Posts (page 2)
I'll be turning 26 soon. Some of my life's goals:
I want to pilot a plane, and charter a sail-boat, both around the world. Race cars on the salt-flats, ride camels across the Sahara, elephants on the safari, and the shuttle to the space-station. Scuba dive. Hang glide. Bungee Jump. Tightrope walk. Sky Dive. Luge.
I want to visit every country, stay in every town, scale every mountain, and explore every valley. I want to learn every dialect, and meet every person. I want to relate to foreign people, read all their books, and comprehend all their ideas. I want to eat in every restaurant, see every play, watch every movie, and listen to every song.
I want to discover a new branch of mathematics, and fashion a new paradigm of programming. I want to solve NP-Complete problems in polynomial time. I want to utilize fusion power, and harness the energy of the oceans. I want to end global warming, eradicate disease, and abolish hunger. I want to restore the rain-forests, and rebuild the mega-fauna ecosystems mankind has destroyed.
I want to create the perfect operating system. I want to run a marathon in less than 3 hours. I want to figure out how to control the weather.
Then, in my 30's...
I joined match.com, a while ago. It's weirdly exhausting. There are sooo many profiles that even trying to make a decision on which one to email becomes a huge task. It's kind of like trying to buy a new car: there's just too many choices. Secondly: getting rejected via a profile and an e-mail is actually MORE painful than real-life. I think a good metaphor for this is: i'd much rather at least get an INTERVIEW with a company and then get rejected, then just get rejected because of my resume. I always feel unfairly gypped if I can't even get the in-person interview. But if I get the interview and they don't like me, then it's cool because hey at least I got my chance, and they know what I'm about.
The other aspect of match.com is you have to create a profile. This is like writing a long essay selling a product. You're suddenly employed as a marketer: selling yourself! It's so tiring to try and write that essay. As well as the mini-fields about your "favorite things", your "for fun:", blah blah.
Then there's the READING of everyone else's profile. Imagine if every beer company in existence was tasked with writing you a one page essay describing why you should drink their beer. It would get mother-fucking redundant about 4 pages in. Every beer would generally sell you the same bullshit points, and you'd be like look I can't really believe any of this crap until I just try the beer: but I've got 10,000 pages of beers here, where do I even begin drinking! I'll be so freaking drunk!
Anyway. I found writing this profile, for myself, much more enjoyable:
About Me:
I never buy ANYONE a present on pretty much ANY occasion...especially not flowers or jewelry: I hate them both. I prize functionality over aesthetics, almost always.
I have no fashion sense whatsoever. I wear ratty t-shirts, shorts, and white sneakers every single day. If it's cold out, I wear my one black hoodie and beanie cap that are torn and faded grey from overuse.
I don't ever wash the inside of my toilet bowl because all I do is put my crap in it so why do I care if it's clean? I apply variations of this philosophy to many aspects of life.
I have no sympathy for people who are responsible for their misfortunes: like fat people. And don't give me that genetic/metabolism crap. If you don't eat: I guarantee you'll lose weight.
Judging by the preference of everyone I've ever met (except my half-deaf father): I listen to music and TV way too loud.
I fart quite a bit. Oftentimes: it smells. I also sweat abnormally more than most people, and I rarely use deodorant. My body's highly asymmetrical.
I don't remember to brush my teeth as often as I probably should. I never floss. I only shave about once a week, at best. The quality of my skin is poor.
When I sleep on my back: I snore. I also roll around a LOT while sleeping.
I don't believe in old traditions or customs that no longer have any rational justification, and as such I have no manners, and am not chivalrous.
I'm known by many for saying inappropriate and insensitive things. I'm often the shmuck who says or asks something others are only thinking. I tell people what I think of them or their ideas, regardless of consequences or feelings.
I consider myself smarter than just about everyone. Most people bore me, some amuse me, very few interest me, virtually none impress me.
I HATE small-talk on phones about as much as I hate filling out paperwork. I can't dance, and I hate dancing. I also hate going out to places where the music is so loud that you have to scream to talk. I'm addicted to listening to my ipod everywhere I go.
I like to fancy myself a sailor, but I can only dog-paddle and I can't open my eyes under water. I like to claim I am an outdoorsmen and hiker, but I'm scared of spiders.
I'm a mild hypochondriac. On more than one occasion I've been convinced I was having a heart-attack or otherwise suffering from something horrible. I'm also somewhat obsessive compulsive. I can listen to the same song over and over 40 times in a row, and I have a strong need to keep the things on my desk arranged geometrically.
Sometimes while walking down the street I will recall something funny and laugh out loud for no visible reason -- causing discomfort in nearby strangers. I also am prone to scratching myself in public.
I put my first gallery live, using the flex gallery I've created.
It's a collection of photos taken while hiking Lake Serene on Saturday.
I will be adding more to jubishop.com soon...
1) Amusing: Just think of how cleverly this program could be written. The architecture will be so marvelous! Redundancies will roll up into tight little balls of brilliance. Inheritance, composition, closures will all flow together in harmony. I'll create my own design pattern out of it! It will be at once succinct, understandable, elegant, efficient, and robust.
2) Exciting: Look! It's coming together and I've got some preliminary parts working. Sure, it doesn't look like much, but under the covers it's like 90% done really! This is going to be my greatest software creation yet. It will sparkle in perfection.
3) Challenging: There appear to be some wrinkles I may have not at first considered...but no worries! The extra complexity will only make the final creation all the more impressive. It's good to stretch the algorithmic muscles a little, after all.
4) Daunting: Ok, some of the planned features may not be doable in a v1. But by scaling back we can make this simpler creation even more perfect. Besides: the old adage says the art of good software is knowing what to take out, not what to add in.
5) Disappointing: In some places because of edge-cases and feature-requests we hadn't considered, we've had to...kind of..."poke holes" in our architecture...to make it work...
6) Painful: This app is so baileywicked 7 ways from Sunday that trying to change it at ALL feels like a meandering hike through the rainforest. I blame this on others. We need a rewrite!
i had a zeeks pizza (yes an entire medium pizza) last night around
9pm, then immediately laid down, thinking i was sleepy and i'd get to
bed early. i'd just done some ab exercises right before i ate...i've
just started doing ab exercises and i suspect somehow that had
something to do with my future pain...
i'm not sure what exactly i did to cause such catastrophe but at
around11pm i was awoken with just about the worst stomach pain (or ANY
pain) i can ever remember. i figured laying down so immediately after
eating wasn't good, so i got up and started pacing. about 90minutes
later, i was still pacing. i'd hugged the toilet bowel hoping to throw
up, but nothing...i was short of breath. i tried putting my finger
down my throat but just couldn't seem to get that to work (or couldn't
have enough resolve to get my finger far enough down my throat). i
fantasized stabbing myself in the stomach just to relieve the
pressure.
i called Mary at about 2am because i thought i was going to need
to go to the hospital, and she was about the only person i could think
of that'd drive me. i had a friend recently bleed out from an
intestinal ulcer and all i could think was that i must've gotten
something similar.....Mary's mom was a nurse and she convinced
me i didn't need to go to the hospital...she came over, with a heating
pad, and had me lay flat on the floor, relaxing my stomach muscles
with the heating pad on top of me.
finally things started to digest and by 4am i was able to at least go
to the bathroom...it was an excruciating evening.
w00t, I finally got SVN set up on my personal domain: jubishop.com
I'm working on a photo-gallery in Flex a.t.m, that I'll use to post the photos i'll be taking on my hikes and travels. You can check out the code for it at svn://jubishop.com/gallery ;o)
I'll be organizing previous code posts, and posting more code crap to my subversion repository in the future now.
Judging simply by my personal interests, I think this blog may transition back into geeky business crap and out of the realm of life-living philosophy for the near future. ;o)
A bit tongue hurts.
When people get drunk, and their inhibitions are shot, they find themselves saying all the things they wouldn't otherwise say....
It grates on ones' mind not to say and tell people what one wants. Which is why that urge bubbles up when we're drunk. Why not just act drunk all the time? (sans the alcohol). What's really the worse that happens? Unless your life, or limbs, are at risk: then I say it's not that bad. ;o)
Part of the human condition is to worry about what others think of you, and where you stand in their eyes (anyone who denies that they worry about this is simply full of shit...). People will appreciate your candor so much, because when it's clear that you speak truth to all, they no longer have to worry what you're secretly thinking. They KNOW you'll just tell them.
Having the guts to say exactly what you want is one of those traits that everyone admires, but very few people manage to achieve...
If there's someone that pisses you off, I'm sure you'd like to tell them. If there's someone you really like/love and they don't know it, I'm sure you'd deep down like to tell them that too.
Apply this to strangers as well. Why not talk to them? Be bold, and courageous.
Keeping secrets is tough, painful, complicated, and tricky. Why bother. Just speak the truth. Let the chips fall where they may. Life will go on.
I feel like this, as so many of my past blog-posts lately, seems so "obvious". Like "well duh". Yet when I look around me it seems like people still aren't listening.
People constantly say "seize the day"...but do they do it? (no) Fear of change rules our society. Be different. Buck tradition.
My hobby projects take _forever_. haha. I polish and refine and re-polish endlessly. I think the value of jobs/contracts is simply that there's someone who forces me to say "good enough!" and push it out the door.
My problem is a general obsessive-compulsive disorder for perfect organization and architecture within my code. My new tack for channeling my obsessions and calming myself is to aim for Perfect Optimality, and not Absolute Perfection.
Code that's perfect hasn't really been perfectly executed because at that point it's been overworked by at least 200%.
Optimal software is that which is built just enough to meet the juiciest part of the effort/reward curve...that spot where the software's acceptability per unit of work is as high as possible.
Write it until it's "done". Until it's deemed "good enough". I'd argue "good enough" is still further than most software ever makes it today, but it's far short of perfection. ;o)
Unlike life, there's many opportunities to start anew on code projects...so it's ok to settle a little on this one, and aim to do better next time around. ;o)
Music affects me, like I think it does most humans. The right beat at the right time can give me the urge to dance or at least bounce rhythmically. Some songs elicit emotional feelings, or extremely strong memories. I associate individual songs with people and events, and I connect with lyrics that, lacking the music, would seem kind of silly.
In our modern age of digital piracy, the love for live music is as strong as ever. Activist events often revolve around musical events. Human courting in the form of dancing, or bars, is extremely interwoven with music.
My pets don't seem to get into music. I've yet to see them dance. Dancing, for that matter, is another odd human trait. Other animals display courtship rituals, but I don't think it's ever synched to noise-beats. People also use music in religion: which I think is just an extension of music's ability to tap into deep primal emotions and urges.
Humans are the globes most social creatures (with relatively complex brains: bees/ants notwithstanding...). So much of our happiness and instinctual drive revolves around socializing. Which was only natural because cooperation and coordination is what allowed our species to get ahead.
Before we'd figured out complex symbol-based languages, I think music and rhythm was humanity's primary form of communication. Sounds and harmonies could convey your feelings to others, and rythms could've been used to even help coordinate hunting ambushes.
A spider scares us in a primal irrational way. A gun scares us intellectually: because we KNOW what it's capable of. Music is like the spider. A poem or novel is like the gun. One tickles deeper feelings that we can't even articulate, the other is just the candy of our neocortex...
