7 Things You Probably Don't Know About Me

The rules:

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

I was tagged by Alix Han.
I've tried to choose things most folks won't know. So to those of you who knew some of this already and feel shortchanged: Bonus points for already being a good friend! 

1. My first childhood dream was to become a singer. I was in a choir. I even wrote 3 songs. All this and I still managed to never learn how to read sheet music. (I just memorized the tune when others sang it)
2. I had a secret first girlfriend in Junior High school. It was very benign -- we never did more than hold hands. I don't remember much of it because it ended badly and as such I told myself it didn't count and blocked it from my memory. Which was surprisingly effective, as I only remembered it a few years ago.
3. I wrote a rap song to help my Ultimate team get into Potlatch last year. The song was about a quirky Ultimate player who had attained legendary status at Cal. It took like 2 days to write and ended up with about 45s of audio. My appreciation of rap music grew a thousandfold. 
4. A (presumably unusual) high percentage of my ex-girlfriends give the thought of dating girls a whirl shortly after dating me. Some of them were just temporarily experimenting, while others truly were more into women after all, and I was simply their proof by contradiction. 
5. Before there was a YouTube, I was one of the kids who got a webcam and put video of me talking on the internet. Most of it was crap, but when I got video editing software I had a fun time editing it and got some good episodes out of it. When I went to college, I made a trailer for the "College Edition" of the Chris Show, but then had too little free time in college to actually keep making it.
6. I want to get a tattoo, but don't have a clue what it would be of or where I would put it. I also want to try giving myself a different hairstyle, but don't know what else would look good on me. I had long hair at one point in college, and put my hair up with a hair tie to keep it out of my eyes. The nickname "Samurai" lasted a few weeks. All the ladies said I looked better once I cut my hair short again, so short it's stayed.
7. On completely separate occasions, I've had someone threaten to kill me, a gun pointed at my head, and got in a fight that was started by my friend's mother at my friend's birthday party. 

I choose you: Mignon Chu, Edith Han, Julia Ferraioli, David Nickolson, Kutlay Topatan, Lisa Bernard, Talie Kurilovich.

Nerd Wallets!

I decided to make myself a new wallet. There were some problems with the old one, and the ones I could buy didn't have what I wanted. 

The Old Wallet

My old wallet was the first one I actually made myself. Doing my best to be a faithful nerd, I decided to make it entirely out of Duct tape, because what nerd doesn't want a Duct Tape wallet. In fact, the wallet it replaced was a Ducti-brand Duct Tape wallet that I got as a gift. But I wanted to make one for myself, and so I did. 

It only took a few hours, and there wasn't much forethought. Really all I had thought out was how long I'd have to make the pieces of tape so that the fold could hold money. And that's literally all I had thought about. So a few hours later all I had was a foldable pocket for cash, only to realize that I also wanted to carry around my ID and credit cards and the like. Whoops. 

Some ad-hoc planning later and I eventually figured out how to make pockets. I wrapped some tape sticky-side-out around a credit card, and then just stuck the card in the wallet where I wanted a pocket. Voila! Instant pocket. Problem solved.

But, it's not lasting. The Duct tape is wearing away -- there are some holes around the corners and the stickiness is beginning to rub off on my credit cards and whatever else is also in my pocket. And I had kinda jammed too many cards into my afterthought pockets. So I wanted to make a new wallet with the following goals:

• Not made of Duct Tape so that sticky thing doesn't happen.
• RFID-blocking so I don't need a special sleeve for my ID
• An external pocket so I don't have to open my wallet to show the bus driver my bus pass
• Enough pockets to fit all the cards I actually use in my wallet.
• A high degree of nerd factor where possible.

The New Wallet

I must say, this is a pretty freakin sweet wallet. I was poking around for tape in my closet and I stumbled upon one of my boxes of aging computer parts. Inside, there was a bag of connectors that had never been used and it hit me. 2 parallel ATA cables could be used to make the wallet. Hell yes.

The dimensions worked out almost perfectly. It turns out the length of a standard PATA cable from Asus is about twice the length of a wallet. So, I got crackin. I hacked away at the connectors so I just had the cable, cut the PATA cables in half, and ironed them flat. Yes, I ironed plastic & copper because THAT IS HOW I ROLL.

Once I was convinced the PATA wallet concept could work, I actually did a bit of designing. I played a bit with paper prototypes to see what kinda size I could make and where I could put pockets. I tried to mimic my old wallet as much as possible, because I do like it. But I also planned out where each of the cards in my current wallet would go before I made the pockets. Which I feel might be a bit obsessive. But I didn't want to end up with not enough pockets or some other glaringly obvious omission at the end. Not again, anyway.

Without going into the extreme detail of its construction (which may only be interesting to me) I managed to get everything I wanted. I did some fancy stitch work with needle & thread to hold everything together. The pockets are made of a different, lightweight material I cut out of a free blanket bag I stole from the Company Meeting. The horizontal pockets on the inside of the wallet are also lined with aluminum foil because early tests showed that the copper in the cables alone weren't enough to fully shield the RFID card. But, they're tastefully hidden inside the pocket, so it's functional and fashionable!

The result is one sturdy, fairly lightweight wallet. That is also UBER AWESOME.

I didn't think of everything, however. After the first day of use, a problem became apparent. The ends of the wallet still had exposed copper (which I thought was cool) but it was rough to the touch, and would bend and get caught in my pocket. I considered doing some fancy stitch work to put some material over the end, but instead, I decided to go with a bit of nostalgia. 

As a bit of a homage to my first wallet, I put some black Duct Tape over the ends. Problem solved.

A Proper Vacation, For Once.

Just got back from a great weekend in San Diego. Mid to high 70's, a cloudless Saturday at the beach getting a tan and a beautiful sunset after strolling around Balboa park on Sunday. It was a lot to do in a weekend, and in my usual "get there first - plan things later" method of vacationing, I owe a great debt of thanks to Mignon & Chi, who always knew the cool thing to do next, even if they had trouble figuring out how to get there.

Leaving was tough. This was the weather I missed. These were the people I missed. How could I go back to Seattle? I was beginning to think I had failed.

I had failed because the point of this vacation was to reinvigorate me. Seattle has had an absolutely shitty winter. The holidays ruined my drive at work -- either I was at work struggling without the aid of my coworkers who were on vacation, or I was on vacation having all my energy sapped out of my by family interaction. I was burnt out from being at work, and from being away from work. For my productivity, and for my sanity, that needed to be fixed.

I needed another vacation. A break from work that, for once, also included a break from being stressed. So, I booked a weekend trip to San Diego, to clear my head, regain my sanity, and be more ready to get shit done at work.

Also, Mignon was bugging me to visit.

As I was sitting on the plane back to Seattle, awaiting it to take off, it had appeared that I simply hadn't gotten that hat trick. Yes, it was an amazing time, I had cleared my head, regained my sanity, and truly enjoyed myself. But the last thing I wanted to do was go back to work -- to go back to Seattle. To go back to the cold, the rain -- away from the beaches, the sunsets, the stars, the close friends.

The fact that my return had become an unwanted one only further eroded the work ethic I had attempted to rebuild.

But, the flight was 2 and a half hours. That's plenty of time for a man to think. This particular brand of thinking involved a $5 rum & coke and a bunch of Texas Hold 'em on my iPhone. Two things hit me. One: Meg did a pretty damn good job of teaching me how to play poker. Two: This was just a vacation high. It will fade, and hopefully overall I'll still have been a bit rejuvenated from the experience.

When I got off the plane, the familiar & cold Seattle air hit my skin once again. Except, to my surprise, it felt oddly... refreshing. Pretty damn good, actually. It was like waking up after a full night's sleep. The impact of it intensified once I got out to my car. Instead of the oppressive, omnipresent cold that I had left, the cold was now reduced to a belligerent bully who nobody likes but no one has stood up to yet. And now that I was back, I was ready to kick its ass.

I drove home full speed, with the windows down. A passing sign reported the temperature to be 37 degrees. I laughed and drove faster.

Turns out I hadn't failed after all. I'm back, and the troubles I left here only a few days ago are all pissant douchebags in need of a solid ass kicking. And, instead of just ditching and going to another party, I'm ready to put up my dukes and defend this one.

So: work, weather, whatever -- bring it on. I'm ready to do what needs to be done.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

This is what it looks like outside our cabin. It is snowing. Quite a
bit, actually.

There were plans to go hit the mountain, but the folks font want to so
that while snow is coming down. So we instead stay indoors. I don't
think I've left the house since my friends were here. Fun!

Before/After

Tada! This is what I do at airports. At least the ones I show up to
hours early because I'm afraid the wearer will make the roads hard for
the bus to get me there on time only to have the flight constantly
delayed while I'm at the airport.

Actually, after taking this picture I discovered my new beer had a fly
in it. I didn't think that actually happened. But apparently it does.

Woohoo unwinding by myself!

Snow Day

Lots of snow today. It was supposed to come yesterday, but so much for
that.

It's weird because this is not like the other places I've had to deal
with snow; and this is dealing with it in a different way entirely.

Normally, I go to the snow. Wait from afar to have it fall, wait for
them to clear the roads, and then go to the snow. It also means that
most times I'm around snow it's intended to be a vacation. So snow
means no work.

Also, in the event that it does snow in Tahoe, this never really
changes our plans. Sure, we can put chains on the tires, but we're not
inhibited from going out at all except that one time where we got
snowed in. But that was a really bad storm. Today was not bad by those
standards but Seattle came to a standstill.

Busses were reroute or cancelled. Lots of cars were spinning out along
the freeways. At least two restaurants on my street never opened. The
commute issue caused massive amounts of MSFT employees to work from
home: excessive load on the servers then made it horribly slow to get
anything done.

It annoys me that Seattle can't deal with snow. I think it might me
more of how the city handles it rated than how the residents do.

Anyways. I need to pack. Hopefully there won't be commute issues
getting to the airport so by the end of tomorrow I can be somewhere
that oat horrified of snowfall.

How Not to Party

I have lots of little voices in my head. Probably not literally, but there are a number of different perspectives I see on a given situation at once, each of them trying to influence what action I take. So it's easy enough to personify these perspectives, give them voices, and then view my thought process as a bunch of dwarves brawling, because that would be awesome.

One of the whinier dwarf voices is that of Doubt. Always asking "what if". Like you gave a chipmunk caffeine and and inherent fear of life and just let it talk endlessly. Everything I face there's a part of me that tries to think a few steps ahead, at how things could possibly go wrong, as proof that I shouldn't do anything, because the worst is inevitable, and I don't want the worst, do I?

This is especially true when I'm dealing with loads of other people. Like, for instance, at a party. Perhaps a winter party with a bunch of coworkers at a golf club at a fancy town in the hills just south of Bellevue. One where everyone comes dressed up nicer than usual because it's not just a party -- it's a dinner party.

Now, in this situation, I'm surrounded by people that I want to have a positive view of me in whatever context I consider them to be a part of. I want folks I consider friends to view me positively by the metric I view friends. I want coworkers to see me in a bit more presentable, professional light. And, for people I don't know, I want to be polite, cordial, and even witty, because I haven't quite decided which context I want them to view me in yet.

A party of this size has folks in all sorts of contexts. And it drives that caffeinated dwarf chipmunk of Doubt absolutely bonkers.

I want to relax and have fun. But I do that with friends, not with coworkers. Do I tell them stories of my day? No, that could go wrong, and why would you want to do that anyway they're coworkers. What if I say "fuck"? Oh heaven's no don't do that people will be offended. Jokes? Maybe but keep it tasteful -- no racial stuff, no sexy stuff, in fact, no jokes might be best after all.

The result of all this is an extra layer of thinking. Of debating if I should say what popped into my head or not. It's not a trivial amount of effort to do, so it's quite taxing. And worse yet, this is all in a setting that's under the guise of being a party, where you relax and have fun, and spend time with friends. And instead, I'm tense, very self-aware, and talking work talk with coworkers because I know that domain is easier to tread without negative consequence.


I have two ways out of this. The first is easy: bring friends. With enough folks around me that know me well enough, Doubt shuts the hell up because it's really got nothing to say. And then if some coworkers stray into the conversation, no worries, I'm already having a fun time, they can masquerade as friends in my head if it keeps the momentum of the evening going.

The alternative is a bit more difficult. It requires a different dwarf to step in and bitchslap Doubt across his puny face. Because he's sick of hearing Doubt's shit -- Doubt's all talk and no action. This new doubt is Boldness, and it does indeed help if Boldness has had a drink or two before he tries brawling with other dwarves and talking louder than he realizes.

The gist of Boldness is to just tell Doubt to shut the fuck up, your wining is only making this worse, and there's no fun to be had if you just sit on your ass and do nothing. A man of action, Boldness wants to do things which can't have all their possible negative consequences enumerated.

Unfortunately, this year Boldness didn't offer much more than talk. Last year, friends helped, and Boldness got me to come alive and have tons of fun with the folks I work with. This time round, he tried, but (a) I had less to drink and (b) there was no clear idea of what benign mischief I could cause that would liven the party up. Also, there were just fewer friends. That hardly helped.


The one saving grace of the evening was the afterparty. A short drive to a coworker's house, with a friend and a number of people I don't really work with. A bit of time sharing embarassing stories, sexy hip moves, and rocking out to "Man I Feel Like a Woman". That's fun. That's a party.

Quick update

This trip deserves a much longer Blog entry, but all I have time for is a short one.

Today was the result of poor planning, of poor common sense. The idea of extending my trip a few days was that it would give me a few extra days in the Bay Area to hang with friends, and also because it would save me about $100 on airfare. Win-win.

But then that leaves today. It's a Monday, and I'm in Berkeley. It's one of my days that I get to spend with friends, in theory. But everyone's got posters and projects, midterms and essays, or they have a job. Everyone is busy with things to do, because in the normal world people get things done on Monday, despite their laziness screaming at them that it's a lot of work and napping is a lot more rewarding.

So I once again find myself with time to waste. I sleep in. Hit up one of my favorite spots for lunch. And all my elaborate time wasting leaves me at about 12:30pm with 5 or so hours to go before friends can hang out, and they've figured out that I'm not a student anymore, so I can't get free wireless around campus. Bugger.

The result is a very long afternoon spent at a cafe. I got a bit of work done -- some design work that, though I hate working on vacations, I really should have done a while ago. Then I began to play a game, but it didn't feel right. That's about as well as I can describe it. Slacking off with mindless agmes didn't seem like the right thing to do.

I instead spent my time on other projects that I had neglected. A bit of graphics work. A bit of HTML & CSS on the next rev of my website -- mostly proof of concept stuff but it's working well enough to actually use. I'm impressed. And pleased with myself. ">

I don't know what it is about my surroundings, but there's something psychologically empowering about being in Berkeley. It's probably just a mental block or something I have about pursuing the things I want to do while i'm in the confines of my family's household. It's not a good thing -- but it's good to know it's a thing.

Anyway. Now it's friend-hang-out-time.

2 therefore n? as in November?

I'm on track so far. Which is easy considering it's been 2 days so far.
I managed to have vegetarian for dinner last night, so bonus there, but I only managed until about 7pm without eating, rather than going through the night hungry. Probably a good choice, as it was pretty rough towards the end.

Also: cardio workout yesterday and balance & quad endurance today. And I'm ahead on my word count.

Tomorrow will tax me, because as of yet, I was getting everything done precisely because I had no work to do. But tomorrow, I have work to do.

Here's to hopin'.

November Targets

A bit late, but here's what my plans are for this month:

• Complete NaNoWriMo. Big goal.
• Video games only if I'm ahead on my word count. This will absolutely suck.
• Eat Vegetarian with 2 exceptions: Thanksgiving & potentially Saturdays. Bonus if I manage to be vegetarian on Saturday as well. Oh, also, I'm going to say fish qualifies as vegetarian cuisine.
• Fast on Sunday. Sunrise to sunset, bonus if I manage to sleep sunday night without eating.
• Daily workouts, 3 a week will be cardio. Bonus if I get more than 3 days with cardio workout.
• Big TV off after 11pm. I'll either read or write after then.
• Meditation 3 times a week? I think so. I need to get that skill back.
• Be more social? I don't know how I can quantify this. But somehow.

Let's go november.

Like New Years Resolutions, but earlier.

I need to change a lot of things about my life. The more I think about it, the more distinct the image of who I want to be becomes. And the more I realize how that is not like me.

The biggest difficulty with my goal is I want it to be sustainable. I've had smaller goals that I've reached, only to go back on them in the long run. Things like a target weight, an exercise regimen, cooking a real meal once a week, forcing myself to try new things, and being more social than I perceive myself to be. In my first year in Seattle, I did all of these things, and I felt good about having done them, but did not keep them up. And now I find myself doing none of these things, and I'm rather unhappy with myself about each of these things, but not so strongly as to bring about a change of habits.

I'm in a rut.

A look back on situations I'm doing differently now:

• Work. Then: In around 10, leave by 5:30. My working hours revolved around my life and whatever activities I did outside of work. Now: I'm in earlier, I go home later. I'm focused more on what work I've finished than how much work I've done. 
• Ultimate. Then: I played 2 or 3 times a week, mostly pickup, but always regular. Now: I have a team, but we don't practice. I don't make it out to lunch games anymore. I play once a week, at best.
• Weeknights. Then: Freakin busy. Dancing Mondays, Thai Tuesdays, Puzzle Wednesdays, Cooking Thursdays, and Drinking Fridays. Now: Just the Fridays. The rest of my weeknights are TV shows or video games.
• Weather. Then: The weather didn't phase me. It was even a bit exciting when the rain began, because it's really not something I'm used to. Now: I'm distrustful of sunny days, as they seem to tease me of what it could be like all the time, but isn't.

I don't think these are all unrelated changes, but they all stem from a common cause. I wanted the real world to be a better version of college. My first reaction when the real world met my idea of what the real world should be was to change the real world. A rare few of these changes have held (Friday drinking and a general atmosphere of socialness amongst my coworkers being the only one that comes to mind). 

And then, after a while, it's hard to keep the momentum going. Especially when there's such little positive reinforcement for my efforts. I stop trying as hard. And as a result, I see what was likely to be the outcome anyway, for much less effort. And the cycle repeats. I'm not getting any better at Ultimate, why keep playing. I'm not accruing a posse of friends that I feel comfortable with asking to hang out with at the drop of a hat, nevermind finding a handful of people I could genuinely trust. I'm not getting used to crap for weather.

And so I sit. Locally trying to optimize my reward per effort has gone from an active social life to me & an Xbox. And I'm genuinely unhappy about it.

That is who I am right now. The uphill climb to who I want to be has had a bit of a landslide and brought me back down here. And while there's a chance that route would work if I simply dug deep and gave it another go, I'm thinking I'll try a different route this time.

If I don't like reality as I perceive it, and changing reality has failed, all that's left is to change my perception of that reality. Then the only thing that can stop me from creating that change is myself. I'm hoping I'll be easier to change than the rest of the world has proven to be. 

I haven't quite figured out what I want to change, but I've gotten a timeline. By the end of next week I'll have a list of things to do different, of better ways to spend my time than I'm spending them now. And then November will be when it kicks in. All the changes, all at once, for one month. 

Wish me luck.

Trust My Decisions

So I think I am holding out on writing on all my other topics until it's NaNoWriMo . But Political stuff is neither fiction, nor will it be as relevant for the majority of November. So here it is.

All the issues in the current presidential election can be narrowed down to one question: Who do you trust to make a decision on the right thing to do in a given situation? While quite vague, these concepts of trust and decision making are a deep part of our government and show themselves across the entire spectrum of experiences in our society.

Let's take an obvious example. You find a lost puppy. It happens to be found beneath a sign telling you who to call if you find this puppy. The Right Thing to do here is relatively obvious. Call the number, give the puppy back, everybody is happy. No laws exist to tell you what to do in this situation, because the government trusts that you'll do the Right Thing so much, that it's not even worth their effort to punish you if you don't. Here the answers are easy, the solutions simple, and each individual is trusted with the decision.

Now for a greyer and more touchy example: abortion. Regardless of its legality, trying to determine what the Right Thing to do is in this situation is one that's hotly debated. Somehow, a woman who does not wish to have a child finds herself pregnant. Whether it be from a failed contraceptive or from, heaven forbid, something as grim as sexual assault. Whichever path got her here, she's now in an ugly situation, and she will do whatever she thinks is the Right Thing.

That is, if we trust her to. Pro-Life supporters don't think that this is a decision that she can handle on her own, so they want laws that explicitly say what the Right Thing is (in their case, that she must carry the baby to term) and force her to do that Right Thing. Pro-Choice advocates do trust the woman to consider what's best for her and her child, and let her choose what she believes to be the Right Thing to do.

On a bigger scale, we have things like our current electoral college process for elections. There are really only 538 votes cast in an American election that hold any weight at all on who becomes president. The popular vote, the ideological one vote per person is tallied, but each state decides how the popular vote will influence the electoral vote. Some states have it all for the most popular, some have it split proportionally, and some electoral votes are completely independent of their popular counterpart. This was designed so that, if the populous didn't vote for the Right Thing on election day, the electoral votes could fix it so that the Right Thing did happen and the right candidate was elected.

This is what happened in 2000. The popular vote determined Al Gore to be the best man for the job, but apparently everyone who thought that was the Right Thing was wrong. Phew. That was a close one.

And with another election in front of us, every issue is another version of this question of trust. Do you trust the banks to regulate themselves and only give loans to folks who can pay them back? Do you trust agencies & corporations to provide equal treatment to same-sex couples as they do heterosexual couples?  Do you trust employers to give equal opportunity and equal pay to women as they do men?

Whoever we elect this year will be in the position to make these decisions. I think Obama will choose what I view to be the Right Thing in these situations. Substantially moreso than McCain. I can only hope that as a nation, we decide this strong enough to make sure the electoral votes agree that this is the Right Thing to do.

More time, less time.

I'm definitely not doing as much after work nowadays. It used to be I
had a crazy social schedule. Mon night salsa, Tues night Thai food,
wed night puzzle, thur night baking, Friday night unwinding. And amid
all that I had energy and focus to work on my website.

But I don't have most of that to do after work anymore. In fact, I
really just en up working a bit more because of it. So when I get home
it's hard to work on the stuff that I've already spent all day working
on. And fir some reason blogging doesn't have the same expressive
relief it once did, so that fallen by the wayside as well.

Which is sad. I really do have some great ideas of things I want to
write and things for my website.

Maybe I'm just saving it all up for NaNoWriMo.

Idea seeds

There are a couple of things that ive wanted to write about, but the
time has escaped me. When there is time, hopefully I can flesh out my
views on:

Communication.
Gender and minority issues.
Things I unequivocally enjoy.
Trust: personally and in the media.
Family: birthright or social function?
The future of the Internet.

I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones I can remember of the
top of my head. I'll refer back to this list when I want to write
about something but need an idea seed.

No hangin' out.

Sometimes I have a busy day at work. Today was one of those days.

Sometimes I get a lot of work done. Today was almost one of those days.

The reason: process. I have 2 bug fixes, but I can't call em done
until they go through a process that proves that my change isn't
adding more bugs than it's removing. A lengthy process. One with many
moving parts.

For the last few days, these parts have failed to move entirely,
leaving me with work I can't really do any more work on, but that
isn't actually finished. So I loop in a bunch of other people in an
attempt to get this process machine running again. Other coworkers are
having the same problem with their machines. It all points to a
problem external to ourselves: the engine is fine, but you can't use a
combustion engine in a vaccuum.

So I call the folks with all the oxygen and say, "Hey. Oxygen folk. We
need some." But instead of giving us oxygen, they just kinda look
around and say, "we've got oxygen here. What's the problem?"

This goes on for an hour, a time that would kill anyone who actually
did need oxygen.

And when you finally convince them that yes, you do need air, the task
of giving it to you is passed off to another person who doesn't truly
understand that not giving this to us immediately is stopping us from
running our process and getting actual work done. Why is this how it
works?

Because that's their process. And they've got all the oxygen.

The moon doesn't count.

Even on a super clear night, after a beautiful day of cloudless sun,
there are no stars in Seattle.

This bugs me.

Not all thinking is good.

This was a tough week. Fairly draining. I did have some fine PieMo
merch to help me get through it, but that only does so much.

Literally 8 bugs resolved this week. That's madness for me. I have 8
more to go over the next 3 weeks, but they really are harder ones.
Regardless of difficulty I was just on fire about being motivated to
get my shit done.

But I'm drained. And I need to be as motivated in the weeks to come.
So for the sake of my job I need to do fun things this weekend to
energize me to work.

But I don't tend to do that anymore. None of the folks I know in
Seattle ask me to do things- they're just not that kind of friend to
me. And I've become tired of bugging them to hang out with me. So the
result is me, at home, all weekend.

It's crap.

And then work serves as a relief: after a 2 day haiatus, I'm finally
surrounded by people who want to talk to me. My occupation shouldn't
serve ad my only social outlet. But I do need folks to kim me in the
pants once in a while to do what's really best for me.

I'm going to be diappointes by this weekend. I know it.

blogging powers for good.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/09/help_find_hannah_upp.html Friend of a friend is missing in NY. If you've seen something, let the authorities know.

story premise

I had this great idea for a story yesterday. The basic premise is this:

How do you tell the difference between something you remember and something you dreamed? Really, the only major difference is memory continuity -- you wake up one day, and have two distinct memories of something having just happened. Either your last day ended and you went to bed, or you had some adventure that we believe was generated by your subconscious. Most of the time your brain figures it out with the following logic: one means you should be in bed, which you are, and the other means you should be running away from Ninjas in china or something because you stole their prized statue of a green monkey. It could happen.

But during most dreams, you believe everything at face value. And you seem to lack the memory of having just gone to bed. Somehow this continuity isn't questioned.

Oh man i'm spinning off a couple of different ideas about dreams, all story worthy.

• Original idea: Every one of your dreams ends the same, you are somehow tricked into pushing a red button that sends you back to the waking world and destroys your memory of the dream. Like Groundhog Day but with a sinister puppetmaster toying with you every night to make you push this button. Except you notice a girl beginning to recurr in your dreams. Each time, it's her trying to stop you from pushing the button, as this dream world needs your help desperately, but so many times you end up pushing the button anyway (which usually erased the memory of her, but she keeps appearing in the bits you remember) The puppetmaster of this dream world is doing something bad, and you can stop him if only you could break this horrible cycle of red-button pressing. 
• Spin off 1: Every dream begins the same as well. You wake up from your bed and do something. But this memory is so mundane that it is lost.
• Spin off 2: What do sleepwalkers think when they wake up? Or hungover people when they don't entirely remember how they got there either? This seems to break my theory of memory continuity, as folks are still just as easily able to tell what was a memory and what was a dream. Well, maybe notsomuch with the drinking. hm...

So yeah i really only have one idea. but I like it. I should figure more out.