This post will be a rather boring and un-enlightening week in review. As you already know from my last post, my wife and I are moving to Kansas in about a month. This means that I need to find a job in a rather odd time of the hiring season. Most jobs open up around graduation time, basically this month. And so, while there is a plethora of jobs being advertised right now, most of them will be displeased to hear that I won't be around till next month. It is just one more drawback on top of an already heaping pile of drawbacks (lack of a bachelors degree, lack of experience in fields I want to work in, and the virtual disappearance of entry level jobs that pay anything close to a livable wage).
In one bright bit of news, a friend of the family dropped by for a short visit last week and mentioned that we should call ahead to the local church leadership in the area and try to get help from ward and stake employment specialists. It sounded like a fantastic idea, so I spent most of last week trying to get into contact with someone who can help me. It was difficult, it seems they recently changed the employment specialist in one of the wards, and the branch's employment specialist lives in the wrong town. And so with hope I called up the last ward and found out that indeed they are willing to help.
This employment specialist has done an okay job, other than the fact that she seems to disapprove of my job seeking standards. I don't feel they are unreasonable though. Simply put, I don't want to work in a call center because I already know I would be terrible. I don't want to be a salesman pushing a product that I don't 100% believe in. I need to have a job that I can pay rent, utilities, food, gas, and student loans on. Lastly, I want to be able to support both my wife and myself so that my wife can start working on her own business. In other words, I need to be earning about as much as I am earning now. Yet this employment specialist keeps riding me about how I need to be willing to take a janitorial position that won't support me, and keeps saying that my wife needs to be a secretary or take some other full time job.
I don't think that it is part of her calling to be judgmental of my employment lifestyle choices. I can understand that it can be frustrating, especially in this economy to meet my demands, which I find to be frankly ridiculous. I'm not asking to have a lifestyle of new cars or ultimate leisure, I don't take part in expensive past times, I am simply asking that I can pay rent, utilities, and food so that my family can live on one income. A janitorial position paying $10.68/hr doesn't cut it in that area.
On the positive side, I do have to hand it to her, she did locate a company that has several open positions that I would be perfect for, and which may actually pay me a livable wage. These positions have not been posted on any of the other job aggregating sites. So this weekend, it is time to draw up several resumes, and start to schmooze up to the HR Manager.
In other news, I have an old game that I've been wanting to play, but when I install it on my newer laptop, it gives it a bad case of the recurring Blue Screen of Death. I've played it on my older laptop before and so I know it would work. But the old laptop has been having problems with overheating lately. I figured, what the heck. It is out of warranty, I might as well just try to fix the problem myself. So I looked up a guide on dismantling my old laptop and went to work. I was surprised at how intensive the process was actually going to be. To get to the cooling element, you have to dismantle the entire laptop from the keyboard down. With each plug I pulled, each ribbon cable I disconnected, and with each screw I pulled out I silently prayed in my head that I wouldn't break something important.
Then I finally had it all apart and I looked at the fan and aluminum heat dispersion fins, It wasn't nearly as clogged up with dust as I had expected, so I decided it must be the thermal paste that has worn out. I went to Radio Shack and picked up a small tube of the paste, looked up some guides online of how to apply the paste, and began to take the heat transfer plate off the board. It wasn't pretty, the old paste was gunky, put on poorly, and hardly there. The GPU only had a half torn poorly applied thermal pad on it, and that was the piece that was getting particularly hot in my old laptop. I checked to see if Thermal paste would be okay for a GPU and found that while it is alright to use it, there can be absolutely no excess past that squishes onto the board around the GPU Die. That may only apply to actual Graphics Cards, but I heeded the warning nonetheless. I carefully spread the thermal paste on both the CPU and GPU, secured the thermal transfer plate, and began to button everything back up.
Just before hitting the power button I turned to my wife and said "If this thing even starts up I'll be happy. If I get even a few degrees better cooling, I'll be ecstatic." Sure enough, everything turned back on and worked properly (other than the microphone and the caps-lock light. The plug with the wires to these two parts broke while trying to remove it, something that several people complained about in the comments to the dismantling guide. I tried to manually reinsert the wires, but I think I got them crossed because I couldn't remember which way they went.). It will take a while for the thermal paste to cure and get optimal performance. But I'm already seeing 10-20 F difference. Hooray for the power to do things yourself.
Floyd.
03 May 2014
23 April 2014
Improbable State Change...
I took my last final of the BYU winter semester 2014 yesterday. Freedom is sweet and terrifying. I have not graduated. I do not have a bachelors degree. I am changing colleges to hopefully pursue a different program. There is one catch, I am moving two states away from my current position to a town that is two hours travel away from my nearest relatives or friends (as far as I know). I have checked the MIT living wage calculator for the area and at minimum to support my wife and myself I need to be making about $13.15 an hour in order to survive. If we are planning on having kids (which we hope to do sometime), then the sum I need to make is closer to $16.30. And none of these figures are taking into account the student loans we will be paying back. We don't really have much in the way of savings and the move is planned for next month. This means I have to find a relatively well paying job or other forms of income, 2 states away in a very short time, in an area where I don't have a network previously setup. So I'm back to blogging again to document this crazy transition in my life.
So, what do the prospects look like? In this economy. Meh. There are very few jobs offering wages in the range I need, and the ones that do, require 2+ years repairing complex electronics, or working in the O.R. at a hospital, oh yeah, and a degree. I would much rather not extend the student loan debt we already have. Starting out your professional life tens of thousands of dollars in debt never seemed like a good idea to me. It is a pretty bad social program which pretty much equates to slavery.
Speaking of slavery. It occurred to my co-workers and I a few weeks ago that we seem to remember being taught in school that back in yon early days of the republic, a person could elect to go into indentured servitude for 7 years, at the end of which he would receive a piece of land on which to build a house. We compared this to today and the fact that in our society the average worker slaves away at their job and even then can barely pay off their mortgage and student loans in 30 years. hmmm..... 7 years, 30 years, 7 years, 30 years.... Am I the only one who sees a problem with this.
I guess I'll be back next time with hilarious job descriptions.
~The Floyd
So, what do the prospects look like? In this economy. Meh. There are very few jobs offering wages in the range I need, and the ones that do, require 2+ years repairing complex electronics, or working in the O.R. at a hospital, oh yeah, and a degree. I would much rather not extend the student loan debt we already have. Starting out your professional life tens of thousands of dollars in debt never seemed like a good idea to me. It is a pretty bad social program which pretty much equates to slavery.
Speaking of slavery. It occurred to my co-workers and I a few weeks ago that we seem to remember being taught in school that back in yon early days of the republic, a person could elect to go into indentured servitude for 7 years, at the end of which he would receive a piece of land on which to build a house. We compared this to today and the fact that in our society the average worker slaves away at their job and even then can barely pay off their mortgage and student loans in 30 years. hmmm..... 7 years, 30 years, 7 years, 30 years.... Am I the only one who sees a problem with this.
I guess I'll be back next time with hilarious job descriptions.
~The Floyd
22 August 2012
Black holes and dimensions...
We now take a break from the usual political fodder to bring you a glimpse into the wild landscape of what Floyd thinks about in his idle time...
So, I have decided I am not a normal person, in my idle time I don't go scheduling my coming week, thinking about games I'd like to play or TV shows or books I've read (well sometimes, but rarely compared to the other things that go through my mind). I think about things like world economics, political intrigue, and Unorthodox origin of the universe theories (and by unorthodox I mean both the creationists and most scientists would probably laugh at me). But here goes...
So, lets just look at a few principles of our known universe. Light travels at, well the speed of light, usually this is referred to as c, approximately 299,792,458 metres per second or 186,282 miles per second (from Wikipedia) Nothing we've seen really changes this speed much. Now... Black holes. Black holes are super dense clusters of matter, so dense in fact that it creates a gravitational field around the object that is so powerful that light itself, going as fast as it is going, actually can't escape once it's crossed a certain threshold of that gravitational field. That threshold is called the Event Horizon... So... Lets just say for theoretical purposes that you throw a light emitting object into the black hole and that it actually is able to keep emitting light all the way past the event horizon. The very moment it crosses the event horizon it emits a photon of light that is going in the exact opposite direction of the black hole.
How fast is that particle of light going? Well, according to our normal three dimensional thinking, so long as the particle of light stays at the event horizon, it is not moving at all, (unless it rotates around the surface of the event horizon orbiting the black hole, but that is a negligible detail...) But, light is always traveling at the speed of light, ya know approx 185,000 miles per second... So what is this particle of light traveling across to keep up the speed sufficient enough to stay at that event horizon?
This is where things start to get funky... (Break out your old R&B music) So the light is traveling across something, and that something is being pulled or stretched backwards into the black hole at the speed of light effectively making the particle of light stand still. Could it be that space itself is getting stretched and sucked into the black hole? Well, if that is true, then wouldn't everything eventually be pulled into a black hole? Not entirely, because we have recorded that space is being created in our own universe all the time. There is a noticeable red shift everywhere we look, like the universe is constantly expanding from every point at once... So lets just assume for the sake of argument that enough "Space" is being created that the black holes can stretch and suck in as much as they want and the rest of the universe will be will be fine. But if black holes are sucking the space in, what happens to it when it is in the black hole?
Time for the crazy leap. Lets just assume that our universe exists inside a black hole that is in another universe. We can never directly interact with that universe, the event horizon prevents us. But the space that is getting sucked into our black hole in the other universe would start showing up in our universe, and because it is hitting such an infinitesimally small target in the other universe, it would show up all over the place in our universe (I don't know like from every point simultaneously... manifesting itself as a slowly decelerating universal expansion) And the same would happen with any sort of electromagnetic radiation that landed in our black hole, it would show up everywhere at once in our universe (And manifest as a slowly cooling background radiation as our universe continues to expand) In which case, if these kinds of things were true, then that would mean that there are an infinite number of infinitely large universes, each containing an infinite number of black holes which would each be their own universe, all nested together in a never ending stack... Turtles not only all the way down, but all the way up too...
Yep It is a rough theory I know. That is how my brain works... A few screws loose but always an adventure. I'll stop there and give your brains some time to recuperate from encountering the mess that is this post. Till next time
~Floyd
So, I have decided I am not a normal person, in my idle time I don't go scheduling my coming week, thinking about games I'd like to play or TV shows or books I've read (well sometimes, but rarely compared to the other things that go through my mind). I think about things like world economics, political intrigue, and Unorthodox origin of the universe theories (and by unorthodox I mean both the creationists and most scientists would probably laugh at me). But here goes...
So, lets just look at a few principles of our known universe. Light travels at, well the speed of light, usually this is referred to as c, approximately 299,792,458 metres per second or 186,282 miles per second (from Wikipedia) Nothing we've seen really changes this speed much. Now... Black holes. Black holes are super dense clusters of matter, so dense in fact that it creates a gravitational field around the object that is so powerful that light itself, going as fast as it is going, actually can't escape once it's crossed a certain threshold of that gravitational field. That threshold is called the Event Horizon... So... Lets just say for theoretical purposes that you throw a light emitting object into the black hole and that it actually is able to keep emitting light all the way past the event horizon. The very moment it crosses the event horizon it emits a photon of light that is going in the exact opposite direction of the black hole.
How fast is that particle of light going? Well, according to our normal three dimensional thinking, so long as the particle of light stays at the event horizon, it is not moving at all, (unless it rotates around the surface of the event horizon orbiting the black hole, but that is a negligible detail...) But, light is always traveling at the speed of light, ya know approx 185,000 miles per second... So what is this particle of light traveling across to keep up the speed sufficient enough to stay at that event horizon?
This is where things start to get funky... (Break out your old R&B music) So the light is traveling across something, and that something is being pulled or stretched backwards into the black hole at the speed of light effectively making the particle of light stand still. Could it be that space itself is getting stretched and sucked into the black hole? Well, if that is true, then wouldn't everything eventually be pulled into a black hole? Not entirely, because we have recorded that space is being created in our own universe all the time. There is a noticeable red shift everywhere we look, like the universe is constantly expanding from every point at once... So lets just assume for the sake of argument that enough "Space" is being created that the black holes can stretch and suck in as much as they want and the rest of the universe will be will be fine. But if black holes are sucking the space in, what happens to it when it is in the black hole?
Time for the crazy leap. Lets just assume that our universe exists inside a black hole that is in another universe. We can never directly interact with that universe, the event horizon prevents us. But the space that is getting sucked into our black hole in the other universe would start showing up in our universe, and because it is hitting such an infinitesimally small target in the other universe, it would show up all over the place in our universe (I don't know like from every point simultaneously... manifesting itself as a slowly decelerating universal expansion) And the same would happen with any sort of electromagnetic radiation that landed in our black hole, it would show up everywhere at once in our universe (And manifest as a slowly cooling background radiation as our universe continues to expand) In which case, if these kinds of things were true, then that would mean that there are an infinite number of infinitely large universes, each containing an infinite number of black holes which would each be their own universe, all nested together in a never ending stack... Turtles not only all the way down, but all the way up too...
Yep It is a rough theory I know. That is how my brain works... A few screws loose but always an adventure. I'll stop there and give your brains some time to recuperate from encountering the mess that is this post. Till next time
~Floyd
19 August 2012
There's not a president for me...
So the three main presidential candidates that are flooding the media at the moment would be Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Ron Paul. You would think that between the three options I should be able to support one of them... But I can't. I think no matter who wins, even the unlikely Ron Paul, we the american people will lose.
Starting from the top, Barack Obama has pushed for more government power. As far as I have seen from the news in the last four years he has increased government spending and debt by increasing welfare benefits and instating government issued and mandated health care and next he has said he plans on letting the taxes go up... Here is the problem, I don't really trust the government very much. So far they have been passing more and more and more and more laws to the point where there is not a chance that all those laws can ever be enforced cause no one really knows even half of them. So the idea that the government is actually competent to manage things better if they have even more of my money seems absurd. Government has been neglecting the responsibilities it should be taking care of, and instead been trying to stick its fingers in everyone else's pie and in effect screwing up everything that they should keep their noses out of. All these social issues, Abortion, Gay Marriage, etc, Government shouldn't have a say in any of it. And yet Barack wants to continue in that direction, having the government go on signing more laws they can't pass, managing poorly the programs already in place, and sticking its noses into issues it should stay they heck out of.
Mitt Romney, A Two faced puppet of big business. Mitt Romney has flip flopped way too much on all sorts of subjects and in my opinion he is doing it just to get votes, or rather, his advisers have told him to change his stance so that he could pull in all the extreme right folks. Then you look at who is funding Mitt Romney? Big companies like AT&T... He has promised to leave the tax cuts in place and from what I've heard, he has also been advocating for the letting up of several regulations on large corporations. One frightening example I've heard of is that if Mitt Romney becomes president, he intends to sign laws which will make it more appealing for corporations to stop providing company funded health insurance to it's employees. Frankly I'm not very trusting of large corporations either, especially when I see how much some companies and CEO's make and yet how little they care to reward their workers. Not to mention the sheer quality of work that large companies are outputting, they are charging more and more for less and less. I've bought two pairs of shoes and put them through regular work wear and both pairs of shoes were unwearable within 6 months. Companies seem to be only out for one thing, to screw you out of more money.
And last but not least (well maybe) Ron Paul, The guy that wants to blow up the Fed?!? Don't even get me started on this guy... His whole campaign has revolved around one thing, shutting down the Federal Reserve. This guy has obviously not taken a good economics course and actually learned what the Fed does. Our economy is like a steam engine, and the amount of money in the system is kind of like the steam in a boiler. If you get too much steam (inflation) the whole thing blows up, if you get too little, you don't have the power to drive your pistons. That is why you have something on the boiler called a pressure regulator valve. The Fed, that is the pressure regulator valve. If you take that off then there is nothing stopping this crazy emergent economy we have to possibly go screaming off into inflated ruin like so many other countries have done in the past. What with gold bugs trying to already defraud our currency, once the faith is lost in the currency, it is over. The Fed has been one of the most responsible, well educated, highly regulated organizations in this whole country. And Ron Paul's main aim is to tear it down... But it doesn't stop there, What would he do after he tears it down? I have no clue. No one will say what his stance on everything else is. He is so monomaniac about the Fed that I have no clue what he will do about welfare and healthcare and social security and foreign policy... oh wait... I did hear him say something about foreign policy, "Lets give Iran Nukes" *HEADDESK* Are you kidding me? That's it I've to to stop talking about this guy...
So to sum it up, I think we should just change our flag to a white flag that says Welcome to America, surrender your Rights, To Government or Corporations. Yeah, I think that would about say it all...
I guess if Ron Paul actually won, his ineptitude might finally bring everything crashing down and we could start all over again... Like a reset button on the computer. Hmm, save your work guys...
Till next time,
~Floyd
Starting from the top, Barack Obama has pushed for more government power. As far as I have seen from the news in the last four years he has increased government spending and debt by increasing welfare benefits and instating government issued and mandated health care and next he has said he plans on letting the taxes go up... Here is the problem, I don't really trust the government very much. So far they have been passing more and more and more and more laws to the point where there is not a chance that all those laws can ever be enforced cause no one really knows even half of them. So the idea that the government is actually competent to manage things better if they have even more of my money seems absurd. Government has been neglecting the responsibilities it should be taking care of, and instead been trying to stick its fingers in everyone else's pie and in effect screwing up everything that they should keep their noses out of. All these social issues, Abortion, Gay Marriage, etc, Government shouldn't have a say in any of it. And yet Barack wants to continue in that direction, having the government go on signing more laws they can't pass, managing poorly the programs already in place, and sticking its noses into issues it should stay they heck out of.
Mitt Romney, A Two faced puppet of big business. Mitt Romney has flip flopped way too much on all sorts of subjects and in my opinion he is doing it just to get votes, or rather, his advisers have told him to change his stance so that he could pull in all the extreme right folks. Then you look at who is funding Mitt Romney? Big companies like AT&T... He has promised to leave the tax cuts in place and from what I've heard, he has also been advocating for the letting up of several regulations on large corporations. One frightening example I've heard of is that if Mitt Romney becomes president, he intends to sign laws which will make it more appealing for corporations to stop providing company funded health insurance to it's employees. Frankly I'm not very trusting of large corporations either, especially when I see how much some companies and CEO's make and yet how little they care to reward their workers. Not to mention the sheer quality of work that large companies are outputting, they are charging more and more for less and less. I've bought two pairs of shoes and put them through regular work wear and both pairs of shoes were unwearable within 6 months. Companies seem to be only out for one thing, to screw you out of more money.
And last but not least (well maybe) Ron Paul, The guy that wants to blow up the Fed?!? Don't even get me started on this guy... His whole campaign has revolved around one thing, shutting down the Federal Reserve. This guy has obviously not taken a good economics course and actually learned what the Fed does. Our economy is like a steam engine, and the amount of money in the system is kind of like the steam in a boiler. If you get too much steam (inflation) the whole thing blows up, if you get too little, you don't have the power to drive your pistons. That is why you have something on the boiler called a pressure regulator valve. The Fed, that is the pressure regulator valve. If you take that off then there is nothing stopping this crazy emergent economy we have to possibly go screaming off into inflated ruin like so many other countries have done in the past. What with gold bugs trying to already defraud our currency, once the faith is lost in the currency, it is over. The Fed has been one of the most responsible, well educated, highly regulated organizations in this whole country. And Ron Paul's main aim is to tear it down... But it doesn't stop there, What would he do after he tears it down? I have no clue. No one will say what his stance on everything else is. He is so monomaniac about the Fed that I have no clue what he will do about welfare and healthcare and social security and foreign policy... oh wait... I did hear him say something about foreign policy, "Lets give Iran Nukes" *HEADDESK* Are you kidding me? That's it I've to to stop talking about this guy...
So to sum it up, I think we should just change our flag to a white flag that says Welcome to America, surrender your Rights, To Government or Corporations. Yeah, I think that would about say it all...
I guess if Ron Paul actually won, his ineptitude might finally bring everything crashing down and we could start all over again... Like a reset button on the computer. Hmm, save your work guys...
Till next time,
~Floyd
17 August 2012
Voting...
Just writing a short little something here that I realized today while talking with my wife in the parking lot of the mall. I've heard a lot of people say that If you don't vote in the elections then you shouldn't be allowed to complain about the country. But here is the thing, Voting is nothing more than voicing your opinion about any specific topic weather it be about health care, taxes or who you want your next president to be... So isn't not voting simply voicing your opinion that you feel none of the available options are viable? If yes, then not voting is another form of voting. The only thing I wish is that the option of not voting was given a little more sway. I propose that there be a law instated that says that if a certain percentage of people register to vote and then choose not to fill in any of the choices for their vote on any particular issue, then the election or whatever was being voted on gets thrown out and started over with more or new options. Because seriously, I cannot in good conscience vote for any of the presidential candidates that I am currently aware of.
This kind of law would certainly be revolutionary, You would have to register to vote even if you didn't plan on throwing your hat in with any candidate, and if you did plan on supporting a candidate you would definitely make sure to participate lest those who don't vote at all overthrow the election entirely. It would increase participation across the board and finally give people like me a voice. I could finally, in a legally powerful way, voice my frustrations with the socioeconomic system we as the American people have built.
Anyway, more on those frustrations to come. I'm open to conversation, if you want to hear about my specific frustrations in any area drop me a question in the comments. Unless someone seriously wants to hear about something else, I'll probably outline my frustrations with each of the three major candidates soon.
~Floyd
This kind of law would certainly be revolutionary, You would have to register to vote even if you didn't plan on throwing your hat in with any candidate, and if you did plan on supporting a candidate you would definitely make sure to participate lest those who don't vote at all overthrow the election entirely. It would increase participation across the board and finally give people like me a voice. I could finally, in a legally powerful way, voice my frustrations with the socioeconomic system we as the American people have built.
Anyway, more on those frustrations to come. I'm open to conversation, if you want to hear about my specific frustrations in any area drop me a question in the comments. Unless someone seriously wants to hear about something else, I'll probably outline my frustrations with each of the three major candidates soon.
~Floyd
06 August 2012
Busy life...
I really wasn't expecting to blog tonight. I was expecting to go clean up my old apartment. But when I got there, the power was finally disconnected. I guess when I was on the phone with the utilities people last week to tell them to not turn off the power while my wife was still in the house, they must have told me that I couldn't re-schedule the shut off till next week and in my panic mode I must have said something along the lines of, "Ok, That is Fine, Do it."
life comes back to bite me in the butt sometimes.
I have been rather stressed lately... I would outline my week, but it was too packed and I just don't have enough time to do it justice and it also contains some sensitive material... Suffice it to say. Monday car breaks down, go to work come home look for car. Tuesday, buy car go to work. Wednesday, wake up finish packing house, pick up U-Haul, drive to apartment, wait for carpet guy to get done, move in, barely get U-Haul back in time. Thursday, More moving... So stressed physically, I don't think I've taken a crap in three days... THREE DAYS!!! Friday, More moving, Wife begins to feel a bit under the weather. Saturday, More moving, grocery shopping, finding book shelves. (Every three days we are not out of the old apartment this month translates to $50 in rent now owed to the old apartment) Sunday, Go to church, find out our congregation's boundaries are changing, we are being put in an entirely new congregation (as in the congregation was not organized until yesterday) Today being the 6th, we now owe the old apartment $100.
In the upcoming week we have to finish cleaning the old apartment and get out, then we have to settle on which insurance to get and get all the rest of the legal work done on the car.
Anyway... My life is too busy at the moment to really consider much of anything philosophical. Though I would have loved to give my opinions on freedom of belief, my stance on Gay Marriage, and a hand full of other things. but right now everything else is crowding my thoughts.
life comes back to bite me in the butt sometimes.
I have been rather stressed lately... I would outline my week, but it was too packed and I just don't have enough time to do it justice and it also contains some sensitive material... Suffice it to say. Monday car breaks down, go to work come home look for car. Tuesday, buy car go to work. Wednesday, wake up finish packing house, pick up U-Haul, drive to apartment, wait for carpet guy to get done, move in, barely get U-Haul back in time. Thursday, More moving... So stressed physically, I don't think I've taken a crap in three days... THREE DAYS!!! Friday, More moving, Wife begins to feel a bit under the weather. Saturday, More moving, grocery shopping, finding book shelves. (Every three days we are not out of the old apartment this month translates to $50 in rent now owed to the old apartment) Sunday, Go to church, find out our congregation's boundaries are changing, we are being put in an entirely new congregation (as in the congregation was not organized until yesterday) Today being the 6th, we now owe the old apartment $100.
In the upcoming week we have to finish cleaning the old apartment and get out, then we have to settle on which insurance to get and get all the rest of the legal work done on the car.
Anyway... My life is too busy at the moment to really consider much of anything philosophical. Though I would have loved to give my opinions on freedom of belief, my stance on Gay Marriage, and a hand full of other things. but right now everything else is crowding my thoughts.
30 July 2012
On Drastic Changes and Life Hacking
For the last few months, I have been feeling a tad bit lost... I'm not really sure lost is the right word, but it fits well enough and so for now I will use it. I keep having the feeling that no matter how I use my time, it is not a good use of it. This could be just some illogical snippet of my mind that won't let me rest entirely. Or it could be some deep inner struggling trying to get out... "I don't know" has been my mantra through this whole issue though. Am I using my time unwisely? "I don't know." If I weren't doing what I am doing now, what would I be doing? "I don't know." Why do I feel like I am in such a funk? "I don't know." and on and on.
So... I decided, along with the counsel of my wife, that I should shake things up a little. First off, I have uninstalled all but two or three games on both my Laptop and my Desktop. It felt like I was burning a security blanket. I had mixed feelings. I spent (wasted) long hours tracking down, installing, and testing those games to make sure those games worked, and then I haven't really taken the chance to play hardly any of them. Having taken an economics course, I know the time I plunged into that effort is now considered a "sunk cost" and I shouldn't feel so bad about moving on with my life. But it is still hard.
Second thing I have done is I have set my home page as something other than facebook. For the LAST (approx.) FOUR YEARS, my home page has been facebook. But frankly, when viewed from a lifehacking perspective, that is a horrible thing to do. Every time I get on the internet to do something specific I have to go through the attention minefield that is facebook. All it takes is one enticing looking post and I'm finished, 15 minutes are automatically sucked away from my life as I scroll down the endless series of updates till I find where I left off. Now I have to actually go seek out facebook when I want to message a friend etc... Which hopefully will mean that when I go to facebook, it will be with a purpose unto itself, rather than a purposeless wandering, or a risky passing by.
These two changes have gone over smoothly enough for the first day. Of course, I've had plenty of other things to keep my mind occupied today, what with my car dying, then figuring out how to get to work and get home from work, how to get a new car and soon, and on top of all that, preparing to move across town on Wednesday and fixing my bike which has been out of commission since October 2011. Ahh, I remember that week well, On Monday the back tire on my bike went flat. On Tuesday, I take the car to school, it was a frosty morning and as I tried to go through a low visibility intersection I got T-Boned. And on Friday I proposed to the woman who was to become my wife the following March. I imagine this week will be nearly as eventful as that one was.
Well, It looks like I am back to rambling on this old blog since It is one of my new home page selections. We will see how long I can keep it up, though I promise you nothing. I make no promises this time regarding length, content, or frequency of posting, just some insight into the brain of Floyd aka Stealth Blue. Enjoy, for what it's worth.
~Floyd
So... I decided, along with the counsel of my wife, that I should shake things up a little. First off, I have uninstalled all but two or three games on both my Laptop and my Desktop. It felt like I was burning a security blanket. I had mixed feelings. I spent (wasted) long hours tracking down, installing, and testing those games to make sure those games worked, and then I haven't really taken the chance to play hardly any of them. Having taken an economics course, I know the time I plunged into that effort is now considered a "sunk cost" and I shouldn't feel so bad about moving on with my life. But it is still hard.
Second thing I have done is I have set my home page as something other than facebook. For the LAST (approx.) FOUR YEARS, my home page has been facebook. But frankly, when viewed from a lifehacking perspective, that is a horrible thing to do. Every time I get on the internet to do something specific I have to go through the attention minefield that is facebook. All it takes is one enticing looking post and I'm finished, 15 minutes are automatically sucked away from my life as I scroll down the endless series of updates till I find where I left off. Now I have to actually go seek out facebook when I want to message a friend etc... Which hopefully will mean that when I go to facebook, it will be with a purpose unto itself, rather than a purposeless wandering, or a risky passing by.
These two changes have gone over smoothly enough for the first day. Of course, I've had plenty of other things to keep my mind occupied today, what with my car dying, then figuring out how to get to work and get home from work, how to get a new car and soon, and on top of all that, preparing to move across town on Wednesday and fixing my bike which has been out of commission since October 2011. Ahh, I remember that week well, On Monday the back tire on my bike went flat. On Tuesday, I take the car to school, it was a frosty morning and as I tried to go through a low visibility intersection I got T-Boned. And on Friday I proposed to the woman who was to become my wife the following March. I imagine this week will be nearly as eventful as that one was.
Well, It looks like I am back to rambling on this old blog since It is one of my new home page selections. We will see how long I can keep it up, though I promise you nothing. I make no promises this time regarding length, content, or frequency of posting, just some insight into the brain of Floyd aka Stealth Blue. Enjoy, for what it's worth.
~Floyd
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)