Nerd Stuff

Hung out with Kyle and Tucker, as per usual for a Tuesday night. Settlers of Catan, three person euchre and some classic conversations were had. Truly good people.

Magic the Gathering today, Kyle and I split two matches in our 16 deck CUBE tournament. So far he is crushing me overall.

Dinner with the Kannon's at Red Robin. Veggie "5 Alarm" burger and shared Onion Tower were very good, but put me way over my calories for the day.

Texas looms in my future. I haven't prepared but there is still time to get things done, and to do things right. I'm excited but worried about all the responsibilities, I'm a 15 year old in a 27 year old body. I'm also not worried, once the responsibilities are realized and not nebulous future mountains I'll handle them all effectively. I always do, but it's still a little scary, I'm not used to risk. Just like public speaking where I'm flustered and sweating before the event, and totally ride my adrenaline and crowd energy and power though the presentation once I'm talking.

Running

Been running more lately. I forgot how badly I suck at running. Surely I remember a time where running was easy and fun, where I ran for miles at a time. This is no longer the case. It's amazing what even a year can do to your body. I let myself go, and went off the deep end. Any way race to ONE MILLION!

14.5 miles = 7 runs

ONE MILLION millimeters = .62 miles, I run this every day I run
ONE MILLION centimeters = 10k or 6.2 miles, I knock this out over a span of three runs
ONE MILLION inches = 15.7 miles, I'm almost there
ONE MILLION decimeters = 100k or 62.1 miles, Average Americans drive half of this every day
ONE MILLION feet = 189.4 miles, Average Americans drive this in 6 days

ONE MILLION meters = 1,000k or 621.4 miles, or about the driving distance from New York to Detroit. If a person ran a 5k every other day, it would still take them over a year to run this distance.

ONE MILLION kilometers = 621,371 miles, No runner will ever achieve this goal, a person running everyday for 70 years would have to put in at least 24 miles every day. This distance is greater than running to the moon and back! (477,714 miles)

Run to the MOOOON! = 238,857 miles, Even the much shorter distance for a one way trip to the moon would require the 70 year runner to average over 9 miles a day. *sigh*

ONE MILLION miles! Equally impossible as 1,000,000k, the 70 year runner would now have to run just over 39 miles every day. This is an interesting number though, over the course of a 70 year life if you do something at least 40 times a day you will do that activity a million times!! I think about reading, If on average I read 40 pages a day, I could potentially read one million pages. The average American driver, will fall well short of the 1,000,000 milestone if they drive for 70 years, assuming 12,000 miles a year. Even assuming 13,000 miles a year, the driver falls almost 100,000 miles short. Fifteen thousand miles a year just barely does it, coming in at 1,050,000 miles

Crying is wonderful

I'm not sure I can even call it crying, my eyes water, there is an unmistakable ache in my heart, but like a roller coaster there is no danger, the adrenaline produced artificially. On the few occasions -when my mom had to pick me up from jail, when my friend's dad died, the many times I've loved people at the wrong time- I've actually cried it has been a horrible experience. I had no control over the tears, I didn't want to cry more, I wanted to stop crying. My heart hurt so much I thought I would die. Whoever said that words couldn't hurt them had never been hurt by words. Emotions hurt, physically. Emotions heal, physically too, sometimes the same ones that hurt. Everything in moderation, a lesson I know but never quite learned.

I blame my lack of will power on addiction, but I think I actually am addicted to cigarettes, one of my many "addictions." How does this life lesson continue to escape me? It seems to be that people can know things, know for a certain truth, and ignore them. Patients with lung cancer that still smoke, people that know about the horrors of the meat industry but continue to eat fast food, obese people that continue eating desserts and living a sedentary life. While I've quit smoking and haven't had lung cancer yet, I am/was all of these people. One hundred pounds overweight, and I still have dessert more days than I go to the gym. I hate myself but that's not new, makes it hard to find a job or a girlfriend, and I know that too. Self-confidence would probably yield both in short order. I'm not a terrible person, I'm just a person. Educated well enough to be a fine engineer and have enough sense to be pleasant conversationalist. I know this, yet somehow lack confidence.

I've often thought about the disparities between knowing and believing. It's what makes humans great, it's what makes humans human. To take in information, know it, and then check that against all the other information you have for validity. It's odd how that mechanism breaks. I know I'm not terrible but I can't stop believing it even when friends tell me how great I am, but the same mechanism lets me know evolution is a fact, no matter how hard ignorant people try to argue against it. Maybe debating abortion is a better example. Pro-life and pro-choice arguments both have valid points, while I am pro-choice and will fiercely defend that right, I can understand the logic behind the pro-life position, and even agree with many pro-life ideas. None of which changes where I come down on the issue, which isn't to say that debate couldn't change my mind. I was pro-life many years ago, did a lot of research, had a lot of debates and finally arrived where I am now, but I can know, understand, and agree with pro-life sentiments and still believe that pro-choice is the correct approach to abortion. This is where the knowing/believing mechanism works wonders, to be able to see and respect both sides of the coin, while knowing which way you want to see it land.

Empathy

I find it strange that we can connect to people in a very quick and very deep way. In the length of an hour long TV show a character's hardship can move people to tears. Fictional characters, with fictional problems in a science fiction setting that may never come to be. A child lost, or a parent's sudden death, or a lover saying goodbye for the last time, these are real world losses that do not lose impact just because they are fictional. But what of a burden that does not exist, that has no real life analog. You're life long friend is a robot, you come back from the dead in a new young body, but give up the opportunity for a second life for the sake of the body, and because you promised a friend that you'd only occupy the body for a short time. Loss, loyalty, and selflessness, surly they are present in these fictional settings, but to understand that, and to cry because of the beauty and purity of these situations- is wondrous. An hour, less than that really, people can be moved to tears by things that never happened, maybe because they never happened. Sometimes I think people cry because the situation is impossibly good, and they realize life is not that way, and will never be that way. I've noticed that I don't cry at the sad parts in movies, when the hero dies, the pet gets lost, hearts are broken, that doesn't matter. But when enemies reconcile differences, or weep when their adversaries are defeated, or when good people rebuff irresistible corruption, or help a rival achieve their goals, that is when I cry, sometimes I even cry when people cry at other people's death as I find their respect and sense of loss to be impossibly good and proper and my inability to do so.

I don't view myself as normal, in fact crying makes me feel wonderful. To feel emotion makes me feel human, feel alive. I've lived life with a silver spoon in my mouth, I don't know what work feels like and I don't know hardship. Hunger and want for anything are so foreign to me they might as well be quantum physics. I've worked 16 hour days, I've gone more than 36 hours without eating, but always with a safety net of certainty that if I really wanted I could quit, or find something to eat. It's not that I had to work 16 hours, or that I had to go 36 hours without food, I choose to do those things and I feel that invalidates the experience. If you knew you couldn't fail, would back flipping off the empire state building and landing on a 3 foot by 3 foot landing pad be that exciting, or even an accomplishment? My friends tell me I think too much, I tend to believe them. I write this as if I'm the only person that feels this way, but it's way more common than I think, even though I think it must be a large amount of people.

I recommend "Dollhouse" to any science fiction fans who have not already seen it.

Super Moon

All right, I have to admit that the Super Moon tonight was frigging awesome. Super bright and looked bigger tonight because I caught it at moonrise when it was close to the horizon. Hope everyone had a chance to see it!

Maintenance

Doing life maintenance today: laundry, pay bills, shower shave clip nails floss twice, practice guitar, and working out. Cleaning my room, and car, and organizing the basement in anticipation for moving to Texas in April.

Japan seems to be safe, or rather no longer getting damaged. It sounds like power and cooling will be restored to all reactors shortly. I hope that this is true.

Libya also seems to be calming down, now that French fighters patrol the skies and pretty much everyone the UN is putting pressure on Gadhafi to stop killing civilians. This is good news and also comes on the day Egyptians are voting on a referendum on constitutional amendments. It sounds like they should be adopting a whole new constitution but anytime there are free elections the people benefit, but they could benefit more by voting down the referendum in hopes of getting a new constitution.

Good Luck World!

And Then Something Happened

My buddy Paul is in town from Texas. Played Comet Crash, which was a crazy fun tower defense game, with multi-player co-op no less! Then we made the journey to Good Time Charlies in Ann Arbor, and eventually Ashley's. Drinking was done by others while I pinned for cigarettes, none were had.

Everybody talked about Japan, everyone was an expert on Nuclear Power Plants, NPR taught us well. The general feeling was optimistic, and I think that the situation is worse then reported but that nuclear power is extremely safe outside of the RING OF FIRE.

We have a "SUPER MOON" or some non-sense. The moon was very bright, but wasn't noticeably bigger to me. Maybe we have higher tides? I love the moon, but seemed like more of the same to me. I wanted the moon to fill the sky and cause wide-spread awe, screw you science. I love and hate you all at once.