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Geekery, Me

when things don’t go the way as planned.

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Things aren’t going as planned.  I’ve been struggling these days to keep things balanced, prioritizing items, and not letting myself get in my way.  There’s a ton I want to do/write around here but right now I am struggling to find the time to do so.

I’ve been wanting to put in a commenting system here that really kicks butt.  There are two that are competing for my attention and I am keeping a close eye on both.  They are disqus and intense debate.  Both are really cool but neither stands out above the other.  Both have a lot to offer but neither are really above what I have already in place to justify the switch.  The cool thing about both is that they are integrating with social networks and the like (what isn’t nowadays) so that your comments can “follow” you as you go around the net.  Both are super cool and have tons of potential but I am waiting on some maturity before I make a decision.  Probably won’t be happening for a while.

I’m looking forward to the warmer weather.  I think my being locked in a cave, in all its anti-social glory, is starting to turn me into Jack Nicholson in The Shining.  The only people I see these days are my coworkers, and the only people I speak to are dissatisfied techies and my parents.  My only saving grace is rock climbing but I have had to defer that for a couple weeks because of the GMAT.  But the GMAT isn’t going nearly as smoothly as I projected.  I do great on some tests and I do so-so on others.  I need consistency before I do anything.  It sucks because I keep deferring and deferring and deferring and I might defer it past the deadline for Uni applications.  That wouldn’t be the end of the world, in fact that would probably be my preference but I don’t want to stay in my cave any longer!  I have a pile of books just waiting to be read.  I have vacations to plan, people to see, things to do.  My mind has been telling me “As soon as your done this thing man, BJJ, that’s what you are going to do.  5 days a week man!  You can do it!” and “Oh man your grip strength is incredible now, and you can do triple the amount of chinups you could do before without even breaking a sweat.  Now imagine if you had time to get in even more workouts.  Rock climbing machine!” and “These books, you have to read them.  There’s so much wisdom and knowledge to be applied.  Hurry man, you’re wasting away your time.  You aren’t young anymore!” and so on and so forth.  Can you imagine trying to study with all that racket?

Truth is, I am in no rush to back to school, so my mind needs to stfu.  But I do want to write this GMAT thing soon, just to get it over with.  How soon?  When I’m ready and not a moment before.  And yes, I am still young, I plan to live until I’m 150, and then by the time I’m 150 the medicine and technology during that time will let me live until I’m 1000.   😉  So I am doing just fine.  I’ll be missing some events here and there, like a trip to Boston, and some climbing, and some birthday parties.  But those are the breaks, and I’m fine with that.  I want to earn everything that comes to me, including the good and bad.

Lesson for today:  Tell your brain to shut up.  Then tell it you love it.

Geekery, Life, Me

when death comes knocking.

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“First you have to give up, first you have to *know*… not fear… *know*… that someday you’re gonna die.” – Tyler Durden

Murder… suicide… aids… cancer… heart attack. I’m reminded of the ways people I know have left this place.  I’m reminded of death and I think, wow, that sounds like something out of a movie and yet, this is what has happened with great people that have touched me in one way or another at one point in my life.  Another great one over the weekend has left.

What are your regrets if you were to die today? What would you wish you’d done?

I don’t have many. Mine would be that I never had a child to call my own. That would probably be at the very top. Other things are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things:

  • A dog, man’s best friend. Lol I know weird, but a dog will love you unconditionally, no matter what.
  • Seeing the world. I’ve seen quite a lot, but still microcosmic to the vastness of the world. If I could do it full time, I would. One day…
  • Working with children. I’d love to be able to work with children. Young children, whose innocence and curiosity is just so pure. Right before social conditioning gets a hold of them. If I can inspire some kids for the better, that would be awesome. Its something I’d love to do in my later years.

But really, that’s about it. I’ve loved, I’ve lost. I’ve been beaten up, and it wasn’t the end of the world. I’ve tried my best and failed miserably, and I’m still here. But I know, that my time will come, and your time will come, so instead of fearing it, why not embrace the inevitable? Such a liberating feeling it is to know that today quite possibly could be your last, so why not do the things you love to do? If I were to go today, I’d be content. But I’d love to stick around, because there’s just so much to feel, so much to experience, so much to contribute and be a part of.

Speaking of contributing, check out the awesome idea of Tim Ferriss.  What a great and easy way help a worthy cause.  Social Media for the betterment of all.  I like it.  All you have to do is follow him on twitter, and money gets donated!! I like.

By the way, I hope you guys are checking out my Tumblr stuff, I usually post funny pictures and goofy stories I find around the net.  I know its silly stuff but hey if it makes me smile, maybe it’ll make you smile too 🙂

Oh and check out this awesome poem.

Geekery

Twitter for n00bs

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Disclaimer: Written by a twitter n00b

What is Twitter?

I don’t know.  It is so simple yet so difficult to explain.

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

That was taken from the twitter website.  But that still doesn’t explain it that well.  They call it “micro-blogging”, I guess.  Basically twitter lets you provide small updates (140 characters max) and they make it convenient to do so.  You can update via email, on your Iphone or Blackberry, on the twitter website, through 3rd party applications or websites, really almost anywhere.  Nice and convenient.

Who uses Twitter?

Everybody!  Celebrities like Shaq and Britney Spears.  For the record, Shaq is hilarious.  Politicians like Al Gore and Barack Obama.  Authors like Tim Ferris and Steve Pavlina.  University Professors and researchers.  Companies like Starbucks and Marvel Entertainment.  Sports teams like the San Diego Chargers and the Chicago Bulls.

They come from all walks of life!

So far so good.  But why use Twitter?

Because its fun!  You can let your friends and family know what you are doing and what’s on your mind.  You can share funny things you find across the web.  You can ask questions and get quick replies.  It can be an extremely useful tool.

A snowboarder that went missing in the Swiss Alps was found with the help of the GPS signal from his iPhone, while his friends were raising awareness about the accident on Twitter. His friend, unfortunately, was found dead after an extensive search.

Taken from Mashable

When Gmail went down a couple of weeks ago, Tweeters were the first to report it.  Slowdowns on the public transportation you rely on?  Check Twitter, I bet there is news about what is going on.  Companies are starting to pay attention to what Tweeter’s have to say.  If customers have a complaint, these companies want to gather this information to satisfy their customers. 

In short, twitter has past the tipping point and has hit critical mass.  There are enough people using it that you can get real time information very very quickly.  It can be used almost like a real time search engine, where the information comes in fast and furious.

How do you use Twitter?

Simple, go to twitter.com and sign up for an account.  Then you are ready to start tweeting.  You will need to follow some people to see their updates, and they’ll need to follow you to see yours.  If you don’t hide your tweets, they will also be a part of the public timeline so everybody can see them.

You can tweet from the website itself, or you can download apps for your Iphone, or extensions for your browser.  For example, I use Digsby as my IM client on Windows.  This has twitter integration and so I am able to see what other people are tweeting about and reply if want to.  I usually tweet using the Ubiquity Firefox extension.  The two most popular desktop  applications I keep hearing about are Twhirl and Tweetdeck, although I haven’t used them myself.  Its all supposed to make tweeting easier, not more complicated so don’t get overwhelmed.  If you are confused then just stick to the website for now until you get your bearings on it.

Twitter is the fastest growing social network on the web right now.  Facebook tried to acquire them and failed.  Very soon, your going to start seeing some changes on Facebook’s homepage.  This is a likely a direct challenge to twitter’s emergence, as Facebook will try to beat twitter at its own game.  It will be interesting to see how it all unfolds.

Geekery, Me

Changing it up around here.

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I think I’m going to start mixing things up around here. Lately I’ve been writing about how to be awesome (actually, pretty much all I’ve been writing about since I revamped the blog) and I really enjoy doing it. I could probably continue writing about being awesome for the rest of my life. I highly doubt I would ever run out of things to write about. Writing about being awesome is really more for my benefit than anybody else. I have to constantly remind myself, and so I write it here. But the site is super duper awesome and really allows me to be a lot more flexible than that. There’s so much more I would like to share with everybody. My deep and sensitive side, my masculine and caveman side, my happy side, my goofy side, my sad side, my hugely over the top nerd side, and so forth. And I hope you all will contribute to the site as well. Its a lot easier to do so now, if you have Facebook or Gmail or OpenID or Seesmic you can do a lot around here. I know a lot of you enjoy reading my site and that’s great but it would be even more awesome if you dropped a note saying hello or shared some cool stuff that you happen to run into.

Right now all the rage for me is social media. It is blowing up across the world and I am happy to be a part of the ride. Social media involve sites like Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, and all that fun stuff that has a huge social aspect to it. I was rather cautious at first, as I’m generally a pretty private person, but it has proven to be really fun and now I don’t care. The internet is a valuable part of my life and this blog, as well as my contributions around the web, will be a part of my legacy. My manager is really big into social media and he said to me that the ones that are overly protective of their privacy are the ones that have something to hide, and I thought that was a fair enough statement.

I’m sure over time you’ll start to see more stuff from Twitter, Tumblr, and the like around here. I’ve already had my friendfeed life stream over on the right column if you haven’t noticed, as well as a list of sites I am a part of. I’m not active on everything, in fact I’m generally only active on Delicious, Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, Google Reader and to a smaller scale Last.fm and YouTube. I have just joined Tumblr yesterday and I really like its simplicity. I’m sure I’ll be adding to it whenever I get the opportunity. I’m still debating where I want to put my photos. I used to put them all on the site but found that it took up too much space. Flickr and Picasa are both good choices, but I don’t know the best way to go about doing it yet. I was thinking of taking up photography sometime in my future and I’d like to post that stuff to Flickr, and maybe put up all my travel adventures on Picasa. Miscellaneous stuff would likely get dumped to Photobucket, and the rest I find around the net likely would get a tweet or tumble.

If you have no idea what I just wrote, stay tuned… I bet I’ll get into more details eventually.

Life, Me

Persistence paves the way.

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My hands are shredded.  Blisters on most of my fingers from a hard day of climbing.  The agonizing pain of climbing, for the first time in my life, a 5.11 wall.  I did this twice, on two separate walls.  Finally, after all that hard work, I broke the barrier to the next level.  I remember being lowered down after climbing that second wall, that amazing feeling… “I did it.  About time.”  The onlookers congratulated me as I was untying myself.  “Wow, you were determined.” said one fine young lady.  Determined?  Probably.  Persistent?  Most definitely.  Washing the chalk off of my hands with soap, felt like acid burning through my skin.  But man was it worth it.

After a year being stuck in the same level, I thought I had plateaued.  I thought I had reached the limits of my abilities, but mentally I wasn’t convinced.  And so I plugged away at it, and plugged away, and plugged away.  Somebody at the climbing gym jokingly said to me, “Its the devil inside of you, that makes you keep on trying.” and I would say that there’s definitely something inside, telling you to keep on trucking.  If there wasn’t, we’d still be living in caves hunting for food with our hands.

You know the story of Thomas Edison?  He failed at making the light bulb like 1000 times.  But he kept on trying and trying and trying and he eventually got it right.  Can you imagine if he quit, what our world would be like today?  Then there’s this guy named Ghandi, you may have heard of him.  Him and his followers were able to single handedly convince one of the most powerful army’s to ever grace this Earth to withdraw from his country and grant their independence, without the use of violence.  How did he do it?  Basically, he kept on nagging them and nagging them and nagging them until they eventually got so annoyed they left lol.  Now that is persistence.

Go out, take what is yours, and if you can’t get it, try again.  Keep on trying.  Spend the hours and years working to your full potential, and put your heart and soul into it.  Let yourself fail, but don’t let yourself stop trying.  Yes, you’ll be on the plateaus more than you’ll be on the peaks, but don’t let that slow you down.  You are a locomotive, and you can’t be stopped.  You are a menacing lion hunting for its prey.  You are awesome, and you are persistent.

As for me, what comes after climbing a 5.11?  Plug away, plug away, plug away, and aim for 5.12.  Like I keep saying, it never ends, and its the journey that counts.  There is no why.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Life

The only thing I’m pretty sure I know is that I don’t know anything

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I like to think I have a pretty good grip on reality.  But the truth is, everybody lives in a different world.  Same physical world perhaps, but mentally very different worlds.  To some people, a cigarette is a great stress reliever, to another, its a disgusting habit.  In the physical world, it’s merely a cigarette, the person’s interpretation of it is what makes it valueable.  That’s why I’m pretty sure nobody knows anything, because they are only filtering it through their own model of their world. But there are many advantages of not thinking you are a know-it-all.  One of my all time favourite quotes comes from Royce Gracie, one of the biggest pioneers in the sport of MMA: “The belt only covers 2 inches of your ass, you have to cover the rest.”  What I think (my interpretation) of what he’s saying there is that you are ultimately responsible for yourself, not any type of symbolic achievement such as a black belt or a championship belt.  Once you’ve achieved those things, do you really think its going to get easier?  Heck no, its going to get harder with people gunning for the belt!  That’s why the road to mastery is never ending.  It is the journey that counts.  When you don’t think you know it all, it let’s you continue your journey, as if you are a beginner, as if you are a baby soaking it all in.

Without thinking you know, it prevents you from pre judging a situation.  It lets us be curious, to be open, to be satisfied with the present moment.  And that is the fun part, isn’t it?  Knowing is half the battle, so I guess not knowing is the other half?  Who knows.  I know you think you know, or you think I know you know, but you don’t know and I don’t know.  But we can try and find out, or not, because who knows if we’ll be right.  I just gave myself a headache.  Its like that TV show about the celebrities where they say “You think you know, but you have no idea…” or something.  I don’t know.  All I’m saying is you don’t have to know everything or think you do, because what you think you know might not be what you think you know.  Know what I’m saying?

Life

be a (wo)man. do the right thing. have integrity.

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I looked it up.  Integrity means moral soundness.  Its about staying true to yourself, of having strength of character.  Its very easy to spot a person of integrity.  You just feel it.  You know what that is?  That’s their energy blasting out at in all directions.   The rules of integrity include:

  • Follow up on your commitments
  • Keep your promises
  • Always pay back your debts
  • Love  what you see in the mirror
  • Keep your word
  • Be honest
  • Do not compromise your values

Sometimes it can be very hard to do.  Sometimes the right thing isn’t the thing you want to do.  People with integrity don’t bend these rules to fit their needs.  Integrity is not something that blows in the wind.  But that means you have to live by your rules, and not the rules of other people.  People with integrity need not the external validation of others, only the satisfaction of living life.  To love and be loved.  To experience and feel every second of every moment of this life they have been blessed with.  Its not about taking advantage of  friends, or about lacking the guts to tell somebody you like them and instead showering them with gifts, hoping one day they’ll just magically fall in love with you.  Its about telling people to step back when they’ve gotten in your space, its about having the courage to do what’s incredible, even if nobody knows you did it.  Especially if nobody knows.  It’s about being awesome.

“Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr.