may have to give up on drinking. And not in the normal "What did I do last night," kind of way. I don't drink often, so I shouldn't have much of a tolerance, but every recent time where I've tried to drink enough to enjoy the experience of being drunk I've failed because even though I'm drinking enough to kill some of my friends I only feel a little bit buzzed. In a way it's maddening.

-I was talking to Laney about my car the other day, and she interjected by saying "It sounds like you don't want to give it up, but you're trying to talk yourself into selling it." And that's exactly how it is. I've gone through two white boards of discussion in this subject, and I know in the end that it comes down to something very simple. Before my car was broken I didn't need a car because I never went out and did anything. Then while my car was broken I didn't think I needed a car because I was doing okay despite my car being broken. Now that I have a car, and I'm seeing how much easier it makes the process of going out and doing stuff I want to have a car, and I wish that money wasn't an issue here.

-I'm fighting my old habit of tearing up small plastic things as hard as I can, and it's going fairly well. However, I've noticed that stopping that particular fidgeting behavior has caused a number of others to spring up.