Liquid Nonsense

Bird, plane, Parrot!

2008-10-02T00:39:00.000-07:00

For the last few months I have been actively developing a set of products based on certificates, PKI, and PCI-compliance (credit card management). In the process of naming my flagship product ParrotPKI I decided that I was going to have all of them under the same umbrella company, and thus, Parrot Labs was formed. Further, I'm pleased to announce that earlier this week I finally launched the Parrot Labs website.

I'm not terribly proud of the website, but like they say, if you aren't embarrassed by your 1.0 release then you waited to long to ship it. I know why most companies don't adopt this kind of technology, and it's principally related to cost. I've been doing this stuff for years, I get it, and I can make it simple and efficient. That's the bottom line. I've always loved working with security software and now hopefully in the future I will be doing it as my full-time job. So, if your in the tech community and at some point you plan on issuing certificates for any number of reasons, give Parrot Labs a call.

Taking stock with various updates

2008-08-19T22:52:00.002-07:00

I've switched up my training schedule at the dojo to do Monday night black belt workouts, Tuesday night black belt sparring workout, and Saturday general sparring with whomever. So far I'm digging the switch since it's really giving me time to work on the material I want at the level I want. Tonight's "inventory of damage" includes a minor nick under my left eye, some blood on my lowest earring, various little nicks, and a pop to the nose. I also got a handful of shots in I've been working on for a while. I've said it before, and I'll say it again because it bears repeating, I fucking love sparring. It's great for Chris-regulation.

I'm trying to eat better. I completely realize and accept that this might sound nit-picky considering I'm already a fastidious eater, but it's true. I'm attempting to take a cue from Phil and start planning my meals ahead of time so that I can take my lunch to work. The last several days it's been something homemade and organic. I recognize that my mind is clearer and I work better when I'm keeping an accurate tab on my macronutrients. I like feeling alive and awake without a ton of caffeine. Though the caffeine does help.

Tasty recipe suggestion of the day: Make macaroni and cheese with coconut milk instead of regular milk. The result is creamier AND tastier!

The space inside the mug

2008-08-11T23:03:00.001-07:00

Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking about where I've placed some of my commitments. The biggest ones being financial. I'm going to start this by saying that I'm not doing poorly, I'm not hard up for money, and I'm definitely A-OK with the bank. It's more that I'm starting to feel certain things are more and more frivolous. Somewhere along the line several weeks ago I got the "downsizing" bug and it hasn't let itself go. I keep pondering about selling my car and ending all the monthly expenditures that go along with it. It isn't that I don't like it, and it isn't that it isn't a hell of a fun car, it's just that I recognize despite all those things I'm fundamentally happier when those funds are unallocated. I easily lose touch with the fact I'm happier being *capable* of affording a nice car, rather than *actually* owning a nice car.

The next calendar year has the two exciting potential trips back to Asia- one to China, the other to Japan. As it stands right now, that would be somewhat difficult to swing unless I started saving right now and only did that for the next 8 months minimum. I know me, and that just doesn't sound all that likely. On top of that there is the very real, and very possible, relocate to Vancouver toward the end of next year. If I'm living downtown in a city with a public transit grid, not only would I not need my car, it would be prohibitive just to keep it. Am I talking myself into getting rid of it early?

Yes, I realize my wants are fickle. I've always known that so I've also factored it into most of my decisions so that I have easy exit strategies later on. My car is no exception. More than anything I fear being rebuked for wanting to simplify things on a larger level like this. I feel like I won't have support and I'll expend more energy trying to double-back on past statements and trying to appear consistent when I would much, much rather have people just say "I understand. Your thinking isn't completely unjustified. Things change and you've adapted in a way that makes sense for you. I support this decision."

As it stands I have number of projects I want to finish on my house, I want to be able to travel to Asia again next year, I want to have a stronger sense of financial security and the shortest path to all of these goals certainly looks like releasing the second largest expense I have. I am not my possessions, but am I prepared to deal with the social BS that may follow?

Into the groove

2008-08-07T22:07:00.003-07:00

OK, I've now been at the new job for just about a month. I would not describe myself as a creature of habit, but changing jobs always throws a wrench into whatever semi-routine I've managed to setup. As usual, and as was expected, my gym times have been thrown completely out of whack. I have substituted it with more time at the studio and relying on isometric exercise I can do on my own. Either way, I need to step it up and get back to where I was a month ago.

Work is also not draining me nearly as badly at this point. Getting into the "groove" of things is taking a little longer than I expected, but I'm mostly chalking it up to the pace Integrum maintains. I <3 working for smaller, start-up like companies.

Lastly, I seriously need to put together some kind of mini-vacation for myself in the very near future. I am terrible about getting out of town despite my love of travel. So, if your reading this, come up with a 3-day travel plan and we'll see what happens.

Community Involvement

2008-07-23T23:20:00.002-07:00

I have undervalued the importance of community at work for far, far too long. It's funny, even as writing this, I can't recall the last time that I've thought of work as a place where I would actually make new friends. Colleagues sure. Acquaintances sure. Friends? That's a bit more of a gray zone. For the first time in years I actually feel like I'm working in a community of my peers as friends. I think the last time I've thought of it this way would have been in college. Maybe.

Regardless, I have noticed a huge improvement in my morale. I knew the last place sucked, but it's a case of not knowing how *badly* it sucked until it was replaced with something preferable. I know I was working there two weeks ago. I *know* that in my mind, but somehow that already feels like it was a past life. This is where I allude to Plato's Cave idea.

The most salient examples I can point out is 1) a community-involved discussion on the nature of fostering creativity, and 2) Hacknight at Gangplank. On the first: Apparently Integrum has talks on Wednesday for lunch that range from technical matters to much more nebulous ideas like "what constitutes creativity." Today we had the creativity talk and it was interesting to hear the different ideas. It's one of the very few times I feel a conversation on something so abstract didn't turn into a complete cluster fuck. On the second: Hacknight is awesome. It's not only great to see community involvement, but it's even better that it happens at the same place I work. This ties back into the earlier morale statement. I love that I work at a place that also serves as an intellectual hub for technical professionals EVERY Wednesday.

All in all, Chris is super happy with his recent job change.

So Very Tired

2008-07-15T18:54:00.001-07:00

So I just finished day two at Integrum... and had to fight from collapsing on my bed. I feel like I'm coming up to speed quickly and knocking the cobwebs off, but it's draining. It's also not very surprising that I've done more thinking on the job in the last two days than the last six months with my previous employer.

Last night was a particularly fun black belt workout with a guy that travels through out territory periodically. He, Seth, and myself ended up doing an unexpectedly high-intensity, hour-long workout. That workout coupled with today's brain activity have left me wiped. I think I'm going to take a "me" night and play some video games. Give the ol' mind and body a chance to recover.

Twitter

2008-06-23T00:13:00.003-07:00

I went to the Tempe Nerds Luncheon this last Thursday for a sort of meet-and-greet with a lot of developers and entrepreneurs based out of the area. Aside from making a lot of contacts it was nice to get to know some more people that work in the field.

Also, I was very nearly blackballed at the door because I don't have a twitter account. I have since "corrected" that since I'm pretty sure if I don't have one by the next time, they will not let me in.

http://twitter.com/squanderingtime

Update!

2008-05-23T14:54:00.000-07:00

To say that I've done a "bad job" at blogging over the last several months would be something of an understatement. I'm reasonably sure that the people that don't have an RSS feed on this site have pretty much given up.

Let's recap the larger events of this year to date.

New Job: Started as a contractor for a company that does so-called "triple play" network services in January. Triple play here is a combination of voice, video, and data over DSL. After an experience with their HR that can only be described as hellacious, they brought me on as a contractor for three months. My contract elapsed in March and they offered (demanded?) to bring me on full time. So, my official "start" date here is March 24th. I am essentially the lead technical liaison to a massive soul-stealing company that I now hate from the darkest reaches of my soul. Also, after I was brought on full time they decided that it would be a decent idea to almost completely change my role in the company so that I do virtually nothing technical anymore. I have grown to hate it and I have been actively searching for a new job for about two weeks now. I know I am readily employable, ergo my resume was officially on the market for 4, that's "four", hours before I started receiving callbacks. I'm so very happy I know how to write a resume and that it's full of good bullet points.

The Boy: Phil and I are still happily together. He's been busy as ever with medical school and whatnot. He's currently enjoying a much deserved long-weekend in Mexico with friends. We'll probably take a trip or two this summer and get out of the valley. I'm looking forward to doing something even though I don't really know what it will be yet.

My Car: Back in February I decided that it was time for Chris to get a new car. I could have made a conservative, fiscally responsible choice but I didn't; I decided that I needed a BMW M-Roadster. Holy shit, is that car awesome. If I remember I'll put a picture up at some point. Even my parents love it, especially my mom. She's demanded that when I travel out of town that I leave it with her at her place so she can drive it around. Hell, the first night I got it I let her and my dad take it for a drive and I could hear her laughing from a half-mile away. It was glorious. My other favorite response so far has been Jason referring to my car as an "ass net." Supposedly if I wanted to I could go to the bar and just sweep up the ladies (men?) with it. Phil claims I purchased a status symbol, which is true given the number of strangers that walk up to ogle it. I prefer to think of it as me purchasing "zoooom."

Momoko-Maynard Group: The MM group is officially off the ground. We have finished filing our articles of organization at the AZ Corporate Commission. We have business bank accounts, we have signed several stars, and things are well underway. The first of our sites should hopefully be launching at some point this summer. We are actively working on getting our revenue stream going so Heidi can quit and then proceed to do it full time. At which point we will dominate.

I have no real plans for this coming weekend except to relax and get in some gaming. I've been needing some rest and relaxation. Now we just have to see if I can actually sit still and relax.

In the news

2008-02-14T18:20:00.001-07:00

I don't know how to approach this one. The press says "Choking game" and all I can think of is "evolution in progress."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/15/usa

Because I'm Ned Flanders

2008-01-28T10:31:00.001-07:00

I have already e-filed my taxes. I feel....responsible?

Yes, it's been nearly 2 months since an update.

Quick bullet pointed list:
* I quit my job.
* I got a new job.
* Holidays were good.
* New Years was very good.
* Paperwork for two additional side businesses have been filed with the AZ corporate commission.
* I have been very, very busy. Seriously.
* Heidi announced me "gayest man ever."
* Phil is still awesome. Heart.

Adventures with Egg

2007-11-15T18:14:00.001-07:00

The other big story of the last month actually has to do with my dietary habits. Several weeks (months?) ago my doctor put me on the elimination diet to see if I had any potential food allergies that would have been interfering with all my physical activity and my ability to gain weight.

First, the elimination diet. It's an eating regiment that you go on for about 2-3 weeks to clear the system of anything that might be a potential allergens. This means you are not allowed to eat: wheat, dairy, corn, soy, peanuts, solonacea family, nightshades, egg, and a few other things. Not only can you not eat these things, you aren't allowed to eat anything that is derived from them either. Ketchup? Nope, generally has high-fructose corn syrup in it. Pita bread? Nope, has wheat. Licorice? Nope, wheat again. Tofu is out because it's made from soy. The list goes on and on of things your basically not allowed to have. Then, after two weeks of this you start adding in one new food every three days to see if it triggers a reaction in the body. Day one after the elimination period, we decide to try egg. Within about two hours my back had turned bright red, my skin completely broke out, and it felt like my stomach was full of shrapnel. The only other food that produced a result even close was dairy. Turns out I'm semi-lactose intolerant.

After completely eliminating egg from my diet (even the crazy hidden sources) I resumed my workout plan in early-mid October to see if I could finally make some gains. Lo and behold, I'm about 5-6 weeks in and I've made more gains in those last weeks than I have in the last 3-4 years. Fucking egg! Apparently it's presence prevents me from absorbing nutrients and throws off my hormone balance and generally interferes with body functions. Eliminating this one stupid food was the roadblock that's been in my way for years. Go figure. As of Tuesday evening I was up to about 144lbs from 139 in early October. Hooray!

It's been a while...

2007-11-15T00:28:00.000-07:00

Since I've had a legitimate battle wound.

Most of my martial arts workouts these days are purely sparring. I do the group class and work on the usual martial artsy things, and then for my own private instruction it's basically just fighting. I don't remember when it was specifically anymore, but at some point I stopped sparring with gloves, and at this point the thought of having to use them is kind of terrible.

Seth and I have some great matches, but tonight's was wicked. We were both "on." At one point Seth and I locked each other in close. I think he grabbed me, I think I swung for his head, I think he popped me in the face. I'm not sure as it was something of a blur. All I know is that one second he had my arm, the next he managed to get another one underneath me, and proceeded to shoulder throw me to the ground. In the air I tried to grab his throat, and when I landed I tried to kick out one of his legs. Next thing I know he has one of my legs pinned, is essentially kneeling over me... and punches my head into the ground. A new student, who used to train for a few years I believe in Tang Su Do, was watching. He had a sort of wide-eyed, oh-my-god-this-is-really-fucking-cool expression on his face as he watched us tear into each other. It's always funny watching other students from other schools see what we mean by black belt full-contact sparring.

Either way, the punch I received while prone left a cut underneath my eye and is starting to turn the area a yellow-ish color. I'm going to have a fun explanation at work tomorrow.

Bad Day

2007-10-11T18:02:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that chugging half a bottle of Nyquil and saying goodbye to Oct. 11th sounds like a pretty fan-fucking-tastic idea. Too many unrelated things today for Chris to handle.

Suddenly So Real

2007-10-08T17:18:00.000-07:00

All the time I've put into the new business venture are suddenly starting to pay off. We're talking to recruits, starting to take clients, and I'm in the process of actually making an appointment for early next week to make arrangements with legal counsel. I feel disgustingly grown up as well as responsible at the moment. Here's to hoping that I can leave my current job by early next year!

Borrowed from Liz

2007-09-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

I'd like to know 27 things about you. Just copy and hit reply and paste in the comments section with answers. Thanks! You'll be surprised how much you didn't know about your friends after this! Then copy the meme and see if anyone answers you.

1. Do you have a tattoo?
2. How old are you?
3. Are you single or taken?
4. Fish?
5. Do you dream in colour?
6. Ever seen a corpse?
7. How about them hipsters?
8. How did we meet?
9. What's your philosophy on life and death?
10. If you could do anything with me, and have no one know, what would it be?
11. Do you trust the police?
12. Do you like musicals?
13. What is your fondest memory of me?
14. If you could change anything about yourself what would it be?
15. Would you cheat?
16. What are you wearing?
17. Have you ever peed in a pool?
18. Would you hide evidence for me if I asked you to?
19. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?
20. Which do you prefer - short or long hair?
21. What's your favorite day of the week?
22. What's your favorite color?
23. If you could bring back anyone that has passed, who would it be?
24. Tell me one interesting/odd fact about you?
25. What was your first impression of me?
26. Have you ever done drugs?
27. Will you post this so I can fill it out for you?

New Resident Evil Movie

2007-09-21T23:01:00.000-07:00

Is absolutely terrible, thoughtless, and exceedingly predictable. Brain dead even. Truly and absolutely. That being said, it's also incredibly fun and lots of things go "boom." You should totally go see it, because it's worth it.

If you come back and say, "Chris, it wasn't that bad and I thought it was a good movie for its plot," I guarantee that I will think less of you. Just sayin'.

Busy With Life

2007-09-15T15:11:00.000-07:00

I have not been paying a whole lot of attention to my blog lately. My principal problem is that when I feel like I have a lot of activity in my own life I want to write it out the least. It's been almost a month since I've updated anything...

Since the last update I've probably put another fist-full-of-hours toward startup business activities. Things have calmed down somewhat due to all the involved parties taking care of other obligations: read as "living life." Our next milestone date of activity is October first. I am looking forward to a supplement of my income.

I am not to be financially trusted. At least that's what I am going to maintain. Financial responsibility, much like spatial reasoning, has never been one of my strong points. I am exceptional at spending money and not so great at thinking beyond my next paycheck. This is, of course, to be taken with a grain of salt considering I have a reasonably sized mortgage and I am a tax-purpose single homeowner at 24. My life is lived comfortably and I don't question whether or not I'll be eating later on...but I still feel like I should be doing it "better." To combat this economical ennui I've drafted myself a budget in a spreadsheet with all my bills accounted for, a food budget, and a little spending money. With all bills being paid, factoring in various equities in businesses, and my 2007 tax return I should be bad-debt-free in February.

A prime example of my non-financial-trustworthiness would be last week's purchase of an Apple iPhone. It's a plastic doo-dad that is part impulse buy, part desire to organize my life better. Years ago I carried a PDA to keep track of various notes and homework assignments for school. Somehow I think it broke down and I just stopped using one. The desire to have a portable means of tracking all the shit I can't keep organized in my brain seemed like a good idea. Originally I anticipated it would become a phone with some side features I could use. In the first week of ownership I have used it's mapping functionality several times, the notepad to take notes, and I have actually logged appointments that I follow. This new phone is making me feel like a stylish grownup.

I'm growing my hair out. To what ends I do not know. I needed to get it cut earlier in the week and since Mario, my previous stylist, vanished from the face of the Earth, I have been looking for a replacement. Currently it's Lori at Altered Ego in Tempe. She does an excellent job, but lacks the raging arrogance and egotism I like in my stylists. She's afraid that when I tell her to take "creative license" that I won't end up liking it. A reasonable fear, though it never stopped Mario. Either way, I'm growing it to medium length. I've gone from dreadlocks to shaved head, maybe I'll end up with dreadlocks again... though I kind of doubt it.

Otherwise life is progressing very well right now. The hardest thing for me right now is self-restraint. My desire for self-employment through my startup efforts is palpable to me. It's *right* fucking there and I want it. Maybe I should do some meditation on future planning.

Side note:
I use Pandora a lot at work. This is my favorite programming/mindless activity channel. I call it "Dance!" It isn't necessarily "good" music, but it's great to zone out to. My Dance! station.

Seriously, I'm not dead

2007-08-07T14:10:00.000-07:00

I have been woefully negligent yet again with updating this damn thing. Here's a whirlwind update of the last several weeks.

First and foremost, I have been shitting code. I mean that almost literally. The pace at work has picked up substantially based on certain quarterly goals which are connected to contractual obligations with some very, very large companies. If you really want the details of these projects, because they are kick ass, you'll have to talk to me personally; I am legally forbidden to put any of them in writing or name any of the companies involved.

On a closely related note, I have essentially started working for a startup company. The startup is going to be owned and run by Heidi, so I'm just kind of getting in on the ground floor. She needed a comprehensive website as well as management functionality to be available via the web, so I hit the ground running about three weeks ago and I haven't looked back. Between startup and regular job I have been working about 60 hours a week.

Two weeks ago I drove out to New Mexico with Phil for a little mini-pseudo-vacation. Mini because it only lasted the weekend for me. Pseudo because it was Phil taking a trip to the mountains to study for his basic science board exams, which he is taking today as I write this. Let's all wish him luck. His good friend Margot joined us for the weekend, which was delightful as expected. For the record, yes I do think of an ideal vacation as three smart people sitting around the table with one reading, one looking over anatomy, and one analyzing post-structuralist literary theory. I heart smart people. The trip even involved another set of somewhat pleasant yet awkward interactions with Phil's parents. I am thoroughly convinced the world they inhabit is not the world I inhabit. Pictures to follow.

Switched over to LA Fitness this last weekend in favor of Pure Fitness. This isn't a major bullet point, but it's something I've been meaning to do for a while now. Phil has a membership with LA Fitness and now this means Sunday morning starts with a brisk morning workout instead of the usual "lie around and wait for things to happen" approach that I am much more familiar with.

I seriously need a new RPG to play. I am craving one. Craving one like a heroin addict craving his next fix. I can't remember the last time I played an engrossing one, and I absolutely refuse to chalk this one up to adulthood or "growing out of them." Fuck that. I started playing Tales of Symphonia again because I never finished it and I barely got into it. It's better than I remember it, mostly because I remember it sucking badly. This time it doesn't seem to be sucking badly. Hooray!

I have earnestly resumed my effort to gain some weight. I have literally been eating like a pig attempting to keep my caloric intake around where I think it needs to be. If it goes any higher I am going to give myself a complex about how much I'm eating. Restructured my workout plan in an attempt to introduce some change. Wish me luck and we'll see how it goes.

OK, back to work for me. There's one metric-fuck-ton of code that needs to get written.

Fuck open souce

2007-07-30T00:32:00.001-07:00

I truly, from the bottom of my heart, hate open source. More reasonable updates to come.

Dear Nintendo...

2007-07-03T00:04:00.000-07:00

I'm aware that perilously little productivity generally happens on Friday afternoon after lunch, but that is no time to write the ending for the latest installment of one of your flagship series's. Yes, I am referring to the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess's ending. I can only assume that your writers had some other pressing matters to get to, because quite frankly, the conclusion was anti-climactic at best. This might be the most visually impressive Zelda to date, but it's far from the most satisfying.

I will accept an IOU for 1x Good Conclusion.

Sincerely,
Chris

I am not to be trusted...

2007-06-25T00:07:00.000-07:00

... with money. In one single move today, with an action of such awesomeness that it is matched only by the glory of its excess, I have committed myself financially for several months to paying for an addition to my stereo.

For those of you that do not know my condition of "audio nervosa," I am forever on a quest to increase the quality of music reproduction (and video watching) in my house. Several years ago I started putting together a phenomenal stereo, and today I feel like I've finally gone from "absurd" to "re-goddamn-dickulus."

The events of today. I was searching for a desk when my journey took me through a couple stores in Scottsdale. Eventually my mom called and gave me a recommendation for a store called Storables up in North Scottsdale by the old office. I found an amazing desk and was elated to get it loaded up into my blazer so I could get it home. It occurred to me that I haven't been to Sounds Like Music in many, many months. Sounds like music was the audio store that used to provide me with audio-equipment-based jerk off fantasies. If you had the money, you could easily spend $80K+ in world-class audio. For examples: Linn, B&W Speakers, Dynaudio, Audioquest, etc. The list goes on for a while. Anyway, several months ago they were bought out by a Texas company called the Home Theater Group, and are in the process of changing their inventory around for different brands. The guy that usually helped me out has apparently quit a few months ago and some new kid was fielding my questions. As a joke I asked him what the going price was for a pair of speakers I've had my eyes on for quite some time. Thinking I knew the price, because I have oggled them for so long, I was not prepared for the answer. In an attempt to get rid of them, because Home Theater Group does not carry my brand, they were close to 60% off. My jaw wordlessly fell open, as my penis electrically stood up. Surely the universe had guided me here on this day for this deal. These speakers are actively sold elsewhere, and to think of them going on sale at this rate is absurd. Dizzily I walked around the store and noticed that they were also clearing out their subwoofers. Once again, I asked about the going rate on a subwoofer that I believed to be completely unaffordable. Once again, I was astonished to find they were also purging this brand and the same insane discount applied. This was like a 2-for-1 deal like I had never heard. It was a deal that I was utterly conflicted about. I got my senses about me, and realized what was before me, and I acted. I will never, ever get a chance like this again.... so I leaped. I exercised carte blanche power for the first time today, and I have very little remorse. Make that none.

I am listening to sound in a new dimension. Heidi swung by for a while because she called me and got most of the details via the phone. She had to come over to behold my folly/wonder. I am quite sure she came in one of my chairs while listening to an array of CDs. DVDs have a new auditory quality that previously was only available in the theater.

Perhaps this is me embracing Phil's attitude of (paraphrasing): The road to the tower of knowledge is paved in excess. This is the kind of glorious excess that I think people appreciate. Either way, I have consigned a very large portion of my income to audio payments for quite some time. At least I'll have tunes in the meantime.

Review #1

2007-06-21T23:47:00.000-07:00

Shark Skinned Man and Peach Hip Girl sucked pretty horribly. Their clever "matching" algorithm said I would really enjoy it because I loved:

Spirited Away
The Royal Tenenbaums
Kung Fu Hustle
The Professional
Princess Mononoke
Rushmore
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Arrested Development: Season 1

The thing I don't understand is tonight's movie really had nothing in common with ANY of those. Maybe a tiny bit of Lock Stock, but nothing substantial with Princess Mononoke except for possibly that they might both be in Japanese, which strikes me as terrible matching point. Just to let you know how boring this movie was (even though it's marked thriller), I got to about 35-40 minutes in, activated fast forward, and just sped-read the subtitles for the remainder in a few minutes.

Chris awards this movie 1 out of 5 stars.

Movie madness

2007-06-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

It finally happened. I got caught by the Netflix bug. After spending years working around people with accounts, and Phil finally getting one himself, I decided that it was finally time for me to jump on the train as well.

Now that I am officially signed up I can see why so many people like this service. Particularly the movies they think I will enjoy. Phil put it best, "it's like they know what movies I own." After providing a couple seed values they pretty much started listing off movies that I own on their recommendation list. Recommendations coupled with the ability to rate a movie on any page of their site creates a unique user experience to say the least. For instance, I would not say that I am a thorough movie buff, but having rated a couple hundred movies off the top of my head I might start to change that perception.

The one thing I have truly enjoyed so far is the ease with which I'm gaining access to obscure movies. Phil's first arrival was Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance. I'm not going to go into the details, but suffice it to say, it is the truest definition of an art house movie I can think of. Think an hour and a half of orchestral music put to a video montage juxtaposing hot dog production, public mass transit, and day-to-day monotony. It's worth the investment of time.

Tuesday night we wanted movie #2, Shortbus. I remember when this was released something like two years ago and how much I wanted to see it. Clearly, I did not understand the scope of that movie, otherwise I would have kicked my ass for not seeing it. This is an oversimplification, but think of a movie told through de-eroticized sex, miscommunication, and social awkwardness. I believe I was reading on IMDB that it was a movie about people reclaiming their sexuality after it had been bruised in some way. Either way, the tag line of the movie is "voyeurism is participation." Not that I make snap judgments, but I really don't need to be friends with people who don't like Shortbus.

My first movie arrives today: Shark Skinned Man and Peach Hipped Girl. I am rapt with anticipation. Also, all of this movie talk just furthers my need to have a movie-night at my house on a weekly basis. I think I should really, really get the ball rolling on that.

If you wanna be my Netflix friend, you should click here.

Me thing?

2007-06-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

Phil has suggested that maybe this is one of those "me" things that other people don't do. Does anyone else use a shop vac in place of a regular vacuum for cleaning their personal space? It strikes me as much more efficient and handy than a silly up-right vacuum. Then again, the guys are coming back later this afternoon to finish my cork floors...so, perhaps I'm not the best gauge for my own behaviors.

Great Stories Abound

2007-06-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks have seen some pretty great story-telling activities.

Last Exile (DVD): I finally finished watching it. About a year or two ago a friend burned me a copy of the entire series on DVD, and I dutifully placed it on the shelf. Then, about three weeks ago I had one of my occasional anime cravings and recalled that I had this interesting series just sort of hanging around. I started watching it from the beginning again, not that it mattered since I only got through the first two episodes last time, and by episode four I was absolutely hooked. I proceeded to watch all 26 episodes in three days. It may very well just be my opinion, but I thought the whole thing was astoundingly good.

Legend of Zelda- Twilight Princess (Wii): We return to the land of Hyrule where all the usual characters are engaged in their usual stop-ganon-from-getting-the-triforce antics. This time Hyrule has been plunged into "twilight," a neat air-filled-with-black-squares-and-light-bloom-around-everything situation. It's probably one of the most interesting Zelda games available, and also one of the least intuitive. Maybe I'm just an idiot, but my idiot friends agree that a lot of the game mechanics are somewhat non-obvious and a lot of time is spent floundering figuring out what to really do. Either way, it's still some pretty captivating game play, especially on the Wii. I can't malign it too much, I've already sank some 20 hours into it.

Kafka on the Shore (Book): Heidi periodically gives me reading assignments, and to refuse them is to take my life into my own hands. Twice now she has asked me if I have finished it, and twice I've had to tell her no, which implies twice she's asked me that if I truly valued our friendship why I would not have already read it. Well, I finally read it. The first 150 pages didn't intrigue me, but from page 151 (approximate) to the end I was ensnared. She was absolutely right, the book is brilliant and it is like reading a dream. Haruki Murakami takes you on a pretty crazy adventure that comes across as so matter-of-fact that you can't help but believe it's all really happening. Spirits, sex, genderless characters, self-referencing metaphors, and time bending- it's all there. Great read. Chris gives it 5 stars. Next on the list is One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Meeting the parents (Real life): In a surprising development that caught me off guard, I met Phil's parents over the weekend. They were evidently traveling through Arizona and decided to have dinner with their son, when it was decided that I would join them all for brunch the next day. The following morning, Phil and I arrived at their hotel and went on what can only be described as a "road trip" to get food that was really just down the street. After faulty directions, twists, turns, and needing gas, we arrived for a supremely nice buffet at the Tempe Buttes. I am going to assume for the time being that I made a good impression since we were all laughing and having a good time. The bottomless mimosas definitely made the whole experience more enjoyable for me. Yes, I was somewhat tipsy while getting to know my boyfriend's parents for the first time.

Wii Double Plus Good

2007-05-25T15:11:00.000-07:00

I finally managed to get my grubby little mitts on a Wii! Though in all honesty I wasn't exactly looking with much concerted effort. Things just happened to fall into place this morning, and lo and behold, I have my Wii.

I know a few of my friends have a Wii, so you will all have to send me your console number so we can get our Mii's playing together.

Here's mine:

7382 7294 9140 6677

What a Night

2007-05-24T00:11:00.001-07:00

Do you ever get the sensation that the Universe is attempting to tell you something by means of coincidences, odd happenings, or general craziness?

Chris is going to sleep.

Psychedelica

2007-05-16T18:03:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been listening to a lot of psychedelic music; mostly a combination of Pink Floyd and various psytrance artists. Anyone who's been over to somewhere I've lived, or who's had me provide music for something, has been exposed to some sub-set of my psybient/psytrance collection. I can definitely say that psychedelic + modifier is my favorite branch of music (psychedelic rock, psychedelic trance, psychedelic ambient, etc).

Today I decided to look up some old favorites and see what they're collaborating on now. After some hunting around I discovered that Shpongle's Simon Posford and Raja Ram are teaming up to produce a fourth CD. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom shortly after the discovery. Furthermore, I knew Posford was working on several other projects, but I finally found a sample of his other big group, Younger Brother, today. After perusing the tracks for a few minutes I decided that I really needed a copy. Those playing the home game may also recall that Posford, as well as 90% of psybient*, is on UK's Twisted Records record label. Getting stuff from Twisted used to be somewhat complicated since they had an extremely limited US distributorship, but now not so much. Most of their stuff will show up on Amazon, albeit sans album covers.

Even though bizarre European psychedelic electronica is now available domestically, I still prefer to buy it from a business in Germany that's given me some great customer service (www.psyshop.com). They have a pretty poor website and you can essentially only browse by Record Label, so if you don't know who someone is with your pretty much screwed trying to use their search feature. Long story short, after browsing them for a while I've got three CDs on the way.

Younger Brother - A Flock of Bleeps (Twisted Records)
T.I.T. - Ambient Factory (Ultra Vista)
Kick Bong - A Cup of Tea (Ultra Vista)

I'm rapt with anticipation.

* 90% of psybient, as a genre, is probably a total of eight or nine people. Being so small, the most recognized artist, Shpongle, is able to claim CD sales in the 80-90K range.

Brownies and Murder

2007-05-15T00:41:00.000-07:00

So, today was day four of this crazy diet. The cravings have finally subsided as the book said they would. Yesterday afternoon I feel I might actually have killed someone in cold blood for a brownie. I very rarely indulge in cookies, brownies, cake, and most of the related stuff, but let me tell you, giving up carbohydrates is fucking hard. Maybe it's just me since my usual diet doesn't include a lot of meat and cheese, but these last three days have been really hard. There was actually a point I almost broke down in the grocery store.... definitely not my proudest moment.

Today though my energy levels are almost back to where they should be and I feel like a functional human being again. On Saturday afternoon Friday (end of no carb period) felt like a lifetime away. Now, Friday seems like a fairly insignificant goal since my hormones are starting to reset themselves. Hooray for the human body's ability to self-regulate.

Since I don't have the energy yet to continue working out I've been watching stuff in my spiffy home theater. Since Saturday afternoon I think I've watched something like seven hours of Arrested Development, Napoleon Dynamite, The Departed, and several episodes of the Venture Brothers. I'm not sure when the last time was I camped out like this. Either way, it's been a pleasant change of pace. A little wine, cheese, and a movie night in to relax.

I just finished watching The Departed actually and I somehow have to be able to sleep. The movie has me ridiculously tense (more wine?) and I'm not sure how I'm going to pull this one off. Either way, I need to crash so I can be functional in the morning.

Whirlwind Update

2007-05-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

These last couple weeks have kept me occupied. So, here's a list of changes.

1) I'm on a new team at work. Previously I worked on The Company's shopping cart application that let merchants get online and starting doing stuff like credit card processing and shipping. Now, I'm on The Company's PKI team handling secure certificate management. Without going into the details of what this means, it's a much sweeter position with a lot higher visibility. It also means much higher security and a lot more accountability. Ergo, I haven't had the strength for updating this thing quite so rigorously while I've been changing over.

2) House related changes are coming along well. I still love having my upstairs couch in my downstairs. One of these days I will order the remaining amount of cork I need to finish the flooring in my upstairs. Got the backyard finally cleaned out so I can do something with it; the current vote is still koi pond.

3) Phil and I went to Philadelphia several weeks ago. I've actually updated since then, but I totally glossed over it because I was being extraordinarily lazy in the following days. It was great to get the personalized tour and meet some of his friends, specifically, Michael, Jill, Amy, Dan, and Neil. If I forgot someone and they (you?) actually read this I'll happily edit you into the list.

4) Phil has shown me this crazy Natural Hormone Enhancement book/diet plan for optimizing various biological functions. Supposedly the book claims that nobody is really a "hard gainer" and that it's really a product of your biochemistry and whether or not your motivating it correctly. I'm going to give it a shot, but it essentially starts with seven days of Atkins-like eating. No more carbs for me for the next seven days. Then it becomes carbo-tastic.

Another point to my growing hatred of academia

2007-04-26T21:58:00.000-07:00

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that my feelings toward the academia have been going downhill for the last two years. I have my own list of reasons, mostly based on pragmatism vs. head-in-the-clouds ideology, but now I have another.

Apparently MIT's dean of admissions has been ordered to resign because she falsified her resume in 1979. Nineteen-fucking-seventy-nine. Seriously?!? According to the chancellor of MIT it's because the institution is founded on the basis of trust and integrity. Never mind that she's held this position for 28 years. Never mind that she's teamed up with pediatricians to tame the college admissions process via writing books for parents on how NOT to stress the hell out of their children during the process. Never mind that she signed letters to kids "your mom away from mom," to make the transition easier. Never mind that NOBODY realized she did not in fact hold a master's degree because she's actually intelligent all on her own.

At 55 years old, one of the sweetest ladies in academia is being ousted from her position because she doesn't have a master's degree. This is one of those very few positions where the government knows how to handle this sort of thing. Fucking lie about it! If she's done good enough for 28 years to land the respect of the entire profession of college admission officers, let her keep her job. Cover it up. Spin it. Who really cares? What principle are we standing for? The not-lying-on-resume principle?

I think this is why nobody in any company I have ever talked to has stressed academic eduction. Google comes close, but even they stress practicality. I strongly feel there should be a rule that when you've done something extremely successfully for 25+ years you get an automatic master's degree in whatever it is you do. But no, not in academia. There you get a big "fuck you" despite everything you've done and all the lives you have enhanced, because what's on paper, and entirely in the realm of concept, is more important. It's rooted in principle.

So beautiful...

2007-04-23T23:56:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been watching movies that could best be described as "gut wrenching" or "emotionally disemboweling" in some way or another. About a week ago, after I got back from Philadelphia, I watched Takeshi Kitano's "Dolls." That was sort of like taking a melon baller to my heart. Heidi best described the movie as "having tendrils of visual metaphor to rip out your still-beating heart and show you how beautiful it is." A very fitting description for a movie that is essentially about the astonishingly self-natured qualities of love, but that we somehow forgive them because they are, in fact, in the name of love. If that movie had mantras they would be: "Guilt can hold even the most hollowed relationship together," "no matter how much we want the past, a lifetime of selfish wants cannot be undone," and "obsession of another is not a substitute for one's own life." Highly recommended.

Tonight I watched "Babel" by Alejandro González Iñárritu. The movie was exquisite. I've probably spent at least the last half-hour crying in my movie room. The title makes absolute sense by the time the movie is over. Cultural misunderstandings abound, whether it's the collision of neighboring countries or social groups clamoring for acceptance from their peers. Equally, it could be a treatise on the nature of despair and isolation that derives from cultural interaction. It's a small world after all? Somehow it makes me think of Serial Experiments Lain, but without the ubiquitous technology metaphor.

I'm going to attempt sleep now and hope that I don't have some seriously fucked up dreams.

Super Comfy Couch

2007-04-11T23:12:00.000-07:00

I know I've had something of a hiatus from my blog over the last few weeks...trust me, I've been occupied with stuff. Here's a pretty great story though from yesterday.

So, several weeks ago I wandered into an Arizona Leather Company store and decided to check out what they had. Considering that they make some pretty premium furniture, I definitely was not anticipating purchasing something. After wandering around the store for a few minutes a really friendly guy helped me out and gave me the quick rundown of the showroom's layout and what was where. He then asked if their special had brought me in. Special? Apparently they were having a two week truck load sale of all their furniture as long as you purchased a specific type of leather on it. This piqued my interest because A) I needed a couch, B) their furniture is awesome, and C) dead cow hide is really comfortable.

How awesome of a sale was it? Sofas were $800 off and sectionals were up to $2,400 off...so, enough to entice me. I found one that I absolutely loved that was available in their Mesa leather with Navajo Butter as the color, thus it qualified for a $1200 discount making it reasonable. I went ahead and put a deposit down so I could have it delivered, only to find out that all their furniture is custom made to specifications, so I got to pick out which was the long side of the sectional, and which was the short, etc. The whole process takes six weeks from order to delivery.

--- Fast forward to delivery date ---

I take the afternoon off of work to receive my frickin' awesome new sectional. The delivery guys show up and I inform them that I'd like the couch in my upstairs entertainment room. The guy at the store told me that as long as I have standard sized door frames, which I do, that it wouldn't be a problem. They look at the stairs and have some serious qualms about whether or not my gigantar sectional is going to get upstairs.

They try the long piece first...lo and behold there is a small spot in my ceiling where it's about a foot lower than the rest of the house... which in turn means that my ceiling is about 3 inches too low at the foot of the stairs to stand it up. The corner is also too sharp for them to angle it in correctly.... fuck.

Boss-man is called and informed that they can't get the long piece up. They tell me that I can have a technician (yes, "technician" for furniture) come out and remove the arms and they can possibly squeeze it up there at my expense. Not so good. My other option is to have the couch sent back to California and have it re-segmented in the middle to make it a four-piece sectional. Not so good again. After a few moments of chatting they load it back onto the truck to store it in the warehouse so we can figure out what to do.

Ten minutes after they leave I get a call. They want to try and get the smaller eight foot segment upstairs, because if that gets up there they know for sure the other piece will because it happens to be eight feet without the arms. I let them back in and once again they start hauling stuff upstairs. This time they get to the second floor landing before they discover there isn't enough room to maneuver the couch to actually get it through the door. Double fuck.

The sectional comes BACK downstairs again. This time we reach the realization that the couch can't be re-segmented (because of additional factors) and even removing the arms will most likely be insufficient. I decide to have them set it up downstairs so I can at least enjoy it while we come to some kind of decision.

After a few hours I realize that my color choices go really well together downstairs. Now I'm considering just keeping it downstairs and officially making my upstairs couch the official downstairs couch.

I have to admit that I am considering a different Arizona Leather couch for upstairs...one much smaller that I know will easily navigate my narrow stairs. Either way, now I feel better about inviting people over since I have somewhere for them to sit.

Thinking of You

2007-03-16T14:36:00.000-07:00

Ecological Footprint

2007-03-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

I've been living in my house for about a month now. Needless to say, this living-on-my-own thing rocks the cock.

Twice a week for the last month I have taken my trash out to the curb, once for regular stuff and once for recycling. I have noted the following things:

1) The contents of my recycle bin are usually substantially larger than my regular bin.
2) I hardly throw away anything that is not recyclable.
3) With the exception of all the boxes I threw away in week one, to this day I probably would not have filled my recycle bin completely.
4) My regular trash bin has never had more than 1 ft. tall worth of volume.

I am not sure what the normal or average amount of stuff a mid-20s male living on his own should be in terms of throwing away, but I feel like I have something worth being proud of here.

Hooray for minimizing my ecological footprint.

Note to Self

2007-03-14T22:40:00.001-07:00

Dear me,

Don't forget how awesome you are. These last few weeks have been chaotic; your sense of self is changing. I know that you've been coming to grips with things past and present, and I'm still here for you. I am the you that feels well grounded and balanced. I am the you that is empowered to exert calming and composing forces. The more time that you remain as me, the more you are like your old self everyday.

The acupuncture therapy is definitely working. Stick with it! The forces of damp heat have nearly cleared your large intestine and the underlying constitutional imbalance between liver and spleen is the next major roadblock. We can totally do this!

Yes, I'm aware you don't remember the last time this kind of turbulence was in your life. Once the tears clear, once the angst has passed, and once the mind is open we will stop feeling like split personalities. Ultimately, only I am going to remain.

Neither of us can control the future, nor can we alter the past. All we can do is change our perspective and grow to be the people we want to be, so the past can be the ground from which we grow, rather than the path we try to return back down. You have some insecurities, especially about your sexuality and the way in which you relate to men. Sometimes it feels like you have a failed sense of competence, or that your ego takes an amorphous hit when your soft and fuzzy parts are exposed. That's just what it means to try and love. We hoped to grow that area in college, but our sense of where the growth should be was mostly academic. At the end of the day it was easier for us. Getting graded at the end of a semester was simple, it was always an 'A' or a 'B'; we never put who we were on the line to be judged or accepted by another individual... the thought of a failing mark was always too high.

We are not perfect, but we both realize that. I've always been proud of you for admitting to your faults and never feeling bad about owning up to mistakes or whole-heartedly telling someone else you hurt. I've watched you grow so much in the last few years. You still spread yourself thin comparing yourself to the people with the characteristics you desire for yourself. Don't worry about those! You have so many strengths all on your own. It is not realistic of you to aspire to so many things at once. You have nothing to worry about, all things come in time.

Your spirit is strong, so like all things, this too shall pass. Remember these things. There is a boy down the street that tells you he loves you daily, and you always say it back. Anytime you've ever been down and out, cranky, or whatnot, he's been right there for you and made you not hurt. That's amazing. You have great job security because the core of what you do is exhilarating, not to mention you enjoy it. That's amazing. You have managed to have the financial solvency at 24 to own a house by yourself. That's amazing. You've earned your black belt in China, a testament to follow through and what you've accomplished. That's amazing. You're a published scientist in the IEEE, one of your papers is even in an IEEE Transaction report... Dr. Xue still reminds you Ph.Ds we would be very proud of that accomplishment. That's amazing.

In case I wander off, just come back and reread this to yourself. One day you'll be me completely, and that will be amazing.

Love,
Me

Midlife Crisis

2007-03-14T01:00:00.000-07:00

I'm seriously having a midlife crisis. Perhaps that is a tad excessive... maybe it's just a post-college-becoming-something-of-an-adult crisis. Does everyone go through this stage? Is it a necessary transition to being an adult? Is this psychological pupation? Does the damp heat in my large intestine signal something I've been doing wrong for years? Who decided that my sense of self should be in upheaval?

Two years ago the plan was somewhat simple: finish college and continue on to grad school to be big scary doctor-like person in computer science. Actuality: working for a crazy Internet corporation as a software engineer, making great money, owning a house, considering a car, and learning what it takes to be in a relationship.

My simple plans feel like they have become anything but.

I'm learning what it feels like to be corporate Chris. Monday through Friday I arrive at work, go to my desk, and do engineering-like things all day. Some days it's meetings, others I'm running around playing group coordinator, programming, etc. The scary thing to me is that there is a considerable amount of this I truly enjoy. Sure, there's a phenomenal amount of bullshit too, but I feel like I'm actually contributing to something real. I would also like to think I am damned good at my job, especially since I keep being told that by coworkers.

A house. I own a fucking house. Talk about things that I didn't foresee two years ago. A mortgage payment definitely has the power to make you feel like a grown-up. Writing the massive check once a month to let The Man know that this little piece of property is mine is borderline heart breaking. My anti-responsibility college-student core is learning to adjust.

I'm going to conveniently gloss over the car at this point until something materializes out of it in the next few weeks.

A relationship also wasn't on the road map. Over a year ago I met Phil, and boy has that been a wild ride. A year ago I couldn't stop thinking about him, and a year later I still can't stop thinking about him. Needless to say, I think he's amazing. With all this crazy emotional cleansing I've been doing lately I know I've been moody and prone to crying fits, but he's been behind me the whole time. At this point I can't imagine my life without him. I feel like he gave me the chance to start over somewhere new.

Who knows what all this means? For now I think I am just going to try and take everything a little more slowly so I don't get swept away. Then again, have "slow and steady" ever really been the words to describe me? I think not.

Cute Hair

2007-03-05T17:02:00.000-07:00

Today has been somewhat helacious with meetings. My brain is officially in soup form. That's what nothing but dry meetings over and over do to you...

The one really positive thing to come out of today was a sweet new haircut I really like. Over my lunch break I decided to take care of a few errands. On my way back to the office I saw a new salon/spa/thingy that looked somewhat new so I stopped in. I explained that I missed the days of me being a pseudo-hair model and that I wanted neat and fun new hair again. So the awesome lady hooked me up and gave me a pretty sweet cut. I'll take a picture later if I can remember.

Feeling Kind Of Crazy

2007-02-28T23:55:00.000-07:00

So for three or four weeks now I've been receiving acupuncture treatment for "damp heat in the large intestine." This is not the first time I have received traditional Chinese treatment for something, but it is the first time that the healing has involved my emotional channels. They definitely don't write on the treatment plan: "Warning: this therapy may make you feel like a crazy bitch."

The quick and short of it can be summarized that certain organ systems are responsible for the flow of particular energy (and emotions) through the body. Negative patterns establish and become part of our daily lives. This leads to pathological patterns like damp heat in the large intestine. Removing the negative pattern essentially involves solving the underlying problem. Guess what that involves? Re-harmonizing those energies and pathways so they all work correctly again, even if that means stirring up all the negative forces that started it to begin with.

Two weekends ago I emoted like crazy out of the blue on issues resolving around my sense of success and personal identity. This last weekend I broke down in a fit of hysterics and was crying. Not regular crying, wailing crying. The last time I think I did that was at my grandmothers' funeral, and even that might have been more subdued.

Clearly, I have a very deep seated angst-like feeling about my identity. At this point I know it's wedged squarely between what I thought my life path was, and my sexuality. The life-path one is more of "have I been living a lie for the last several years," and the sexuality is my feeling like I've somehow wasted my life up to the present as a gay man. The latter is the far more terrifying one to me.

All in all I have this overwhelming feeling of isolation right now that's proving difficult to overcome. Feel free to send some positive energy my way over the next few weeks. I desperately need it.

In the meantime: this is me breathing in....this is me breathing out.... repeat.

10 Funny Things

2007-02-23T01:17:00.000-07:00

Each player of this game starts off with 10 weird things/habits about themselves. People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 10 weird habits/things as well as state this rule clearly.

1) I route optimize. Whenever I'm walking or driving somewhere I'm probably sizing up variables like "what's the fastest way to get there," "will the reduced speed of side streets still be more efficient than a possibly traffic laden freeway," or "even though the freeway slightly extends beyond my destination, will the increased speed still result in a shorter arrival time." This is undoubtedly the sort of behavior that got me into computer science.

2) Gummy bears are my Achilles heal. If you put a bag of them in the same room as me and tell me that if I eat them I will be shot in the head, then I'll probably die.

3) I have an overwhelming urge to learn tantra. Spiritual sex is totally my bag. If the path to enlightenment should end up being paved with man-sex, all the better.

4) My dreams are utter nonsense. They have no narrative structure to speak of, feature Escher-like architecture, and are mostly baffling. I am not convinced they mean anything, but I find them fascinating.

5) I sleep next to a pair of nunchucks and/or a 21 inch aerospace steel baton in case somebody decides to start shit in the night.

6) I feel guilty driving a Blazer. It was a combination high school graduation present as well as a "hey, you need something reliable for college and beyond." Somewhere in there I became an organic, pot-smoking hippy and now I feel vaguely hypocritical when I drive around.

7) I play games with my coordination. I weight lift standing on one leg. I'll wait to catch a rapidly closing refrigerator door with my foot at a distance and simultaneously keep two cupboards open. I have 4-point jumping jacks I do that go 1) feet together 2) left foot is forward, right foot is back and arms are parallel to the floor 3) feet come back together and arms are straight up 4) right foot is forward, left foot is backward arms are parallel to ground again 5) feet are back together and arms are down by side. One!

8) I workout a lot. It is not uncommon for me to do two to three yoga sessions a week, at least one extended night at the dojo, and possibly swing by the gym some point on the weekend. Total hours in that: 7.5-8 hours. If I miss workouts I get extremely antsy.

9) Many times I have tried to gain weight, and my times I have failed. My metabolism says I am a muscly well defined ectomorph, but my desires say I should be a hot more-muscly well defined mesomorph.

10) Not completing sentences or trailing off pisses me off like no other. My dad does it habitually. He'll wander into a room and say "You know, earlier I was thinking..." and then he'll walk out of the room and never finish the thought. He will also start talking, leave the room, and not increase the volume so it sounds like he's muttering from down the hall, yet expecting you to listen.

Anyone willing to participate. I think these ones are fun.

Greatest Response Ever

2007-02-22T11:03:00.000-07:00

This might just be the single most awesome political response I've ever seen to publicly released homophobic contents. Enjoy.

For your consideration

2007-02-20T00:40:00.000-07:00

Behold, two artists (I am using the term in a loose sense) with similar names and similar themes. I wouldn't feel right with NOT sharing these with the world. For your consideration: Cazwell and Samwell (Note: not explicit, but most likely not work safe either).

Hoorah.

Orange!

2007-02-19T00:22:00.000-07:00

All I've been blogging about lately has been my house, mostly because it has been this all-consuming aspect of my life. I spent the vast majority of today painting the upstairs of my office/theater room. Thus far, it looks amazing. I have chosen to paint all the walls a color of orange that has previously been used exclusively for gay pride parades, I'm sure. The curious can go here. It's "clay 2," but it's really a weak approximation of the color; the real one is substantially brighter, and richer. Three walls down and one to go.

Other highlights of the last few days include purchasing a new mattress that's supposed to be delivered sometime between Wednesday and Thursday of this coming week, purchasing a new gas range to replace the one I currently have that was manufactured in dickity-2, and additional do-it-yourself-because-it-is-essentially-disposable furniture by Ikea.

Thus far everything is going swimmingly. I will get my camera out of here in the next few days and update the pictures in my gallery to reflect where we're at now. Special thanks go out to Phil for helping me with stuff around the house, and for telling me about the joy that is Secret Agent on SomaFM. Soma has been providing not only the soundtrack for my life as a secret agent, but the soundtrack for painting this damned room.

Exhaustion

2007-02-16T01:05:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry I've been so unbelievably negligent with updates recently. If I am not at work, then I'm attempting to impose some semblance of order on my new house. Regardless, I've gone to sleep absolutely exhausted every night for the last week. Some preliminary pictures will very likely come this weekend.

Comings and Goings

2007-02-06T16:40:00.000-07:00

Last week I was doing my finest impression of a human petri dish. Sometime over the previous weekend I managed to pick up a sinus infection that thought I had nothing better to do with my time than produce mucus. Needless to say, last week was fairly miserable for me in between the times I was blowing my nose. Sometime on Sunday it started to substantially subside, so last night I went to Bikram yoga to finish burning out the remainder. Today I haven't felt any symptoms at all. Hooray!

Speaking of hooray, my home closed today and I now officially own a little piece of property on the Tempe/Guadalupe/Chandler/Ahwatukee border. Today after work I am going to swing by the Best Buy down the street and pick up a cable modem so I can haul my laptop down there and see if Internet is turned on. Yes, I'm aware of my addictions, thank you.

Does anyone know of a good carpet installer here in the valley? The previous owner of my home had one or two rather large dogs and did a crap-tastic job of changing out his air filters, ergo the carpet in the house is somewhat filthy. I could clean it, which only does a minor job of removing "dog," or I could simply replace it. I'm leaning towards replacing it, but I need a guy to do the square footage estimate so I can order carpet from the mill. Suggestions for the Phoenix area are being gladly accepted right now.

I have finally decided that I am going to get a subwoofer for my stereo. I have actually known which one I've wanted for a while, but now I have the financial resources to do it. There's a British brand named Rel that produces absolutely stunning acoustic subwoofers for musical reproduction. A chunk of this week's paycheck and some of my spare assets shall contribute and hopefully I can get one in the next week or so. They are stellar to say the least and it's the last major component I need. Bye bye my small, tiny, little Polk woofer; hello big, mean, bowel moving Rel.

Additional usage of a subwoofer? Phil has suggested movie night at the Chandler Citadel (I can't call it the "compound," as my current tiny little backyard hut is the "compound"). Copenhagen has a decent sized couch that I really liked that could feasibly sit about 5 people. Take that and add my desk chair and I could probably comfortably sit six people. I could even get some super comfy pillows and other people could hang out on the floor. I think Phil might be on to something here. Plus it gives me a tiny bit more excuse to get the previously mentioned Rel... can't have people over to watch a movie and then have "polite" bass.

Aside from house, the only other thing on my mind lately has been sex. My hormones for the last week have kept me sufficiently sex, err, distracted from some of the other stuff I probably should be accomplishing. Thank you Internet and your wonderful pornographic bounty too.

A slight tangent away, I want to order some more cute underwear. Several years ago I think I was as mystified as the rest of the population as to why women love Victoria's Secret so much. Cute underwear are awesome. To the men reading this: go get yourself a pair of Aussiebums or Ginch Gonch. Ultra-comfy and sexy at the same time. Your significant other will thank me.

Peace out yo!

Closed!

2007-02-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

I just received notification that my house closed. I'm now a legal and official homo-ner. w00t!

I'll post something more meaningful later in the day with updates with all the hoo-haa going on lately.

Godless whores

2007-02-01T00:44:00.000-07:00

I would just like to say that the wonderful people over at Dark Horse comics are godless whores. Why? Because a certain someone who shall remain nameless (me), has chosen to purchase all the available English copies of the manga version of Trigun (11 books). The same individual has read through them over the last several nights and has just reached the end of the eleventh book. Why am I so angry? Because there's a mother-fucking 12th book that concludes the series that they have yet to publish! Going by their website they release one about once every 2.5-3 months and the last one was apparently just released several weeks ago. Great, just great. I'm not even going to comment on how much of a cliffhanger 11 leaves off on or that I'm possibly going to pee blood waiting for the last, and conclusive, book.

This is undoubtedly karma for something I have done.

Pure Insanity

2007-01-26T16:39:00.000-07:00

If you value your friendship with me, then you will watch this (for RSS readers, it's an embedded link):

It's roughly 10 minutes and in Japanese. If I can locate a subtitled version I will post it. Believe me, the translation does not help the narrative. You will be a richer human being for seeing this.

Technological Me

2007-01-22T18:17:00.000-07:00

The whole buying-a-house thing has really served to illustrate the tedium that is paper work. I think I have signed somewhere around a hojillion different papers taking care of everything from home inspections, to seller disclosure acknowledgments, and various loan papers. This would not be such a phenomenal pain if so many technology changes did not have to occur. I receive papers in email, then I print, sign, and fax them back. Email, to print, to fax machine for one damned transaction.

I decided to investigate what options exist for digital signatures, and that in and of itself, took me the better part of three days to sort out. The standards regulating digital signatures are numerous and nebulous. Generally, I feel pretty confident with tech matters, but these were downright confusing. Long-story short: nobody would know how to handle a digital signature even if I used one because PDF files are scary and dangerous and essentially no one outside of a certificate authority seems to know anything about them.

In other technologically-inclined news, I have finally purchased a scanner. It's pretty nifty-spiffy and has enabled me to digitize various older "things" that I have meant to do for some time. Of interest:

Vintage. Pictures of people and events that pre-date college.

Japan. Pictures from trip to Japan back in 2003.

Note: I am going to apologize now. These pictures were taken on either A) a very shitty Kodak advantix camera, or B) a disposable camera. The quality is not the greatest.

My brush with pseudo-death

2007-01-18T23:01:00.000-07:00

Today around 5:30pm I decide to go use the bathroom. I go through the same motions that we all do every day, except I look down and it looks like I've shit out about a pint of my own blood. Momentary panic ensues... I then recall my lunch which largely consisted of delicious Moroccan beets. I proceed to further recall beets change the color of various bodily fluids and I decide that I am, in fact, not dying from a gastric hemorrhage or some horrible ulceration of my innards.

Housing Updates and Post # 101

2007-01-11T01:08:00.000-07:00

I guess it worked out rather well that my 101th post (and the posts surrounding it) to this blog would be about me purchasing a house. Fortuitous indeed.

This afternoon I took a few hours off of work so I could head down to Tempe to take care of the usual terminate and housing inspections necessary to complete the whole buying process. I met up with Phil at SCNM and we proceeded to meet up with Maria (my realtor) and the house inspector at the place. The whole process was actually fairly painless as he walked us step-by-step through all the potential problem areas. Thankfully, there weren't any show-stoppers and even the problems he did find were relatively minor. All in all, a crack on the back wall is the only spot of potential concern, so we're bringing in a structural engineer to fully evaluate it and make sure that it isn't going to compromise the wall's integrity. Two checks and a few signatures later we were done and I got to resume my waiting game for closing (Feb. 6th).

I have to admit that it ended up being a really nice afternoon. Phil and I grabbed lunch over at Whole Foods and ran into Cynthia and Amanda by surprise, which was a nice coincidence. After all, lunch is a wonderful social time and random friend encounters are always appreciated. We also hit up the Bova Furniture store, which I am totally infatuated with, and proceeded to look at various pieces that I might get for the house. I have absolutely no doubt that we were coming off as anything less than flaming. Something about two gay men wandering through a contemporary furniture store comparing wood grains, leather types, and color selections...

My Flickr account has also been updated with more pictures of the place, for the curious. I didn't grab any decent shots of the second floor yet, but I'll get them up there eventually. As I start painting walls and buying furniture I'll update the account so everyone who doesn't live in Arizona can watch it grow too. I am ridiculously excited to get started on the whole process.

Fiscal Responsibility

2007-01-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning the house I entered into contract on officially went into escrow. The process is underway and I have housing inspections to attend to tomorrow afternoon. On Thursday I am meeting up with my mortgage broker to finalize everything I need to actually complete the purchase. The entire process is kind of unreal at the moment... Regardless, I am totally stoked to have a house to move in to. If something screws the process up at this point I am going to be seriously upset.

I feel that I am going to need to step up on my financial responsibility at this point. In all honesty I think I do a pretty good job of managing my money, especially contrary to what my parents may think. To date I have opened savings accounts, money market accounts, a stock portfolio, and I have started a small handful of businesses. At the end of this month I am going to have a mortgage added into the mix, which is only going to make calculating tax deductions and withholdings that much more interesting. By "interesting" I mean "complicated".

Enter Quicken. For the first time in my life I am using financial management software. I have to admit, thus far I am fairly impressed. It's taken a while, but I finally entered all my bank accounts, paychecks, stocks, and various other miscellany. Several clicks and a few wizard steps later it has correctly calculated my taxes for 2006 and informed me that I have a fairly large refund heading my way (suh-weet!). It can tell me how my portfolio is doing in real-time as well as reflect my balance sheet to reflect market trends. It can let me know when I have paid an excessive amount for the Thai iced tea with boba that I love so dearly.

All this together should hopefully help me manage my money a little bit better as well as enforce the savings plans I have put in place. Part of me is really excited to be able to manage this stuff so effectively, and part of me is concerned that the little banker within me that I thought I killed might somehow still be alive. I guess only time will tell.

Homo-ner

2007-01-05T16:59:00.000-07:00

Nearly a month ago, during my quest for a house, I made an offer on a place I really liked in southern Tempe. My realtor suggested that we really low-ball the guy to see if he was willing to negotiate down from his asking price. Well, it just so happened that the man's agent was a complete and utter dingbat, and actually ended up countering for a price higher than the original asking value. Nobody was really sure how exactly the math worked... Needless to say, we dropped the idea of getting that house.

Fast forward to yesterday. The house I made the original offer on was still listed. At the time of my first offer the house had already been on the market for nearly 150 days. One month and a house payment later, the house was still listed. My realtor and I made another stop by the place to check it out one more time and decided to make the same low-ball offer back. This time, however, the guy accepted the offer verbally. Last night we scrambled to get the paperwork together and everything else we needed to in order to get this process moving. This morning I was emailed all the documents in PDF format, printed them, signed them, and faxed them back to the various parties that needed them. Right now I'm waiting on the guy, 'cause he lives in North Carolina now, to acknowledge them and send them back with his signature.

If everything goes according to plan then I receive the keys to my shiny new house on February 6th.

I find that the funny part of this process is that I was not terribly excited before yesterday. Sure, I wanted a house and I wanted a place to call my own, but it was not this real or visceral. Now that paperwork is changing hands with verbal confirmations in the air I have become actively engaged. Suddenly February 6th feels like it is a long time away. In all reality I realize that it is essentially a mere 30 calendar days away... it just feels like more.

One interesting problem of this move is going to be a severe lack of furniture. I believe the sum of my furniture-like belongings at this point include: a desk, a bed, 4 bookshelves, 2 theater seats, a very uncomfortable black love seat, and a very comfortable little bendy chair from Ikea. The part of my genetics that tell me that I heart men also tell me that I would like to tastefully decorate my house in a contemporary style. The problem happens to be none of my current furniture fits that theme, so I am essentially starting with absolutely no furniture. Luckily, I have some money set aside that I might be able to buy a few pieces just so I have something to sit on.

The picture on this post is the actual place I am buying. The next time I swing by the house I shall take my camera with me and start putting more pictures on my Flickr account.

Wish me luck!

From Margot

2007-01-04T01:20:00.000-07:00

1. What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before?
Remained a full-time employee for a full year and traveled to China.

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
To the best of my knowledge I didn't make any resolutions last year. I'm going to continue my efforts to try and gain a little weight :-).

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No, but my morally bankrupt cousins adopted an Ethiopian child because Ethiopian children look good with Prada.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Personally, no. Still a little close, yes.

5. What countries did you visit?
China over the summer.

6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?
A better understanding of what I would actually like to dedicate a reasonable portion of my career to doing.

7. What date from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why:
Jan. 14th, 2006. Met Phil. I remember because one month from when we met was Valentines Day.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Traveling to China and working with the real Shaolin monks in a training pavilion at the temple in Deng Feng.

9. What was your biggest failure?
My complete and utter lack of interest in closing out the undergraduate stage of my academic career. All the classes are done, but it took me forever to actually fucking graduate. Lousy bureaucratic process.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing outside of the usual sparring accidents. I took an amazing spinning back kick to the ribs sometime late in the summer. That was fun.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
I wish I could have said a house, but that will have to wait until 2007. Probably my new LCD tv.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Phil's at several points deserved celebration. My job was sucking my soul out via my anus around April of 2006 and I felt he was a champ putting up with my emotional distress. The innumerable hours spent laughing with Heidi about all the things ridiculous in this world also deserve a mention.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Virtually no day goes by without somebody offending my sensibilities in a way that makes me want to either gag, or severely and irreparably harm their genitalia. Seriously, working at a company that bends to the conservative side makes me question how, as a species, we have ever gotten this far. Boggles the mind!

14. Where did most of your money go?
Miscellaneous classes and food take up the most. Martial arts, yoga, gym, and everything else associated with those activities. Plus all the food required to recover from those activities. Surprisingly, there was also some legitimate savings in there as well.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Receiving my black belt in China, but strangely enough I actually think I was slightly more excited to the see The Fountain by Darren Aaronofsky.

16. What song will always remind you of 2006?
"Sleeping In" by The Postal Service

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Happier
ii. thinner or fatter? Definitely not fatter. Hopefully not thinner.
iii. richer or poorer? Richer. I've never been a full-time employee before.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Tying up loose ends. I'm far too comfortable leaving things in indeterminate states.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Staying up late and then being tired in the morning? That just sounds like a generic, shitty answer. How about spending less time in crazy boy state?

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Christmas with my family is a 25 minute event that is followed up with nothing in particular. I made my parents watch both Super Size Me, and Thank You for Smoking. Only in retrospect did I appreciate the fact I made my parents watch movies about over-indulgence and bad habits on Christmas Day.

21. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
Phil. No question about it. I have the summer cell phone bills to prove it when he went a'travelin'.

22. Did you fall in love in 2006?
Actually, yes.

23. How many one-night stands?
They had their place.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
The only TV show I watch is House. Thank you Mr. Internet.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
A handful of individuals. I don't necessarily hate them... I definitely would not actively seek to harm them, but if I saw them stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire I wouldn't stop to help them.

26. What was the best book you read?
"Lapsing into a comma," by Bill Walsh and "Eon," by Greg Bear. I think.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The Dresden Dolls

28. What did you want and get?
My black belt and the opportunity to see China.

29. scene missing

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
Toss up between The Fountain and Casino Royale. Secretly I'm a pretty big James Bond fan.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you (optional)?
I survived to be 24. Phil and I had a small gathering at his house where we drank and played Lunch Money. Spending an evening pretending to be little Catholic school girls beating the everliving piss out of each other is an absolutely wonderful way to spend one's birthday.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Coworkers that knew a green lifestyle was an environmental reference, not an economic one.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?
Callow youth standing in his Merrell shoes and comfy pants.

34. What kept you sane?
The time spent with Phil and being able to periodically retreat to one of my various projects (e.g., photography, gaming, wandering).

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Hugh Laurie from House.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
The most stirring event would have to be watching the Democrats seize control of the House and the Senate. In a close second would be all the smaller events centered around the banning of gay marriage; 'cause I'm happy with my status as a second-class citizen.

37. Whom did you miss?
Phil, when he was traveling or inaccessible due to academic woes. Susahnn for moving to Colorado. Heidi for almost moving away, but brought back by a cruel and twisted yet comically absurd fate.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Phil for being my boyfriend.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006:
It is possible to be someone's friend or boss, but not both at the same time. I have also had it beaten into my head how difficult it can be to relate to people with drastically different world views. For the first time I feel like I am surrounded by people with a completely different ideology, and it's fucking hard. I am honestly not sure how long I will remain with my current company, but the next one will definitely be of a liberal bent and very likely based on renewable economics.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
"Don't wake me. I plan on sleeping in."

Mind Expanding Rock

2007-01-02T23:42:00.000-07:00

Sometime during the last two weeks I have really retaken up my interest in Pink Floyd. I am really not sure what prompted the investigation, but a few days ago I swung by Zia and bought some of their CDs so I could play them on my kick-ass stereo as opposed to simply listening to the mp3 versions via computer.

Pink Floyd has a bizarre effect on me. It could just be the hallucinogens, but somehow listening to a complete CD always puts me in a dream-like state where I basically just want to stare at the wall and think in a meditative sense. Part of me understands the complete campiness of saying that Pink Floyd is drug music, but I really don't think Pink Floyd can be appreciated without some kind of psychoactive substance. I am reasonably sure this is the same relationship I have to Shpongle.

On a completely unrelated note, Christmas was completely uneventful. Just the way I like it.

New Years was awesome. Started the evening off at Zach's annual New Year's party which was pretty good. The tradition of playing Cranium has been firmly established, but now that more and more of my friends are turning professionals, they can't always make it back for these events. Unfortunately, this year the team I usually play on got defeated pretty badly. I am not going to mention how badly, but I will say it left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Afterward Phil and I went to Jean-Luc's (at least I think it was Jean-Luc's) 007 James Bond themed New Year's party. A whole bunch of gay men, naturopathic med students, and a light dusting of various other individuals make for a pretty crazy good time.

What I found particularly funny about the night was the dancing. I make no claims about being a great, or even good, dancer but I feel I can do a passable job. Some of the ladies made some rather nice comments toward me that I am going to assume where sincere that felt kind of nice. Dancing is one of those things I wished I was better at. Just writing this I cannot even remember the last time I went to a club here in Phoenix. That kind of makes me sad. Especially thinking back to the nights with Megan when we would go down and get out club on and dance tell the early morning. Also, it was a lot of fun grinding with Phil that night. Put alcohol in us and we get pretty touchy-feely-grindy-flirty in public.

Last note of the evening, I placed a few more pictures up in a set called "Thanksgiving Weekend" on my Flickr gallery. Picture highlights include several low-light shots from the Urban Cafe, dog pictures, and me trying to take artsy still lifes.

Keep Tearing Out the Sutures?

2006-12-21T16:00:00.000-07:00

Of all the The Postal Service's, I think my favorite is "your heart won't heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures."

This one little line has earned itself a special place in my heart because every time I hear it I am reminded of my own little quirks. Specifically, I am reminded of one in particular that manifests itself as me wanting to look to the past, or less-positive parts of reality at the very least, and start stacking myself up against what I find. This oddity sometimes has the power to make me a little depressed, sometimes frustrated, and other times it does not make me feel anything in particular. At first glance I wonder if this is really some kind of deep-seated, self-destructive tendency of mine. Part of me secretly hopes it is serving a higher function, mostly to make me more resilient and mentally stable.

Several months ago Phil and I traded blog archives for our respective web sites that we no longer operate or maintain. It was a unique chance to read about someone else's past in a very visceral way; all the writing was done at the time. I guess what distinguishes this from reading any other friend's blog is my personal relationship with Phil. I maintain it is essentially impossible for me to maintain any sort of objectivity when reading things in the past, no matter how far removed I might be at the time of writing. There really is not any way to read about your love's previous encounters with other men.

Is it jealousy? Is that part of the emotional mish-mash? Sitting here and pondering it I suspect that it is. On some level I think I am jealous of men in his past. Is that even remotely a healthy response? I would imagine it is, mostly because I refuse to accept that I am the only person who ever feels this way. Well, that does not make it healthy, just more common.

In my heart of hearts I know a large part is my need to feel significant in a big way. Phil has made me feel like a king, but sometimes glimpsing in to the past divorces me of my modern-day-relationship context and it is like I lose touch for just a brief second. Those brief seconds serve as semi-uncomfortable grounding experiences. It gives me a chance to ask questions like "do I make him feel that way?," and I know the answer is simultaneously yes and no. Yes, because three weeks from now we will be celebrating the one-year mark of our relationship, and No, because I am a wholly and completely different person.

It is a very rare time when I do not know what I am feeling or what function something serves, but why I like inducing this sort of ennui in myself is going to have to remain a mystery for a bit longer. I talk with him about it and that usually gets me a kiss on the forehead and a "silly boyfriend," comment. And I am totally all right with that. Actually, I bet it is because once and a while I really do like being emotionally taken care of and sometimes the associated feeling of vulnerability brings me all that much closer to him. Ultimately, who knows?

---

Side note:
A coworker of mine did something that kind of comes off as a mini-tribute. This is easily the most flattering thing he's ever done for me. Details are here.

Suppressing an Insurrection

2006-12-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

Friday, the day after the company Christmas party, I woke up with my legs feeling like they had been thoroughly worked out. At the time I did not really give it much thought; they were probably just tired from all the standing the night beforehand. By the time Friday evening rolled around my legs hurt, I had a headache that I will only describe as "horrific," and a fever somewhere near 100 degrees. This lousy state of affairs continued until about midday yesterday when it finally decided to largely resolve itself.

First and foremost, I do not get sick. The last occasion I can recall having been placed this far out of commission was sometime during elementary school. I missed neither a single day of high school nor college due to illness (do not read that as "I did not miss any days"). So to be this non-functional for five days sort of strikes me as absurd.

To paraphrase George Carlin, my white blood cells are currently working their way into the rebel camps to assassinate the invaders silently in the night. I will not stand for this sort of rebellious uprising in any one of my organ systems. They will slice the leaders' heads off, and place them squarely on pikes in my heart as a warning to all other pathogens that would dare enter here.

I am in a foul mood as a side effect of recovering. My coworkers have somehow managed to be able to piss me off with "hello." Under most normal circumstances I am nowhere near this punchy. I should have known something was up Friday night when I was walking with Simon around Fashion Square in Scottsdale. I was crossing a driveway when an older woman driving one of those (needlessly) large SUVs charged in front of me as if to say "no, pedestrians don't have the right of way as long as I drive my Deforester 9000(tm)." Being a little punchy at the time I noticed that her window was down, looked her dead in the eye, and called her a cunt rather loudly. She was far, far less than pleased, but I felt a sense of smug satisfaction. I always know something is up when I start getting that particular emotional response from my actions. It says, very concisely, "I don't need to be clever, I just need to make you upset." I would say I am semi-upset about this in retrospect, but that bitch really did deserve it.

The Christmas party ended up being all right. Phil was not able to make it due to Star's funeral being on the same day (totally, totally understandable), so I invited Heidi. She felt bad about me not being able to go with my boyfriend, so she decided to dress up as a man to make me feel better. All I am going to say is that I was there with the hottest chick in the place. The company had photographers on site, so I have a single picture that I may be able to get up onto my Flickr account. Phil got back Sunday night during a window when I did not feel like absolute shit, which was nice. Monday night he helped take care of me, which I am still extremely grateful for his rescuing me from the drudgery of my couch. Tonight is apparently bowling with friends who are visiting, so we shall see how that goes. I am just going to offer morale support. I loathe bowling.

Infallibility of Graphs

2006-12-11T16:59:00.000-07:00

My job description is perilously close to having "statistician" added in the requirements. For nearly the last two months I feel like the primary function of my job has become in depth data analysis. This is strikingly similar to the research post I held with my dark oppressor Dr. Xue at ASU. I essentially write programs that gather data. I then write more complicated programs that analyze the data the first set of silly programs produced. What always manages to astonish me is the shear volume of data a single engineer can produce when he or she is attempting to find something to analyze. It helps to impart a sense of perspective as to why data mining exists as a proper subfield of computer science.

5 machines
1 program
6 samples per minute

43,200 data points from that program per 24 hour period.

My personal datamart here at work currently is a MySQL database with several hundred thousand rows generated exclusively by my tiny little apps. I have written a whole array of programs that exist solely to filter and make some of this junk meaningful.
Without geeking out about the problem I have been attempting to solve, I will simply say that it has proven to be beyond a bitch to track down. Hence the reliance on statistics and pretty graphs to illuminate it. This last week was a major breakthrough with this specimen:

Hopefully no one needs a degree in statistics to realize this graph has some issues in the same sense "global warming" has some issues. Five separate computers, identical software, identical hardware, and dissimilar traffic loads all experienced an identical perceived drop of incoming packet data. Identical to the real world problem, and has only been reproduced in captivity once.

All I really know at this point is that I am absolutely thrilled that I have something I can wave in front of management as if to say "Look, see! This is why you pay me my salary!" It also makes me think of the term no-brainer and why I am going to bludgeon someone should it be uttered in my presence. Specifically because I recall someone once saying that the risk of presenting irrefutable evidence related to a previously unknown problem is that someone above you will say "obviously that is a problem! Look at that graph, it's a no-brainer," without giving a second thought to all the research and work that went into simply producing the damn thing. One battle at a time though... Right now I am still enjoying the breathing room this graph has bought me.

---

In other news, last week I sent an email message to Dr. Sen asking if the department needed any TAs for the low numbered classes in the CS department. I have yet to receive any kind of response, but I can not help but feel the answer would be "yes," since so few grad students actually want to TA those courses. I would liken it to a bunch of English graduate students begging to TA or teach English 101. The difference being a lot of computer science graduate students actually suck at programming, whereas I sincerely hope a bunch of English graduate students can all decently write. Anyhow, it is essentially my clever plan to reintroduce myself back to academia slowly to see if I want to pursue more classes. I feel myself becoming increasingly jaded toward the process of enrollment and vastly more critical of the entire academic institution day by day, not to say that corporate America is any better. At this exact moment in time both paths sound like folly.

Thus we continue?

2006-12-11T01:55:00.000-07:00

I have spent the last two and a half hours crying off and on, and reflecting...

The majority of today was spent with Phil, doing nothing in particular, which invariably means it was a good day. We parted ways like we do in the later part of Sunday afternoon so he can study and so I can take care of what few errands I have. Tonight at around 10pm he calls me. Upon answering the phone I immediately know something is wrong... This morning his friend Star, in Philadelphia, passed away from the effects of a sudden pulmonary embolism. No warnings, no signs, no indications, no nothing.

So many thoughts are racing right now, asking to be unraveled. I never had the opportunity to meet Star, and for that I feel unquestionably upset. Even though she and I never talked I am still feeling the loss like a kick to the ribs.

I truly feel that sudden gap is the sign of a person who led a magnificent life. It is never about our money, popularity, or even power. It is about the people we gather around ourselves, those we live with, and the people whom we grieve for. I strongly believe in the structural power of the tribe. Our tribes are formed from the intersections of friends, family, acquaintances, allies, compatriots, and the like whom we strongly associate with because of mutual beliefs, thoughts, feelings, or whatever. Essentially the family we are born into versus the Family we choose for ourselves. The people we would offer our time and our spirit to if they were ever in need. The people whom we cannot sacrifice our time to because we have already willingly offered it. When something tragic happens to one of these individuals, the loss is profound.

No sets of words by themselves have the kind of cleansing cathartic power necessary to truly ease this kind of transition. Personally, I have always felt silence to be the strongest thing I can say, so in these events I offer what emotional presence I can as well as a shoulder to cry on. Perhaps my own catharsis will come in recording my thoughts and feelings in a way which I can share.

My heart is aching for everyone whose life she has touched. I wish more than anything I had something more to say to Phil. It is always hardest to watch someone you love deeply, hurt in such a pervasive way. A hug? A kiss? Just something "more." I can always say "I love you," again... sometimes it helps just to know someone is out there thinking about you too. We all cope with these events in our own way, but it is taking a lot out of me right now to sit at home and not be more actively engaged.

The aspect of death I like the least is my own total lack of understanding. Death is the enigma that sits on the corner of my consciousness. I have no choice but to lump myself in the pool of people that claim to not be religious, but highly spiritual. Is death the road to awe? Is it a vast nothing? Is it something completely unfathomable? Is it the Christian-Judaic Kingdom of Heaven? I wished I knew. I really, really wished I knew. To be completely honest the thought of my own death creeps me out... though every time I deal with it I have a strong, moving sense of acceptance that "everything will be alright," and that whatever lies on the other side must truly be great.

At this point I have meditated, stretched, written, cried, smiled, hoped, sighed, and sniffled. Now maybe some healing and sleep.

Vaguely Human?

2006-12-10T19:36:00.000-07:00

So does this even resemble a human being? Since I have claimed to have no artistic talent for as long as I can remember, I'm actually somewhat proud of this. Leave me with my little piece of happiness.

The Undeniable Sexiness of Being Human

2006-12-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been mentally exploring what I think is one of the most amusing dichotomies. The relation between the amazing sexual force of human-ness and the equally powerful force of archetypal fantasy.

I suspect, and this is entirely guess work as I do not know many people who write about this stuff quite as openly as I do, that many people's sexual fantasies are based on broad generalizations as opposed to extreme specifics. I say that because if your like me, and you like pr0n, then it seems like a very reasonable extension to say that the content is setup to model the fantasy (i.e., it probably isn't a coincidence that hetero web sites have cheerleader sections any more than homo web sites have jock sections).

What I find interesting is that we sort of buy into these fantasies. That is not to say that I am disagreeing with it in any way shape or form, I am merely asserting I find the somewhat dehumanizing aspect fascinating. I do not want to have sex with the man; I want to have sex with the manifestation of the masculine energies I am attracted to. I do not think of myself as a fetishest per se, mostly because inanimate objects by themselves do not bring me sexual gratification, but I most definitely acknowledge that modifying context or "rising to the occasion" to be someone you are not necessarily (role-playing?) can greatly enhance the overall experience. When I, or anyone I know for that matter, is looking for, or at, sexually explicit material we are not terribly concerned with the universe outside of the immediate visual context. I do not find myself terribly concerned with what the pretending-to-be-18-years-old-captain-of-the-high-school-wrestling-team thinks about economic globalization and how it is disturbing the indigenous peoples of the South Pacific. I am not remotely inquisitive about the sultry stripper's desire to complete her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering while maintaining a self-reinforcing social life. It does not occur to me that an all male swim team that sits around in various sexual configurations in the locker room for hours on end will doubtfully ever compete successfully in inter murals. These are all simply things I do not care about. They do not lend themselves to successful sexual fantasy. These contextual questions that emulate reality seem like they are akin to masturbating to thoughts of your, or any potential, partner saying "I have a headache," or "I'm just not up for it." Totally acceptable in the real world, because that is how life works, but that does not change the fact they are decidedly not arousing

However, there is something overwhelmingly enticing about completely discarding the fantasy elements of a situation and focusing solely on the human qualities. I feel the best examples of this are represented in some very specific movie moments of the last few years. One of my favorites is between Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton in "Code 46". Without giving away the plot, there is a particular scene where Morton's character has essentially been biologically programmed to attempt to run away from Robbins. Her body wants to run, but her mind wants to stay. The conflict is both palpable and visceral. She tells Robbins that he has to make her love him. All of the context leading up to this particular scene (e.g. fights, talks, societal elements, Orwellian future, etc.) make it what I feel is one of the absolute hottest sex scenes ever recorded on film, not even counting the whole "violence and sex are inseparable" argument. The scene includes a lot of moaning, kissing, crying, and an amazing soundtrack. The human emotion is clearly the driving force. Another excellent example comes in the new Bond film. Prior to this movie I would not have said Daniel Craig is a particularly hot man. Attractive, yes; Handsome, yes; outright hot, no. One scene in particular in the movie, involving a shower and all characters fully-clothed under less than ideal circumstances, essentially left me breathless. That was the moment where I would have said "absolutely, yes" to Daniel Craig in my bed. Possibly even eating crackers, though that is difficult to say. Once again, it is the relationships between the characters and their humanity shining through that drives the scene.

So there we have two equal truths on opposite ends of the spectrum. The complete fantasy without context, and the fantasy based entirely upon surrounding context. The second case certainly occurs outside of cinema as well, but film works exceptionally well for illustrating the point. Surely I am not alone in this split. I have been to too many sex shops, porn vendors, and late night coffee shop discussions to not believe that this dualism does not cross the minds of other people. Maybe I am just exceedingly fascinated with the mechanics and logistics of what people like to get off to. Maybe I just really enjoy porn. Who knows? All I know is that I am going to continue with my overly-masculine-frat-boy-jock-type-standing-around-the-locker-room-wearing-football-pads-
and-a-jockstrap-questioning-his-sexuality-and-beating-off fantasy every bit as much as I am going to sit around and be turned on by deeply moving character conflict that drums up from some carefully scripted plot line all to a Hans Zimmer musical score.

Urinalysis or your-analysis or year-analysis?

2006-12-08T15:57:00.000-07:00

The concept is simple: take the first sentence of your writing from every month and list them out.

January: I'm a lousy blogger.

February: I wish I had a semantic thesaurus that could act upon an entire sentence rather than just a single word.

March: Does anyone still read this??

April: I promised myself that once I had a legitimately being job that I would use a small portion of my income to engage in various frivolous activities purely for the sake of decadence.

May: My mantra lately has been "ask for help when you need it."

June: Do you ever notice little behavioral trends you get into under certain situations?

July: Day 1 Part 2: Today's tour of the city started off with lunch at a dim-sum style restaurant somewhere in downtown Shanghai.

August: So I'm sitting here watching the new Pinky & The Brain DVDs and having an ongoing discussion with myself.

September: Very nearly a year ago I set out on a mission of self-exploration and change to develop, and more fully integrate, things into my life I didn't have time for in college.

November: You know your training is effective when like an idiot you fall in the shower... not regular fall, but through the curtain and out onto the bathroom floor style fall, and somehow you manage to have enough body awareness to position yourself in the air as to avoid both the hamper and the toilet and catch yourself on finger tips with chin tucked as to avoid hitting the head on tile.

December: Several years ago I remember taking one of those EQ tests that supposedly analyzes the many different factors of your abilities, in contrast to an IQ test that only tests your "intelligence".

---

With the exception of January and March it sounds like I have had quite the year. There has been a lot of hellish introspection this last season cycle, but it has also been one of a lot of self-exploration, a great deal of fun, and a lot of growing.

Hopefully 2007 will be something of a repeat year. That is with the fun and growing. Not so much on the hellish introspection.

Shelter is nice

2006-12-07T17:34:00.000-07:00

I know I have mentioned this to several people in the real world, but I have started house hunting. A few weeks ago I got in contact with a recommended agent, Maria, who has been helping me through the whole ordeal. To date I believe I have examined somewhere in the neighborhood of ten houses, most of which have been total crap.

Interesting story: The first day we went house hunting I actually found a place I really liked. The essential selling point on the place was that it happened to be a single-family detached house with a massive upstairs loft-like master bedroom. That particular room occupied the entire second story and had dimensions of something like 23x14 or something equally absurd. Anyhoo, I totally planned on using the upstairs as a combination open-air office, music listening, and movie watching room and using the downstairs bedroom (which was also a master, hooray for split masters) for my personal living space. So we make an offer and discover that the seller's representing agent is an absolute buffoon. She acts like we have made some kind of personal assault by offering her client less than the asking price and then proceeds to counter-offer us an amount *higher* than the original asking price. Clearly she is well known and sought-after for her prize-winning negotiation skills. The house had been on the market for 80-something days at the time of our original offer, which was something like three weeks ago now, and continues to sit on the market. We plan on giving it another week and then we are going to make the same low-ball offer again and see what happens.

Tomorrow morning I am meeting up with Maria again to check out several places in Tempe. Hopefully one of them will turn out to be promising. I am definitely antsy about getting my own space again, especially since this space will quite literally be Mine. Capital M.

Institutionalized

2006-12-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

Holy shit, it's reading day. I completely spaced out on the fact, mostly because I'm not actively a student anymore. For those of you not familiar with reading day or those of you that didn't have one in college, it's one day off between the last day of classes and the first day of finals. In years past I would have been gearing up for an anal pillaging at this point from a whole host of people.

Here's some crazy stuff:
1) One year ago, plus or minus 4 days, I became a full-time employee and a part of the US economic structure.
2) I am not currently a grad student.

And the creepy part? I'm not totally convinced I want to be a graduate student. Why? Because having spent a large portion of this last year doing statistical analysis and coordinating stress/scale testing at work I have a different appreciation of what contributes to research. I can now say that I have conducted research in the capitalist work place, as well as the academic institution. The only difference: the academic research doesn't functionally matter.

The papers I co-authored are functionally worthless. I have acknowledged that from the get-go. Interference reduction in fixed antenna environments with total modification to both link-state and routing strategy are a good THIRTY years away from being implementable. Academic research in computer science is roughly 30 years ahead of anything we can possibly implement. Not only that, but the vast majority of the people involved in it don't actually realize that. It's research for research's sake, which is fine... as long as the individual appreciates that the fruit's of one's labors are totally ephemeral. Think I'm wrong about that? 802.11b which has been in use for several years now, but is still reaching for broad adoption, is a set of modifications to a protocol called ALOHA that was first deployed in 1970. The vast majority of wireless technology, routing schemes, and all the other who-ha academically researched between 1970 and 2000 has only made tiny influences on the actual state of corporate development.

This conflict can best be summarized as: which bullshit is more tolerable? If I take the academic route I am effectively signing myself up for coworkers so far removed from reality and efficacy that I'm really just making shit up. If I take the corporate world I am essentially a cog in a larger economic institution where I have to listen to talking heads and the forces of "management" that often do not even have a technologically relevant background.

Maybe it is the Taoist in me, but I want to just not participate. I do not want the bullshit, I do not want the hassle, I do not want meaningless papers, I do not want to work 9-5. Life is going to make me choose a path one of these days. The trick will be in finding a path that can at least harmonize somewhat with my other goals.

I should definitely start acting on those "start my own business" impulses I have been getting again lately. That would be good for me...

The tree that bares no fruit

2006-12-05T00:59:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I remember taking one of those EQ tests that supposedly analyzes the many different factors of your abilities, in contrast to an IQ test that only tests your "intelligence". Honestly, I hate the IQ test mostly because I think there's a lot more to intelligence then "pick the one that doesn't belong" and "complete the sequence." Regardless, I remember being exceptionally pleased with the results of my EQ. I remember scoring in the top 99th percentile of several areas (e.g., verbal, mathematical, and reasoning) which put me in the archetype of "the visionary." This all came to mind earlier this evening because when you do really well in several areas, you tend to suck it up somewhere...mine happens to be spatial reasoning/analysis. I rank in at a very impressive lower 30th percentile. Seventy out of one hundred people are substantially better at spinning and folding things than me. I cannot visually manipulate things in my head to save my life. No, seriously, I truly and utterly suck at anything that requires me to perform 3d modeling in my mind's eye, including path finding.

This evening I was set to meet up with Heidi at the house she is currently staying at in Paradise Valley. The directions were simple enough. I, like always, could not maintain all the steps of the path in my head. I think it was a total of like four turns between Shea and my final destination yet somehow I was still calling for confirmation. The mere price of $599 for a very nice GPS unit for my car is easily worth the savings in my dignity.

Ultimately though I am honestly not really upset about the trade-off. I would much rather have visionary skills, whatever those may be, than be really good at more visually artistic endeavors. Somehow I manage to do a passable job at photography, but mostly because I think the finer points of the art appeal to the more scientific part of my brain. Exposure levels, f-stops, aperture control, timing, focal points, etc.

Me and directions: fruitless endeavor.

Obligatory Self Examination

2006-11-15T16:10:00.000-07:00

As of November 10th Liquid Nonsense celebrated its one year anniversary. It seems to be the custom in blogland that once a year mark has crossed you write down your thoughts after going back over some of the original posts. Let's recap some of the major things that have happened in the year:

First Full Time professional career-oriented position as a software engineer.

Looking to get a house.

Avoided graduate study for a while.

Met Phil.

Tons of movies.

Sleep. Precious, precious sleep.

Went to China and got my black belt.

Went to Michigan for Margot and Adam's Wedding.

Last December's housing fiasco.

Financial freedom.

Visiting Biosphere 2.

Formally got into Photography and started my own online gallery.

Finally finished my last physics course, all that stood between me and graduation.

Plenty of other crazy stuff that either isn't germane to write about, or I can't remember it.

I've done a particularly lousy job of updating this thing lately. I'm going to be a wuss and claim that it has to do with the average level of business that I maintain in my life. All the work, workouts, and whatnot have more than accounted for the majority of my spare time. I'm going to attempt to get back into the swing of updating this thing either everyday or every few days. Let's just see if it happens.

You know your training is effective when...

2006-11-10T00:22:00.000-07:00

...like an idiot you fall in the shower... not regular fall, but through the curtain and out onto the bathroom floor style fall, and somehow you manage to have enough body awareness to position yourself in the air as to avoid both the hamper and the toilet and catch yourself on finger tips with chin tucked as to avoid hitting the head on tile.

Shower 0, me 1.

Interesting Diagnosis

2006-10-26T14:09:00.000-07:00

My hands and feet have had a tendency to get cold for pretty much as long as I can remember. Similarly, I've also had hand tremors for as long as I can remember. I know it's been almost my entire life because I remember my parents joking when I was little that I definitely wasn't going to be a surgeon for fear of slicing up my patients. Phil suggested that I talk to a traditional Chinese medicine professional and make sure all my chi was happy.

Yesterday I had an appointment with a guy that works down the street who happens to be a licensed acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist. After walking through the basic questions and taking a full medical history I was diagnosed with "internal heat due to stagnant liver chi." Fifteen or so needles and a Si Ni Tang bag of herbs later I was well on my way to getting my liver chi moving again. I have to admit that the whole thing was actually a lot of fun. There's something about traditional Chinese medicine that is just really exciting.

About 30 minutes ago I tried my herbal tea. That stuff is every bit as bitter as he suggested it would be... I suspect I'm going to look for a more pleasant tea pill alternative.

Stupid Pills

2006-10-16T22:27:00.000-07:00

I seriously think that very nearly everyone I had to deal with today, in and out of work, decided that it would be a phenomenal idea to overdose on their stupid pills. Usually if it's just one or two incidents I shrug them off as aberrations, but when it is this many people I really have to wonder if there's a newsletter circulating that I'm just not aware of. I'm definitely going to yoga tonight in an attempt to turn this energy into something productive.

In other bizarre news, I think my body has finally reached the point where it rejects virtually all fast food. Over the last two years or so the only drive through place I've visited with any regularity is Wendy's, and I think I could count the number of occurrences on one hand. Most days of the week that I go to lunch with coworkers we go to places that either prepare something right then and there or at the very least try and use something other than cuboidal vacuum-packed roast beef. Last week I made an evening trip to the mall to look at some stuff and made a break by the food court and opted for Panda Express. I think I got my usual white rice, orange chicken, and I think the eggplant. Wow, did that disagree with my system... as in my stomach was far from pleased the next day. I was just NOT digesting that stuff. It is kind of weird that after eliminating so much fast food from my diet, increasing exercise (I'm doing something physical probably at least 4 days a week), and decreasing my minor drinking to virtually no drinking that my body has almost completely rejected what many people subsist on. Crazy!

--- Written after physical exertion and in a much better mood ---

Lastly, I'm really starting to think that one of the principle reasons I enjoy yoga so much is because it makes me feel pretty damn sexy. I didn't have negative body image before, but it wasn't particularly positive either. I suppose the best possible term would be "body indifference". Now it's decidedly positive, because I sit in class in a meditative state like "yeah, I would totally do me." Also, I have to admit that I really, really like the positive energy that my yoga teacher brings to the class. I also particularly enjoy the sense that she's checking me out. She's made several comments since I've started about my changing body composition and how certain things are looking much more toned. After class I go to the Sunflower grocery store and walk around in board shorts and a tank top and get checked out there too. Maybe this is just the first time that I've really been keyed into the attention... who knows. One way or another, I'm really enjoying it. I'm totally signing up for a check-up with a traditional Chinese medicine doctor to investigate a possible blood deficiency. If Phil is right I might finally have found the barrier that prevents me from gaining any weight at all.

Toned body, more muscle, maybe a tan. Yeah, I'd totally do me.

Soundtrack of my Life

2006-10-11T18:30:00.000-07:00

I thought this was an interesting enough meme to post. The general idea is that you set iTunes to random and play through your music writing down the songs the program selects in order. Personally, I'm not entirely sure what to think of my movie. Thematically speaking, it's definitely about drug usage as noted by the frequent oscillations between rock and psychedelic electronica.

Opening Credits: Shpongle - Shnitzled In The Negev
Waking Up: ZZ Top - What Is It, Kid
Average Day: ZZ Top - Alley Gator
First Date: Pink Floyd - Sheep
Make Out Session: Gin Blossoms - 29
Sex Song: Bloodhound Gang - No Hard Feelings
Falling In Love: Tracy Chapman - If Not Now...
Fight Scene: Shpongle - Divine Moments of Truth
Long Drive: Shpongle - Exhalation
Getting Cheated On: Papa Roach - Last Resort
Breaking Up: ZZ Top - Goin' So Good
Getting Back Together: Gorillaz - 19-2000
Lifes Okay: Gipsy Kings - Duende
Party Scene: Gorillaz - All Alone
Mental Breakdown: Tool - Stinkfist
Deep Thought: Shpongle - Falling Awake
Flash Back: Underworld - Something Like a Mama
Death Scene: DJ Tiesto - Just Be
Closing Credits: M83 - Slight Night Shiver

Production Commentary:

I particularly enjoy the progression of my love scenes. Any first date that could be set to Pink Floyd's Sheep is probably not going to see a second one. I especially like the line from the lyrics "He leadeth me the silent waters by \ with bright knives \ he releaseth my soul." If that's the first date, then I guess it would be appropriate to follow it up with the Gin Blossoms - 29, 'cause they are just SO uplifting. Featured lyrics from the song: "through good and bad and straight through indifference" , "there's no intentions worthy of mention" , and "Some rides don't have much of a finish." Not sure what kind of sex comes after that, but I'm betting it's angry from me being robbed of an evening in my life hence Bloodhound Gang's No Hard Feelings. At the fight scene I either realize that my date has psyionic powers, or I take a shit ton of drugs and attempt to attack his soul. Shpongle isn't really fight music, so I'm curious how that would end up. What's truly amazing is that the flute Divine Moments of Truth ends on is the same flute that Exhalation starts with despite the fact they are from different CDs. I'm also apparently ridiculously pissed off about getting cheated on- like dizzy with rage pissed. Ironically, the breakup song is actually a really heartfelt song (ZZ Top - Goin' so good)despite the fact everything has been exceptionally lackluster, not to mention super hypocritical on my part, up to this point. I really feel the getting-back-together song just says "Hey, can we still be fuck buddies?"

My party scene is simply nuts. The song makes me think of a party filled with people, loud music, and I'm strangely by myself- wandering in and out of the crowds looking for a clique to hang with and ultimately rejecting them all. One of those nights where you want to be near people, but not interacting with them.

The mean breakdown is absolutely perfect. Does anyone else get the impression that it's a song about surrealistic fisting? 'Cause that's totally how I envision my mind collapsing.

Shpongle's Falling Awake? Yup, if by "Deep Thought" they meant "more drugs." Same thing can be said for the flash back. I'm not sure what Underworld would be flashing back to, but I'm betting it was "more drugs." I mean the lyrics are literally gibberish.

My death is awesome. Not only does my death occur in a rave scene, but the words: "I was lost \ And I'm still lost \ But I feel so much better \ 'Cause now I know \ It's not so far \ To where I go \ The hardest part \ Is inside me \ I need \ To just be." Then I die. In the business we call that "irony."

The closing credits just make me think of all my friends standing over my lifeless body going "huh, that's a real shame."

Another Year

2006-10-10T01:06:00.000-07:00

Hooray, another birthday has come and gone and I've managed to stave off death for another year. All in all this year's celebratory activities were pretty good.

The actual celebration started on Wednesday night. Why Wednesday night? 'Cause Phil's birthday was on Wednesday and mine was today. So we started then, and basically just carried it on through for a couple days. The first night was a low key dinner at the Plaid in Tempe followed up by going to a friend's apartment for some hookah action and watching Kung Fu Hustle (great movie if you haven't seen it). Then, on Saturday evening we had dinner with a couple friends at Bucca di Beppo down in Mesa and reconvened later that evening back at Phil's house for a small get-together. I have to admit that it ended up being a pretty great celebration. My particular favorite was the group of people sitting around playing a card game that emulates little catholic school girls beating the shit out of one another.

I'd also like to say that Phil's present was pretty awesome. Not only did I get a really sweet Mahjong set, but I got an awesome new outfit for yoga.

Got to spend a few minutes tonight (on my actual birthday) with Phil and that was good too. I'm pretty exhausted at this point and pretty much just want some sleep.

Intermediate Updates

2006-10-04T00:45:00.000-07:00

This past weekend Tamara and I helped Phil to dreadlock his hair. I must admit that I am rather pleased with the results. Granted, those results were the culmination of eight hours of effort. A lot of memories of my own came back during the process, but that's probably to be expected. The pictures have been made available at my Flickr gallery (Phil's Dreadlock Holiday).

Tomorrow is Phil's birthday, then 5 days later (on the 9th) it's my birthday.

Phil has purchased amazingly cute underwear. You should ask him about them.

I created backup copies tonight of my photoshop images as well as the CR2 raw files from my camera. The full resolution copies of essentially what's available on my Flickr account take up nearly 20 gigabytes. Sometimes it's amazing how much storage is required to keep high-resolution multimedia data.

At work they are trying to start an internal users group on PHP development. I have to admit that I really want to go to some of these meetings and see what they cover. Is it really that dorky to want to hear about programming languages in terms of application development? Is it even dorkier that I think it would be suh-weet if we were somehow able to put together an equivalent group for J2EE development? I would totally run my own lecture series on the Java Enterprise Environment.

The only thing more awesome than owning this shirt, is owning this shirt.

I have been listening to a lot of Pink Floyd lately. At this moment I have the Live at Pompeii DVD playing in the background. Earlier today was listening to the Echoes CD. Dreading Phil's hair I was playing Wish You Were Here. At work someone has an iTunes share with Dream Theater's version of Dark Side of the Moon to go along with my original copy. Just remember to set the controls for the heart of the sun...

Random link of the evening: Do you wish you there was a portal specifically addressing the needs of all things sexual and pornographic? Luckily there is, however this link is neither work nor heterosexual friendly. Because the world has more breeders than non-breeders, this link is not work friendly but IS heterosexual friendly.

Eta Kappa Nu

2006-09-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

Apparently my scholastic achievements are good enough to get me into Eta Kappa Nu, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Honors Society. I guess when the time to put the list came together my name got on there somehow, despite the fact I'm taking one pseudo-class this semester.

I wouldn't be sitting here so bemused by this except for all the work I did with Tau Beta Pi (the comprehensive Engineering Honors Society), which is substantially larger than EKN. Did I also mention I was chairman of the public outreach committee my first year or that I sat on the engineering college council meetings as the TBP representative? Or the fact that I was chapter president for '04-'05? Possibly even that I've been a voting delegate to the national convention or that I've argued in front of a 500 person assembly to alter organizational bylaws? Let's also not forget all the events I helped put together or the legal battles I fought for on behalf of the organization when ASU tried brow-beating me with the Buckley Amendment with regard to new members.

Let me just say that I had a rather busy year running the show and being a lot of places. I don't particularly want to be involved with another society, but I very well may show up for the free food. 'Cause that's really what being in an engineering honors society is all about: the free food.

Movies, Pictures, and a Phone

2006-09-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

The last several days have been pretty interesting in terms of entertainment. On Thursday Heidi called me up and let me know that she had acquired tickets to a sneak preview of Flyboys on behalf of the Phoenix Film Society. It sounded like a pleasant deviation from the normal Thursday night activities and I had the free time... Wow, what a horrible dog-shit movie. Let me be clear: I didn't walk into that movie expecting it to be good. I walked into that movie with roughly the same expectations I have whenever I walk into a movie that I wasn't particularly interested in. It failed to meet even those. Not only are the main characters disinteresting, but they have no plot arcs either. Really only the peripheral characters have any sense of depth. Disappointing. As much as I'd love to discuss plot, I have a policy against posting plot spoilers. Rest assured though, the plot sucked as well. Even the eye candy was sub-par. As much as I think James Franco is hot, there wasn't even partial nudity (at least that I can remember). Also, apparently Jean Reno is the only man on Earth capable of playing a Frenchman. According to IMDB he isn't even French.

Over the weekend Phil and I went to go see "Another Gay Movie." I didn't walk into this one with high expectations either, and surprisingly enough it turned out to be pretty good. Let me contextualize that: it's good in the same sense that "Not Another Team Movie", "Scary Movie", and "American Pie" were good movies. Really stupid plots, but they manage to make you laugh so you leave without the sense that you have been cheated. The other thing we did not realize about this movie until we were buying tickets was that it was rated NC-17. Both Phil and I agreed this was the first time either of us had seen an NC-17 film in theater. I won't go into any of the details here, but the movie is definitely not for the faint of heart. If you removed the full frontal male nudity and sex scenes from this movie you would possibly trim off about 20 minutes as well as a substantial amount of plot. There's not really a lot of eye candy in this film unless you happen to really enjoy hairless smaller-figured men (read as: twink). Matthew Rush (Probably not work safe) had a pretty humorous cameo appearance that I enjoyed.

In preparation for some photo stuff I want to start working on I've started learning how to do some of the neater tricks in Photoshop. Particularly giving images more of an impression of fine art than just being photo realistic. I'm going to keep playing with it and maybe one day I'll be halfway decent at it (samples are available in the Flickr gallery at the moment). While I'm on it, I believe all my pictures are finally up on Flickr. There's currently some 295 images up there in 15 sets.

Lastly, my yellow brick of a phone has finally decided it no longer wishes to cooperate with me. It has faithfully served me for somewhere in the neighborhood of 3+ years. When I purchased it I was still somewhat actively skating (and falling) and told the sales people that I wanted something that could take a substantial beating and keep on working. They sold me the Motorola i58sr. The selling point that hooked me was the fact it meets all military grade specifications on shock resistance, water resistance, and dust/sand resistance. Ever since I got that phone I never wanted to upgrade because every time I pick up a phone today I just take one look at it and go "Wow, this is a piece of shit." Of course, that's because my previous phone was rubber gripped and included fully accessible GPS, not just the faux GPS most phones give for emergency services. Enter the Motorola i580. Essentially the upgrade to my previous phone in a smaller more compact and flip version. All the same military specifications and robustness with a higher resolution screen and a few other bells and whistles. So when my phone decided to finally stop taking a charge completely and this one JUST became available I took it as a sign. RIP i58sr, your services have not been forgotten and your tasks have been taken up by the new generation of hardcore phones.

Viva Pictures

2006-09-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

The ultimate problem with me hosting things on my own hardware is that implicit long periods of downtime are inevitable. For instance, me hosting my own photo gallery is a recipe for disaster because that means I have to keep a computer running as a web server and offer up my own bandwidth to make it available. So I bit the bullet (well, not really) and got a Flickr account. I'm sneaking pictures up when I can.

My Flickr Sets

I ordered a colorimeter last night for calibrating my monitors and laptop for optimal quality. I suspect I'm going to end up re-uploading a lot of these once I have them properly color corrected. Mostly because I am that big of a dork.

The following are the sets that should be up soon:

Memorial Day weekend
Fetish prom
Las Vegas trip
Misc. from Tempe
China (though I have so many from China it will be broken down into regions)

I'm also attempting to start various photo projects on the side. As those come to fruition I'll be putting pieces up as well.

Two Letters

2006-09-09T18:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Gay HQ,

Another year is coming to a close and I realize it is time for me to make sure my membership is still valid. I know that I am terrible with paperwork, so I wanted to make sure that I take care of this early on. I also know there have been a few times in the past where my membership has come into question because I have not earned enough rainbow points in the year. Though this may sound silly, I am quite fond of the discount we receive at Barnes & Noble as well as the fabulous "member's club" shopping at various malls across America, and would like to reaffirm that my membership is in strong standing.

I feel that the following items more than sufficiently qualify my membership for renewal, if not access for the elite member's "Flame" card:

I have spent more money on underwear in the last year than I have in the first 23 years of my life. The collection includes choices from 2(x)ist, Aussie Bum, Ginch Gonch, Under Armor, Body Glove, and Calvin Klein. I would like to point extra attention to my low-rise "weiner eater" series briefs that I am quite fond of. Also, my ass looks amazing in my graphite floral low-rise briefs from Aussie Bum. This is partially narcissism, but mostly fact.

I know what a topiary is. I can identify one, I can use the word in a sentence, and once long ago I sold them.

As far as I can tell, I am the only student at my yoga studio with a bright orange yoga mat with little yellow flowers on it. I am currently on a quest to find a matching speedo.

I enjoy dick. Other people's. A lot.

If you talk about Sean Cody or Corbin Fisher, I know you are not referring to some southern good ol' boys from Alabama.

My array of personal grooming products is stellar. One bottle contains a mixture of sea salt, lemon, seaweed, Scottish sea water, lime juice, coconut oil, and vanilla- the other contains an amazing concoction of creamed coconut and Vetivert Oil; I refer to them both as shampoo. My conditioner is an all natural blend of Cocoa butter, avocado extract, fresh figs, fresh bananas, fresh passion fruit, ylang ylang oil, cyrpus oil, sandalwood oil, and lastly chlorophyll. My hair is amazing. I prefer a facial scrub composed of both fine & course sea salts, grapefruit juice, lime extract, avocado butter, coconut fat, lime oil, seaweed, and violet leaf. For cleaning the entire body the current selection is "Flying Fox" made from honey, jasmine absolute, ylang ylang oil, cypress, and palmarossa. Last, but certainly not least, is my facial moisturizer constructed from lavender honey water, linseed, aloe vera, cold pressed almond oil, cocoa butter, fresh wheatgrass, shea butter, African marigold oil, tangerine, and sandalwood. I don't look like a hippie, but I probably smell like an exceptionally clean one. Honorable mentions: my vanilla mango shaving cream and American Crew hair forming gel.

Related to a previous point, my pr0n will not fit on a single DVD. It will not fit on several for that matter. To date, my contributions back to my fellow man very likely exceed 50 gigabytes.

I enjoy musicals. I have even seen Les Miserables twice. Once at the London Palace Theater, and once at Gammage.

I know the difference between Navajo White, Eggshell, Off white, and Cream. For that matter, I also know the differences between Burgundy, Maroon, Sangria, and Wine. I own several shirts with coloring from the second set.

If questioned on the street I will lie, but I definitely know all the words to Gloria Gaynor's "I will survive," and in my native habitat (read as: when alone) will sing along rather loudly.

Clearly this list could continue on for quite a while, but I feel these highlight points are sufficient. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to my new membership card arriving in the mail shortly.

Sincerely,

Chris

----

Dear Mr. Grasso,

In response to a discussion from earlier, you asked what the fundamental unit and decay rate of "cute" was. I have brought this ever so important question to my team of scientists and we have arrived at the following formulation.

We need a starting point, and classical Newtonian physics and calculus should provide such a grounding. Firstly, consider the relationship between distance, velocity, and acceleration. From calculus we know that these are related to one another via differential and integral calculus. That is to say that velocity is the integral of distance, and acceleration is the integral of velocity.

Consider the following: we start with the base unit of a Helen. 1 Helen is the amount of beauty necessary to launch a 1,000 standard, soldier-carrying Greek ships to battle. My scientists tell me that since 1 Helen is the amount of beauty NECESSARY to launch those ships, whereas cute is the application of beauty, thus being it's integral. Therefore, we shall adopt the unit of 1 Cuddle (henceforth written as C not to be confused with Coloumbs) being defined as a 1 Helen per second. This unit would be extremely large in most cases, and thus when referring to other people we adopt expressions such as "that person is exerting at least 36 micro-Cuddles of cute on that guy."

Since we are aiming for analogues to classical physics, we must extend this unit once more to have a third level integral. Since we would then essentially talking about the "rate of change of cute." I feel the appropriately named unit, since we are referring to the rate of change of cute, is the Keg (K, not to be confused with Kelvins). Thus, 1 Keg is 1 Cuddle per second, or rather, 1 Keg is 1 Helen per second, per second.

While the names have not been thoroughly decided upon, I feel they are good transitional titles. We propose a further investigative study into the human threshold of cuddles per second as 1 Keg, as defined above, is most likely fatal. We are all looking forward to further analysis.

All the best,

Professor Dr.

What's the Sound of a Value System Dying?

2006-09-05T18:51:00.000-07:00

Very nearly a year ago I set out on a mission of self-exploration and change to develop, and more fully integrate, things into my life I didn't have time for in college. When I look back on my college experience it was a very positive experience, but it was also exceptionally time consuming. I partially suspect that my minor apprehension at diving back into the Master's program immediately is because I've started to become accustomed to having time to think, reflect, and develop things that are not quite so rooted in hard science. Honestly, I've developed an amateur interest in photography that's coming along rather well. A year ago my pictures sucked, and now I feel they're semi-passable. At the very least they don't make me look like a complete tool. I've gone to China to get my black belt. That was a personal milestone I had been working on when I could for the last 7 years. Three (or was it four now?) weeks ago I started doing Bikram Yoga. Yoga isn't quite like any other workout I've ever done, but the sense of body awareness is remarkably similar and just as effective in terms of physical catharsis. Actually, I'd say it's a lot more mood enhancing since it is essentially the same concept of "moving meditation" that I've done in Tai Chi. There's been substantially more reading and writing going on in my spare time. I've finished several books this year and I've been more actively journaling various thoughts and responses on paper for several months. Last, but certainly not least, I've even had an active healthy relationship going for eight months now with Phil. I have definitely gotten used to spending a few nights a week, and a couple mornings, with my boyfriend.

Let it be known that these are all Good things. I can just feel the forces of change moving on the inside and it's kinda weird. It's the sensation that if I were to talk to myself a year ago that I would recognize myself and certainly be able to relate, but present-me would be looking at identity related issues radically different and I'm sure there would be some disagreements, if not outright incredulity.

A year ago I was a full time student at ASU working as an intern. My classes included: American Religious Traditions, Statistics/Probability for Engineers, Geology Lecture and Lab, and History of Math. The only non-Geeky course is the religions one, and honestly the only reason I took that was because the University said I had to. I would grab a short dinner a few times a week with friends, but otherwise time was fairly restricted. My martial arts involvement was scaled back and the only way I was able to workout at all was a 1.75 hour window I had on T/Th in the middle of the afternoon plus Saturdays. I was also living with Clemens at the time and making various plans for grad school on the other side of the country. I also tried to set aside time for various things related to sexuality whether it be dating or chatting up guys.

Present. I am enrolled as a student at ASU as a fluke because I need three credits correctly counted so everyone can officially agree that I have indeed graduated. I am now a full-time software engineer for a prominent web company. My time outside of work is divided up between the martial arts, yoga, and working out. My physical activity is obviously substantially higher. Also, I have become even more of a Luddite now then I was as a computer science major, and I seldom do anything related to my computer outside of work, with the major of exception of occasional gaming and Photoshop. Speaking of Photoshop, I now take pictures of things. Quite a few pictures of things actually since I wanted to be more of a photographer. My plans for graduate school have changed several times over the last 10 months since CMU didn't have an opening on the team I wanted, but was it *really* the team I wanted to be on? On this particular matter I feel like some dubious wizard from the game Heidi and I have jokingly discussed several times has cast "Hellish Introspection Lvl. 10" on me.

These are the lingering questions that past-me and present-me will have to ponder on:

Why was I so driven toward graduate school? I still want to go, and I still want to be Dr. Badass, but is that path in computer science? Is that course that will lead to just my amusement, or also my satisfaction? Given my personality it's hard to tell at times.

Do I have any reasonable grasp of my sexuality? I don't think anyone has described me as shy in the last 7 years, but there are regions of apprehension in my own mind I don't understand. I believe, and engage, in hooking up. Why does my comfort level shift with this depending on the day? In high school I would have said absolutely not. In early college I would have said highly suspect. In later college I probably would have said "not for me, but I support you" Now I simply say "why not?" The same can be said for my outlook on several psychoactive compounds.

Why is it that I suspect I will have problems with things, and then I do them and realize that I not only don't have a problem, but I can thrive? I'm not shy, and I'm not particularly reserved but I don't draw a lot of attention to myself either. After a decent workout I am totally willing to walk around in a tank top and my board shorts hanging off my ass with a cocky smirk. A year ago that would have made me exceptionally self-conscious....I think. I'm not sure 'cause I didn't do it. I do it now and I feel great. What's the relationship there?

Why has the Zen/Taoist part of my personality asserted itself with a vengeance? A year ago I tried to stay busy and I would periodically remind myself of the expression "Eat when hungry, sleep when tired." Now I'm living this attitude. Why am I far less compelled to accomplish tasks set before me by others or live up to expectations other people set forth? It isn't that I don't aspire to great things, it's just I'm starting to see great things in my day to day life. Why do I no longer feel compelled in any meaningful way to achieve "success" in a societal sense?

I used to have what I thought was a great idea for a tattoo that I never acted on. It was a wing-like shape over my right shoulder blade composed of many smaller symbols. I never officially decided on the symbols I would use, but using the white space where the symbols weren't, I was going to outline the kanji for "stain." It's a beautiful character, but kanji tattoos are risky and extremely difficult to pull off even despite the fact I've studied Japanese and have been to Japan. The general idea was that the stain of experience is the force that teaches you how to fly. It's also the inherent duality of expressing the concept of stain in white space. What's worse: being stained with the innocence of never doing anything outlandish, or being stained with having done everything including what many will look down upon? I felt it was rather symbolic of the concept "Good experience grows in bad experience." We have to fuck up occasionally in life and have these periods of inward gazing. They suck, they leave you drained, and they tend to leave you feeling inert.

Right now I just chalk it up to the death throes of the person you were and the values you used to place emphasis on. Change is good, but sometimes it leaves you with growing pains.

Weddings, Travel, and Misc.

2006-08-29T17:29:00.000-07:00

This last weekend Phil invited me out to Michigan for his friend Margot's wedding. The idea was that we would leave Friday around noon and stay through Sunday. Thanks to the poor planning by the folks over at United, that didn't really happen. They cancelled our flight and then conveniently put us on another one roughly 12 hours later. Yup, we flew across the country to Michigan at 11:50pm on Friday. Factor in time zone changes and that means we arrived at our final destination at about 10-something am Saturday morning. The wedding was at 4pm that afternoon, so we got to spend the remainder of that morning and afternoon catching up on some precious sleep.

The wedding itself was very simple and quite expedient. I'd say the entire ceremony part took less than 10 minutes all together. Even though it was really short, it was very well done and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The dinner and reception that followed were equally as awesome.

Margot and Adam, congratulations!

Also, 'cause I thought the picture came out rather well. Phil and I looking cute at the Riverside Inn's dock.

Since Friday afternoon was made available to me, I decided to go down to ASU and finally graduate. I'm not even going to relate the entire afternoon's story since that would require vastly more energy than I'm willing to give right now. Suffice it to say, I'm no mere mortal when it comes to ASU's bureaucracy. Three signatures, two forms, a readmission statement, and transcript transfer, and three fees later I have the credits for the one class standing between me and graduate. In my mind's eye I've already graduated as my computer science nonsense was done a year ago. In the University's eyes I just have to shuffle the paperwork around so they'll print the damn degree.

Holy Sweat, Batman

2006-08-22T00:28:00.000-07:00

Today I was looking for some change to try something new. I've heard Phil discuss his enjoyment with Bikram Yoga as a good means of physical exertion. So, using the wonderful interweb I discovered that there's actually a Bikram Yoga place about three blocks away from my house. So I gave it a shot.

Holy shit, the last thing that made me sweat like this was called "all day outside in Shanghai." I feel like I'm back in China, except that rather than being outside all day, I just got completely soaked 20 minutes into a 90 minute yoga session. I don't think I've ever been this limber in my life. Scratch that. I was feeling limber, now that a few hours have passed I can feel the beginnings of what is undoubtedly going to feel like divine retribution for my efforts tomorrow.

On my way in there was a late teens/early 20's (I didn't want to stare too much) leaving without his shirt on with an absolutely flawless body. If you can tell me that I can get his body, or even something just approximately near it, I'll cancel my gym membership right here and now.

On Love

2006-08-20T23:53:00.000-07:00

Of the 5 quotes from my previous post, the one by Og Mandino is probably my favorite. I like stories, narratives, and experiences that reinforce that love is a living breathing force that has to not only be maintained, but made to grow. The path it will take is always unknown and the destination is non-existent. It essentially is the truest emotional embodiment of the Taoist/Zen expression "the journey is the destination."

Effectively one year after my college life has concluded I am in the midst of many of my friends navigating their own love lives. Some of them have gone off to be married, some were going to be married and circumstances have changed, some of them are in a relationship to kill time, some of them are in serious relationships just enjoying whatever course life may take. The diversity is truly quite staggering.

Maybe it's my sentimentality or simply the emotional glare from my idealist-rose-tinted glasses, but it's all pretty amazing. All relationships have their highs and lows, but isn't that why we're all involved? Isn't it your privilege to feel compassionate pain when your significant other is miserable? Isn't it your privilege to be the first thing someone else sees when they wake up on Saturday morning? Isn't it your privilege to sit and cry when your both all worked up? Isn't it your privilege to know that somebody out there thinks of your face and smiles because your just that damned important? I think it is. All of these things are the privileges granted in relationships. All the good, and all the bad, moments two people share define their wholely unique experience.

Yes, love must be remade. It must be tempered carefully and continuously so that you can always forge something stronger.

I'm well aware that I'm a sentimental sucker, a romantic, and an idealist. Especially when it comes to matters of love, but isn't it my privilege to feel that way?

Because I Like To Periodically Steal Things

2006-08-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

Go to this site. Hit refresh until you find a total of five quotations that are meaningful to you, reflect your outlook on life, or whatever. Post them.

But seduction isn’t making someone do what they don’t want to do. Seduction is enticing someone into doing what they secretly want to do already.
Waiter Rant, Waiter Rant weblog, 11-29-05

Love doesn't sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread: remade all the time, made new.
Og Mandino (1923 - 1996)

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?
Jean Kerr

Many years ago Rudyard Kipling gave an address at McGill University in Montreal. He said one striking thing which deserves to be remembered. Warning the students against an over-concern for money, or position, or glory, he said: "Some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are."
Halford E. Luccock

When you take charge of your life, there is no longer need to ask permission of other people or society at large. When you ask permission, you give someone veto power over your life.
Geoffrey F. Abert

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

Cultural Creative

94%

Postmodernist

69%

Existentialist

56%

Idealist

50%

Materialist

44%

Modernist

25%

Romanticist

13%

Fundamentalist

What is Your World View?
created with QuizFarm.com

Your Ultimate Purity Score Is...
Category	Your Score	Average
Self-Lovin'	21.7% I wouldn't shake hands, if I were you	64.8%
Shamelessness	54.8% It takes a couple of drinks	78.9%
Sex Drive	60.5% A fool for love, but not always	77.3%
Straightness	92.9% Just go fuck something, okay?	44%
Gayness	5.4% Makes Dr. Frank-n-Furter look tame	83.8%
Fucking Sick	60.2% Dipped into depravity	89.9%
You are 47.31% pure Average Score: 72.4%
Take The Ultimate Purity Test and see how you match up! (By The Ferrett)

And Together We Shall Live Forever...

2006-08-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

It isn't that often that I get really stoked about a movie coming out. Sure the summer movies are fun and usually involve big budgets and things going "boom," but I'm rarely super jazzed about them.

When I went to see Lady in the Water, which I thought was awesome, there was a preview for a movie coming out later this year by Daron Aronofsky. You may remember him from such films as Requiem for a Dream, and Pi. The new one is called "The Fountain." Rather than talk it up, I'm just going to post a link to the high definition trailer that I've been watching over and over.

The Fountain

I feel this is the choice line from the trailer:

Bodies are the prisons for our souls... all flesh decays, death turns all to ash... and thus death frees every soul.

In other neat movie news I plan on seeing Little Miss Sunshine this coming weekend. Supposedly there might be a small group of people going to see it. If anyone is interested, send me a message.

Gifts for the Ages

2006-08-09T00:29:00.000-07:00

I've sat really thinking about what stops me from getting tattoos. It's mostly related to me not knowing what I want to get. There are plenty of things that I'd like, tons of images I associate with, and more than enough ideas floating around in my head. My problem is that I would ultimately like a coherent body of work, and that requires tons of future planning.

The more I pondered this one the more I realized that it isn't so much that I can't decide on something I'd like, it's that choosing tattoos is like getting a Christmas present. I frequently don't ask for anything in particular because I want to see what people will come up with given the chance to figure out what I might like. In a sense I think of tattoos the same way. I want to be given them more than I actually want to choose them.

I want parts of my body to be a living canvas, but I'd like to introduce my tattoos as "This was given to me by X for reason Z, and this one over here was a brilliant design by Y inspired by when we did W."

Here's the deal, provide me with a decent design idea and why you think I should have that tattooed to my body and it'll get done. The original concept will be attributed to whoever offers it up, and I will choose final motif so I can get the coherent set I would ultimately like. Be as descriptive as you'd like as I will probably pool my resources on artists and have them construct something. If you'd like, I will even submit the final proposed design back to see if you'd like modifications.

I will treat recommendations as seriously as you offer them. Some of the people reading my blog have known me for over 10 years, and others haven't even known me for all of 2006. All are welcomed to offer suggestions, ideas, and creative input.

I'm interested to see what people manage to come up with.

Connections Perhaps?

2006-08-04T01:03:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting here watching the new Pinky & The Brain DVDs and having an ongoing discussion with myself. It might be my healthy sense of ego, but I feel that open-forum discussions where I'm the only participant are worth writing down at some point.

Tonight's colloquium in the compound is more of an exploration of my relationship with sex. As a side note, the last time I watched Pinky & The Brain I was probably in early/mid high school, yet I feel it adds an important dimension to the discussion. I would say it triggers a feeling of nostalgia for a time long since past, but honestly it doesn't. Similarly today I talked with a coworker about how awesome it would be to be in first grade again playing with blocks and to have carefully metered 30 minute recess periods. No, this is not me setting myself up to sound like a pedophile, it's me illustrating the zen part of the discussion.

Pinky & The Brain as well as thoughts of first grade give me a sense of simplicity and a general lack of complexity. In my head I'm a 23 year old sexually active first grader that apparently has the opinions of a 40 year old porn star, a penchant for entheogens, and a slightly more than "working" understanding of Eastern Philosophy.

I don't understand why things need to be complicated. One of my favorite lines from 20th century literature comes from Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "Little Price":

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

I feel that love and love making should always maintain a certain amount of childlike exuberance. Losing the bright-eyed excitement and bushy-tailedness of crawling around naked with someone else feels like a migration away from that child-like place of freedom and into the land of adults. Which is all fine and good because adults are very important individuals and they have many important things to do like pay the bills, be responsible, and do other adult-like things because "that's the way things are." Sure, I have to do these things too, but that doesn't mean as I get older I necessarily have to swap my action figures for a suit and tie... I can swap them for anal beads.

My attitude towards the matter of sex as a whole could be rather easily summed up as "playful." Well, perhaps pornographically playful. It's a subject I love discussing with other people because the answers are always diversified and you end up learning what people hold close to their hearts. You like being punched in the face with full power while listening to country music and being suspended in a bath tub full of Jell-O? Fantastic! On the weekends you like to role play by dressing up as a giraffe and letting six of your best friends "go on safari" shooting at you with paint ball guns only so they can "bring you down" and gang-bang you in the back of a pickup truck? Awesome, I totally support you! Periodically, you beat off to a fantasy composed of frat boys dressed up in tuxedos with the ass missing performing a concerto around a pot roast marinated with any number of body fluids? Wonderful, tell me where the parade is and I'll be there!

It doesn't help that I'm the kind of person that takes a purity test and writes down the description next to every check box that I didn't check, modify it slightly, and make a twisted to-do list of sorts. I have a healthy sense of exploration and excitement towards sex that I feel provide me with a certain sense of fantasy-related creativity and openness.

In conclusion:
1) Sex is good.
2) Creativity is good.
3) Enthusiasm is good.
4) Restraints are wonderful.
5) Openness with, and the supporting of, others is of paramount importance.

Pervasive "blah"

2006-07-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

My emotions are not my own right now. At least "not mine" in the sense that they're local to me. For years I have admitted that I'm a sponge of affects. It only takes about 20 minutes to soak up the energies of the people around me.

Phil is back in town from Philadelphia, and it's great to have him back, though admittedly I still feel a little lonely even knowing he's here. Totally not his fault though.

Last night went to go see "A Scanner Darkly" with Phil. It was definitely an interesting movie, but I'm not sure if I really liked it. I'll list as worthwhile nonetheless, if anything just to see what a movie made through the process of "interpolated rotoscoping" looks like. Doesn't hit nearly as hard as Requiem for a Dream, but still sends the "drugs are NOT good" message.

Today I decided to get my hair cut. Completely uneventful except for this cute little girl that happened to be there at the same time. She was with her mom and was probably somewhere between 2-3 years old. It was her first haircut and she threw a fit, but it was really cute too. Her mom bought her a little magic-wand-like toy before coming into the shop and sat consoling her with it. I sat smiling paralyzed by the forces of adorable at work around me.

The afternoon involved a day trip down to Desert Ridge since I hadn't been in a long time. Made the usual rounds talking to the people I know out there and stopping in the stores I like. It was an oddly comforting afternoon. Made a stop by Barnes & Noble and bought a new paper journal and spent some time writing.

Also, picked up a copy of "My Undoing: Love in the thick of sex, drugs, pornography, and prostitution," by gay porn super star Aiden Shaw. I started reading it lightly in the store, and it turned out to actually be fairly engrossing. Super light read, but some of the views and emotions expressed by the author hit really close to home. I find it remarkable and simultaneously crazy that my emotions are not all that different from a 40 something year old veteran porn star.

Between the depressing movie, afternoon of cathartic writing, reading a book that reminds me of my emotions, a boyfriend healing, and sitting here writing this when I thought I'd be picking said boyfriend up at the airport from his return..... I am left with a fairly all-encompassing sense of "blah." I'm going to go to work tomorrow and hopefully clear my mind.

My Left Big Toe and Miscellaneous

2006-07-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

Once again my left big toe is hurting. During sparring people are evidently magnetically attracted to harming this one damned specific toe. It's like they gather before class and discuss strategies on how they will lure "lefty" into the fray. Either way, I'm walking around like a gimp today because it hurts to fully step down.

Evidently Lance Bass of N'Sync has finally announced (admitted?) that he's gay. Honestly I never had a crush on the guy nor did I ever like N'Sync as a musical entity, but this reminded me of a discussion I had with a gay manager of mine several years back about how the entire group had to have been gay. Good for him and coming out.

Is there such a thing has venereal disease porn? I think there is, and I think more horrifically I accidentally found it during a less-than-innocent browsing of the Internet. What demographic out there wants to see oral sex involving a man's penis covered in pea sized nodules? Potential acute warts aside, would you even consider putting something like that in your body?? I sincerely hope the answer is No. Similarly, would you put your penis in a man's (or woman's for that matter) bright red and distended anus? Once again, I sincerely hope the answer is NO. Talk about wrecking the prospect of getting it up...

Wacom tablets are awesome. I have a ton of pictures from China that I'd like to clean, process, and possibly order prints for. Unfortunately that's a ton of computer work, and using Photoshop with a little touch pad of a mouse doesn't make the process easy. Circuit City was running a special on Wacom tablets, so I went and picked up one of their smaller ones to try it out. Now I totally understand why all graphic professionals use these things. Image editing is absurdly faster using the tablet, not to mention it's fun operating a computer via a pen.

Crazy Dream After Effects or Perhaps the Time has come

2006-07-22T15:40:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a dream that much like all of my other dreams; bat shit crazy. The reason this one stood out so much is because I don't usually dream in color per se. Generally when I remember back to my dreams they're rather amorphous and memories of conversations rather than real conversations. They have a distinctly surreal quality without narrative and without cohesion. What made last night's dream different was there was a section that had exceptionally real color and vibrancy.

The brilliant color and vibrancy was special because it was literally on me. I had the most amazing tattoo work I think I had ever seen. It started slightly below my jaw line on the left side of my body and a hair away from my midline and continued all the way around to the same point on the back of my neck. It covered a region drawn vertically from that start position to roughly an inch below my floating rib and included a full left sleeve that stopped at my wrist. The colors included a brilliant orange and blue pattern similiar to some of the artwork Jason Dinger did for Simon a few years ago. Other patterns were present and it looked part tribal, part artistic, part insanity. It was beautiful.

I woke up this morning not really thinking about it because I'm usually fairly groggy just after waking up. My usual routine involves me then going to the bathroom. Upon entering the bathroom I looked in the mirror and had a sudden profound sense of loss when I didn't see the tattoo pattern from my dream in the reflection. Without realizing it part of my mind had totally accepted the idea that I could have tattoos starting on my neck that covered most of my body with conspicuous colors, and had actually become upset because I didn't really have them.

I'm absolutely positive that the reason my dream included this tattoo work is because I was considering going with Clemens later tonight to get his next tattoo. My mind must have been processing that much more than I had originally thought. Coupled with the fact I had decided to start my journey into body art this summer it really isn't a surprise at all.

Certain ideas and ideologies that I've worked to change over the years have had their transitions and eras marked by my more profound dreams. They might be absolutely insane, but I know when my subconsciouss has adopted something, then my waking mind has reached a state of near total acceptance. It would seem it's time to start making those appointments I've been considering.

Thank You Fortune Cookie, et al

2006-07-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

It's almost been two weeks since the return from China, and I ready to start integrating Asian foods back into my diet. At least little by little. Anyway, the Pei Wei up by work apparently started getting their fortune cookies from a new distributor since the messages are much different these days. For instance, mine today was:

Go ahead and be as sexy as you can.

I don't recall fortune cookies ever previously telling me to increase my fuckability. I do, however, approve of fortunes which are sexually affirming.

This last weekend Phil and I celebrated the six month mark, w00t! In celebration we sat around and worked on recovering since his kidney chi somehow got out of whack. Currently he's on vacation in Philly (haha, Phil in Philly) catching up with friends and shadowing doctors at a clinic. My boyfriend rocks, and hopefully he's having an awesome time, but I'm still looking forward to his return.

Digitally developing pictures from China is taking a good chunk of time in the evening, so don't expect them all in the immediate future. So far all I've really managed to accomplish is paring out the ones that I don't want. Several hundred pictures were taken, but the final catalog will probably only be about 35-40 pictures. Hopefully later tonight I'll start actually converting them out of RAW and into a usable and distributable format.

Other than that, life is pretty much just plugging along at it's usual pace.

Identity Crisis Averted?

2006-07-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

I think I've found the solution to my work related problem. I feel the problem isn't with the actual company, but rather the underlying task. Software engineering is alright at best, but it isn't exactly a job that I derive a considerable amount of satisfaction from. After really considering whether or not I should interview with another company and consider a job change I came to the realization that I'm most likely trading a good position and good pay for more of the same shit at a different location.

What to do? I'm going to downgrade my position back to intern and resume classes this fall. I'm two or three classes away from a degree in math. I'd like to finish that up and complete the paperwork for my computer science degree. Also, I plan on taking a bunch of undergraduate courses in psychology.

Psychology has been a field I've kept in the back of my mind for the last year and a half after taking psych 101 and social psych. Various conversations recently with Heidi and exploration of my own personality tell me I'm potentially entering the wrong field with computer science. I rock at it, but I'm starting to think the reason I enjoy it so much is simply for the abstract problem solving it requires to become proficient at it. The actual application of the education is drearily boring and research in this field requires a Ph.D. I think research might be fun, but I'm not 100% sure it would be satisfying.

For years people have told me I have a sense of wisdom beyond my age and an emotional capacity that can be mystifying. Maybe I should be pursuing something that let's me engage in the humanizing aspects of society that I thrive on in my personal life. This is going to require some personal exploration and some coursework to see if this might be for me. All I know is that planning this out and making it work has been the happiest I've felt about the short-range future of my work oriented life in a while. Wish me luck.

Loathe My Job

2006-07-12T15:17:00.000-07:00

I'm looking for a new job while I work through the process of interviewing with various other large engineering corporations. I seek mindless activity which yields money. Not even a lot of money. If you have an "in" anywhere in the Phoenix metro area that you feel would benefit from my wealth of abilities, then let me know. My goal is to have something new (and somewhat temporary) setup by the end of this week. Please help end the suffering today.

This is absolutely legitimate. The less customer-facing the better, and it doesn't even need to be technical.

Return from China

2006-07-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

My updates have been somewhat negligent since I haven't had a private Internet connection since I was in Deng Feng. Now, however, I'm sitting at home at the comfort of my own desktop computer.

To summarize the ending of the trip:

We left the Shaolin Temple at Deng Feng and went by bus to the city of Xi'an. The only real thing of note in Xi'an is that it's the home of the first Qin emperor's tomb and the home of the Terra-cotta warriors. The warriors were neat, but it's really a site that you can see in about 20 minutes and not feel like you've missed anything. Most of the pits have yet to be entirely excavated and you can't actually get anywhere near the relics.

After a day and a half in Xi'an we flew to Beijing. Beijing is a rather bustling city filled with people. The highlights from the capital included seeing the famous Peking Acrobats, the Forbidden City, the summer palace, Tienanmen Square, and the famous Hongqiao Pearl Market.

I would elaborate on these topics some more, but I figure I can do that in photo essay format when I get my digital pictures developed in photoshop and posted to the web.

At this point I'm honestly just glad to be back in the United States. The trip was a lot of fun, but China is definitely not a place that I would like to go to spend a lot of time. Two weeks is about the maximum I would like to put up with. Especially since I don't speak the language, the water isn't potable anywhere, and you are really just a fleshy bag of money to the locals.

I'm looking forward to a few days of light work and catching up so I can rebuild my energy stores. Peace out.

Yesterday's Recap and Today's Craziness

2006-07-05T09:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was so tired that I didn't even have the energy to really explain the day out. So let me do some recapping.

After the morning ceremony we went back to the hotel for a little while to get cleaned up for an afternoon with the monks. The entire group was split into much smaller sections so we could receive training in the various training halls of the temple.

All I have to say is "damn". No kung fu movie is ever going to do it for me again. Now that I've seen and trained with the real Shaolink monks I know, at least partially, what the real Shaolin art looks like, and more importantly what a lifetime of training looks like; they are un-fucking-believable. Yesterday they started teaching us one of their forms that we think is translated as something like "Great Flood".

The form took the black belts the better part of six hours to learn. It's long, and it's complicated. It is, however, frickin' sweet. One of the USSD instructor's that I was training with said that based on the movements and style of the form that it was roughly equivalent to one of our 4th degree black belt forms (ie, meant to be done by people with about 15+ years of experience). Being a lowly first degree black belt now, I didn't feel so bad that certain passages and sequences were challenging. After one of the training segments I decided to wring my shirt out since we were outside and ended up leaving the temple a little present in the form of my water. I couldn't help but think of the Dune references.

Today we finished the form and I'm going to have to work my ass off if I plan on remembering the whole thing. The instructors from Arizona had a hard time picking it up too. To help pick it up better we recorded everything on digital video and we'll play it back a few hundred times until we have it down pat.

Last night also involved an amazing fireworks display as well as a dinner show from the Shaolin Temple's designated demo team. Once again, all I can say is "damn." There was a demonstration by about 15 monks using the whip as a weapon. Their timing was so perfectly synchronized that when they all went to crack their whips together, there was only one perfect crack. I can only imagine how many hours of training that takes.

Tomorrow morning we leave for the city of Xi'an to see the Terracotta warriors and then we are continuing on to Beijing.

Quick pictures (training pictures are in the actual Shaolin Temple's training courtyard):

Me working Great Flood in a low stance section

Me working Great Flood in a high stance section

My "water" present for the Temple

Me and the monk that was teaching me

Surrealism

2006-07-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

I can finally say that I've been to the Shaolin Temple.

We arrived early this morning and walked along the stone path to the main entrance. The skies were completely overcast and it was lightly raining. We stood in four lines facing the main arches while Prof. Mattera and Grand Master DeMasco went inside the Temple and greeted the head abbot. I can only describe the feeling of standing in line at attention as surreal. The masters and higher-ups really drove home the point that we were lined up, and standing on the wet stone of the monk's ancestral home. Standing there will be remembered as one of the most profound moments of my life. The abbot came out and as a group we all kneeled down, opened our palms, and touched our foreheads to the ground in reverence. Various speeches were made and the end result was that all the students present for the ceremony were named the official disciples of the Shaolin as well as ambassadors of the art to the world.

Level Up! Part 1

2006-07-03T10:23:00.000-07:00

We left Shanghai earlier today for the city of Zheng Zhou. The only worthwhile statement about this morning was really our lunch. They took us to a real Mongolian BBQ place...it was EXACTLY the same as YC's in Tempe/Scottsdale. There's something somewhat unsettling about the fact that I went across the globe to a country that was once completely controlled by the Mongols and I got the exact same thing as I can get literally three blocks from my house.

The only reason our travels have taken us through Zheng Zhou are so we can get to the rural city of Deng Feng. Deng Feng, as well as Zheng Zhou, reside in Henan (pronounced "huh-nan", maybe you've heard of Hunan style Chinese food??) in the middle of China. This little rural town is the home of the last remaining Shaolin Temple. Tomorrow morning we set out fairly early for the temple.

I don't know if you, the reader, believe in Chi or not....but, this place is literally *alive* with energy. This town is home to a 2,000 year old Taoist temple as well as 74 kung-fu schools. The kung fu students, not counting the Shaolin, make up 40,000 of the region's 100,000 residents. The Chi-qong exercises of a few thousand years as well as the burial sites of the monks, abbots, and Taoists around here have formed a well. If I walk outside and practice my breathing just a for a few seconds I can feel my entire body tingle. It feels like a wave starting at the perinium and simultaneously traveling down the legs, up through the back, and welling up inside the chest and ultimately like a pins-and-needles sensation at the top of the skull. It's a feeling I can produce with some work in the US at home, but here it's like I can produce the feeling on command. It's goddamned amazing.

Tomorrow we can conclude our test in the Pagoda Forest behind the Shaolin temple. It's the final resting place of the Shaolin Monks, as well as the burial site of all the abbots of the Shaolin order. From the stories I've heard, once you walk into the area your hair almost stands up from the energy.

Tomorrow will also be the rank promotion ceremony after all the testing. Hopefully when I write tomorrow it will be as an official Shodan. Wish me luck!

So Sweaty

2006-07-02T02:54:00.000-07:00

Day 2

This morning's activities included a rather brief tour of the old part of the city of Shanghai. This particular part of the city is made to look the way the city did 50 years ago before they started to modernize. It was a fairly interesting area, but it's primarily shopping at this point.

After the morning shenanigans in old Shanghai we went for a tour of one of China's (supposedly) more famous silk factories. I have to admit that it was really interesting seeing how they make silk. For instance, who would have thought there are giant mechanical apparatuses for boiling and de-threading cocoons in the heart of the city? The principle thing this little factory/store sold was actually bedding. As neat as it would be to have full hand-made silk bedding; it just wasn't for me. Granted, you could purchase an entire California king size comforter of some of the finest pure silk available for what amounts to roughly $200 American.

Following the factory there was a rather uneventful lunch and a tour of a different silk shop that made rugs instead. Rather than hang around for the second tour we ("we" being a group of Arizona students) broke out on our own to return to the Yu Garden area from yesterday so we could actually go looking through some of the shops. An afternoon of shopping and haggling totally beat out a second silk shop.

Now I'm just sort of relaxing from the long day. I'm also completely covered in sweat. This humidity thing is a real bitch when your outside pretty much all day long.

Tomorrow is breakfast at the hotel and then we leave for Zheng Zhou and continue on to Deng Feng. The likelihood of me having Internet there is really slim to none. Also, tomorrow night is the start of the rank testing....so that's gonna be a world of hurt. Wish me luck!

Yum, chicken head

2006-07-01T07:36:00.000-07:00

Day 1 Part 2:

Today's tour of the city started off with lunch at a dim-sum style restaurant somewhere in downtown Shanghai. The first notable thing about the restaurant was that most of the staff worked on roller skates, and apparently at around noon they perform some crazy stunts as performers on said roller skates. Like picking each other up and doing some crazy spinning. The second notable thing about lunch, and this has more to do with lunch in general in China, is that poultry and fish come with the head attached.

For the record: I ate my first chicken head today. Everyone sitting at the same table as me was just kind of eyeing it in that sort of "no, you eat it" way. So, seizing the opportunity, I ate our table's chicken head. It's surprisingly good.

Our first stop after lunch was a visit to the Jade Buddha Temple in the downtown region. This particular temple is actually only roughly 200 years old, but contains artifacts dating much further back. The most notable artifact in the temple is a statue devoted to Guan Yin Buddha carved from a solid piece of white jade, hence the name Jade Buddha Temple. Many locals were present in the afternoon burning incense and offering coins. It was a weird comparison to have several groups of tourists walking through and taking pictures at the same time that these people were offering up prayers to particular Buddhas.

The next destination on the list was the Yu Gardens. Our guide informed us that "Yu" in Chinese is the word for happiness. The gardens are apparently several hundred years old and were constructed as the private gardens of a very, very wealthy government official. The gardens were reclaimed by the state nearly 200 years ago, and now serve as a tourist attraction. The gardens themselves are absolutely beautiful arrangements of plants in many different areas, separated by walls and carved rivers.

After the Yu Gardens we had a fairly uneventful dinner and then went on our river boat tour. The river tour involved a view of the skyline from the Yang Si river. There was a pleasant breeze on the river, so the humidity was much more bearable. Once again, many of the sights were incredible.

One thing that I will take a minute to bring up that is rather unsettling is the shear volume of beggars here. I don't mean like the usual sit-on-the-corner-with-cup beggar. Today I was literally accosted by several people badly in need of medical attention and food. After the Yu gardens there was a girl walking right up into peoples' faces that clearly had 2nd to 3rd degree burns on several parts of her body and face as well as leprosy indicated by her nodules and missing limbs. Earlier in the day there was a man carting around a woman on some palette-like thing because several of her fingers had fallen off and she had no legs from slightly above the knee.

This country has many beautiful sites, but there are some extreme organizational problems from the volume of people begging on the streets. The buildings are dingy and the lack of resources is clearly obvious. Our guide even told us that the nice apartment buildings we're seeing in the downtown region are referred to as "mini united nations" because the only people who can afford to live there are foreigners.

First Morning

2006-06-30T20:09:00.000-07:00

Day 1 Part 1:

This morning I caught up with my old friend Andy whom I haven't seen in several years. Andy and I used to be the only two people in Arizona's instructor's academy years ago. Ultimately his work caused him to move back to Huntington Beach in California and my college life just took up too much time to continue with it.

Holy fucking shit it's humid here. Like absurdly humid and hot. I have become way too accustomed to Arizona's dry heat to make this sudden of a transition. It's probably only 95 degrees outside, but probably about 90-100% humidity.

This morning was the first Masters' seminar. Grand Master Mattera and Grand Master DeMasco provided some demonstrations and some interesting material. We practiced as a group of nearly 500 on the soccer field of one of the University's here in Shanghai. As expected the material was awesome. Now I know the Master's Blocks, also known as the Dragon's Blocks, and the first half of one of the Buddha Palm forms. We get the second half in Beijing.

I'm going to drink a fuck ton of water and get ready for the afternoon. We will get a tour of the city, visit the classical Yu Gardens, see the Temple of the Jade Buddha, and tonight is a cruise on the Yong Pu (name?) river.

Arrival in Shanghai

2006-06-30T04:50:00.000-07:00

After approximately 15 hours of flying time I have safely arrived in Shanghai. So far the only thing we've really managed to accomplish is getting checked into our hotel.

That's not true. The other accomplishment was not getting killed on the way to the hotel. Driving in China makes just about every other city I've ever seen fairly tame. Our bus cut several people off, and wove through traffic. We very nearly hit several cars and the driver never even broken a sweat. I hope I don't get killed here.

Tomorrow morning is the first session of training, so we'll see how that goes. I've been forewarned that my legs are going to hurt for the next six months after this vacation. That's hopefully a hyperbole.

Affairs are almost in order

2006-06-27T00:10:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping that tomorrow I have some free time to actually write about the trip to Vegas, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen. Wednesday I depart for China for two weeks, and whether or not I will have access to the Internet is still unknown. Hopefully I will so that I can send images back to my computer here in the US and possibly write about the events. Mostly so I can write about the events. When I travel I like to keep a journal of the comings and goings so I can look back at a future date and remember the finer details. This time I'd like to keep a journal that everyone can read.

Also, I finally succeeded in getting a truly awesome picture of my hottie of a boyfriend, Phil. I am much pleased. I love you Phil. You'll be missed when I'm in China!