Things That I Think (Part I)

(Thank you to Sandgroper for this idea)

1. The Nintendo Wii is amazing. Revolutionary. Everything I dislike about video games, it fixes. Problem with traditional games: you sit on your butt immersed in a game, not getting any activity but your fingers with the controller. Solution via Wii: An interactive remote with a sensor that ensures you actually perform the move you want to see happen for the game to register it. Although I gotta say I'm getting lots of Wii related injuries these days: pinched nerve from swinging the remote for bowling, sore shoulders and arms from kicking Splendor's butt while boxing :) And then there are the rumors of people smashing their TV's by accidentally throwing the controllers into them...

2. Why are people such downers? Case in point. I was recently telling someone that with 4 weeks of training, I managed to shave a minute and a half off of my mile run time (before you go getting all impressed, my starting time was a turtle's pace of 12 min/mi, now down to 10.5 min/mi, respectable for me). An acquaintance overheard and then joined in on the conversation when we were discussing doing an upcoming race.He felt the need to tell us that unless you can do a 9 minute mile, you shouldn't bother, because you're clearly not fit enough to be racing. Why? Was that really necessary?

3. Unless you want to be humiliated, don't go into a bookstore and ask them to help you find a book when the only information you have is "a recent book with the orange hand on the cover". I'm just saying...it was kind of humiliating when he asked everyone on intercom if they knew a book with an orange hand on the cover. Even more so when I learned the hand was red. (For those interested it was Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel).

4. Weekends go by SO slow without college football to occupy your Saturdays. We do lots of little things, but nothing like get up, tailgate, game, drive to dinner, drive home, sleep exhausted. In the spring, it's more on the line of: get up, eat and watch TV, go for a drive to the beach or somewhere, back home for more lazing, go to lunch, back home to sit around, go to lab for an hour or two, back home to laze, go to dinner, maybe a movie, back home and more sitting, sleep.

5. Despite all my apprehension of the big 30 for me next year, I feel more confident, more content, more sure of myself and just plain happier now then I have ever before in my life. Although I loathe that I will probably still be a student at the age of 30 without any major success in sight, I wouldn't want to go back and be the person I was ten or even five years ago. I knew nothing of anything. I am pretty certain I will look back five years from now and thing the same about myself now, but for the moment, just the moment, this is a good one.

To Be Continued...

For the narcissist in all of us...

My new favorite gadget/toy is Balooba Software's Mirror widget for the Apple Dashboard. I know that technically it's not a gadget or a toy for that matter, but it is small, can provide me with with (potentially, because you know I do have work to do...) hours of entertainment, and is backed up with some cool technology. Whenever I'm bored, I find myself hitting F12, bringing up the Mirror, practice some method acting and make funny faces, and do a screen capture of the image. You know, like in Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me: "You're a lemur. Now burrow, baby, burrow!". My new "task" is to make as many funny faces as I can and build a collage of them. Here's a preview:

[Picture removed...creepy comments]

State of Disorganization

Trying to figure out what band was playing in my CD player this morning made me realize the chaotic state of affairs my music is in. I have an old laptop, a new laptop, S's laptop, S's desktop, and an external hard drive. All of these devices contain different libraries of music. The external is supposed to be a backup, but we are nowhere near backing everything up and there is already some level of redundancy as far as music goes on the external. To make matters worse, I can't write to the external (NTFS formatted) from my new computer (a Mac), so all of the music I have acquired recently will need another form of backup. Now add to that all of my digital music players. Please don't judge me, but I have four iPods. Yes four. I know it's ridiculous and I know that someone at Apple marketing is thrilled to learn that his paycheck is well earned, but I promise that I have a very reasonable explanation on how I got each of my four iPods (another time). I have different music on all four iPods, they are not completely synced to any of my music libraries, and I also have music on my iPods that is not in any of the libraries. And then there is S's iPod (not included in the 4 count). He has music on his iPod that I want which is also not on any of the computers. Oh, and one final thing. There are also plenty of CDs that I have that I haven't yet ripped (including the one from this morning, which incidentally was Taking Back Sunday) and they are not in any of the libraries or on any of the iPods. I have a vision of all of my music on an external hard drive free of redundancy, and an iPod (just one) that contains all of this music with perfectly organized playlists, but I have no idea on how to achieve this vision. Someone please help!!! Any ideas?