So my father and I checked out a lot of property in the new area. He liked the looks of the town area at first, but after driving around and seeing a lot of the surroundings, thinks that part of it is depressing and small townish. He's right, this area is definitely a small town, with lots of rural areas and roads. There are a lot of dilapidated areas, and not many options when it comes to shopping. The hilly terrain is gorgeous.
The first place we looked at was the house I've been interested in for awhile. His first reaction was that the drive was long. It's a longer drive than to any other property. We weren't able to get in touch with the realtor, but he was also concerned about insulation on the roof. He thinks that the owner, with this being a vacation property for him, is winterized in some way to keep the pipes from freezing. Without insulation, the heating cost could be very high to keep the pipes from freezing (if they are not insulated). He also thinks there could be maintenance related problems, with the house being nearly 30 years old. The roof is in good shape, the siding might need work in a couple years (but there is not a lot of it), and the porches are unfinished pressure treated lumber. His main concern though seems to be the drive. It's 25-30 minutes to work (not that bad, it's only 5-10 more minutes than I'm used to) in good weather. It's about 19 miles though. The roads aren't in great shape and it passes through a relatively run-down town. I don't think there are towns around here that aren't really run-down though. There isn't a lot of elevation on the drive to this place either. Other concerns are that the only known high speed internet available is satellite, which is never really great service. Verizon has the area on its coverage map for wireless, but it's uncertain. The local wireless company also is unsure if that area could get a signal. I get a cellphone signal there, but since I don't have T-Mobile internet I don't know if that's an option there. It is also a mile away from a state park/lake, and the only neighbors are at the bottom of the hill and seem to have decent houses (one even has a pool) in good shape. It's secluded and I could work on projects and make noises without anyone bothering me. Winter might be some kind of an issue, but I'm not entirely sure how much of an issue.
We also looked at a property with a large amount of acreage(12-14, mostly woods on a steep hill). There was a trailer-style manufactured home that was 15+ years old and looked very dingy. It had two permanent structures and a large propane tank outside the trailer. Lots of grass. The workshop was large, but was covered with glass and so wouldn't be that private if I was working on something (maybe something expensive, like a kit airplane) and wanted to keep people from nosing around it or stealing tools. The neighbors also all seemed to be related and lived in trailers, most of them pretty messy and some dilapidated looking. They seemed to be the kind of folks that would be friendly to you unless you did something that they didn't approve of, then they might be in your business. I'd be surrounded by a family that I don't know.
There was another property that was on the extreme side of what I was qualified for, loan wise. Nice looking house with a decent backyard and detached garage. I liked the looks of it and the drive was probably 15-20 minutes to work, but directly next door there was a building which puts the sh(it) in shanty. Rusted up, falling apart, couple of shirtless guys sitting around drinking beer around noon on a Monday in a building that looked like it was going to fall down on their heads. The rest of the surrounding area looked decent, but the immediate vicinity was bad.
We also checked out a couple other properties last night, but the access was pretty bad and so was the condition of the houses, not worth reporting.
There was a property in a nearby town (15-20 minutes from work) that looked in good condition but the detached garage wouldn't be big enough for doing what I want with it. Turns out it's like twice what i want to spend anyway.
Then there are rental properties. There are several in the 500-600 a month range, with most having lease requirements of a year. Not all of them have onsite laundry either.
I don't think the drive is a dealbreaker for me on the house I really like. The winter issues with heating costs could be a dealbreaker though. What do I like about the house?
-It's isolated. No close neighbors to poke around in my business and complain if I throw a noisy party with lots of dancers and music
-It's a mile away from a state park and lake
-It has a detached 2 car garage with a workshop extension
-It looks to be in mostly great shape
-It is the right price
-I like the setup and looks of it all
The things I don't like
-The drive could be bad in less than perfect weather
-The surrounding town is dilapidated, but the immediate area being home to a golf course and a state park are nice
-Possibly no roof insulation. It could get really cold, but I don't really know how bad it could be
-It's isolated, people I want to come around might be turned off by the location
I'm trying to hold out until I have more time to think everything through and consider my options. Don't want to rush if I don't have to.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Cross country movin'
About one and a half years ago, I moved from Florida, with much help and with a broken leg, to Las Vegas for what seemed like a dream job. It has been anything but. I could go through the details about why it has been an epic failure, but instead I'll stick to what I've personally had to cope with.
This past year has been a lesson in proving to myself that I cannot work for something I don't believe in. If I want something to happen so desperately that I would move across country and leave all my friends behind to do it, it takes more than a whim for me to come a realization that I must leave. In fact, so many others that I have worked with have come to this realization and managed to get out before I did, and I have never lost so many friends to moving out of town in my life. If I were to stay any longer, I don't think my work ethic would ever recover, and my work ethic has in the past been extremely strong, which is why I did so well when I had internships and also in college.
So now, here I am, leaving again. Just when I'm starting to get to know and enjoy the company of certain people, I'm moving 2000+ miles away. But we can probably stay in contact. It just sucks. I tried hard to get a job in California (and Washington state) for months, but the economy and political situation seems to be scaring employers from hiring anyone. So, I'll be moving to a state that isn't attractive to many because it's in the midwest, and it actually snows there, and it's small townish, etc etc. However, the scenery is beautiful. The cost of living is low. There aren't as many obstructions to getting work done as there would be in California, and I could actually be a property owner soon instead of paying thousands a year in rent towards nothing at all. And where I'm going will pay for me to finish my masters.
I'm also concerned a great deal about where this country is headed, and everything I know is pointing toward massive inflation in the future. It would be nice to spend my saved money on things that won't depreciate over time before my saving's value gets destroyed. Owning a small plot of land and a house I could maintain myself and work on small projects would be fantastic. I am also completely enthused about designing engines, there is so much to learn. And there are new people to meet, and new dances to be made. Just as I'm starting to understand the basics of blues dancing, I'll be headed to a place where I'll probably have to bring a lot to the scene myself. That's a funny thought, and honestly I think that I'll need help because I don't have it all figured out yet...actually just beginning. I'm looking forward greatly to what I can experience in a new place.
My life in a couple of weeks will be very different compared to what it's been for the past year.
This past year has been a lesson in proving to myself that I cannot work for something I don't believe in. If I want something to happen so desperately that I would move across country and leave all my friends behind to do it, it takes more than a whim for me to come a realization that I must leave. In fact, so many others that I have worked with have come to this realization and managed to get out before I did, and I have never lost so many friends to moving out of town in my life. If I were to stay any longer, I don't think my work ethic would ever recover, and my work ethic has in the past been extremely strong, which is why I did so well when I had internships and also in college.
So now, here I am, leaving again. Just when I'm starting to get to know and enjoy the company of certain people, I'm moving 2000+ miles away. But we can probably stay in contact. It just sucks. I tried hard to get a job in California (and Washington state) for months, but the economy and political situation seems to be scaring employers from hiring anyone. So, I'll be moving to a state that isn't attractive to many because it's in the midwest, and it actually snows there, and it's small townish, etc etc. However, the scenery is beautiful. The cost of living is low. There aren't as many obstructions to getting work done as there would be in California, and I could actually be a property owner soon instead of paying thousands a year in rent towards nothing at all. And where I'm going will pay for me to finish my masters.
I'm also concerned a great deal about where this country is headed, and everything I know is pointing toward massive inflation in the future. It would be nice to spend my saved money on things that won't depreciate over time before my saving's value gets destroyed. Owning a small plot of land and a house I could maintain myself and work on small projects would be fantastic. I am also completely enthused about designing engines, there is so much to learn. And there are new people to meet, and new dances to be made. Just as I'm starting to understand the basics of blues dancing, I'll be headed to a place where I'll probably have to bring a lot to the scene myself. That's a funny thought, and honestly I think that I'll need help because I don't have it all figured out yet...actually just beginning. I'm looking forward greatly to what I can experience in a new place.
My life in a couple of weeks will be very different compared to what it's been for the past year.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Current State of Affairs
Wow, I can't believe it's June already! Next weekend I'll be headed on a Mexican Canadian cruise (Swine Flu hysterics) with the parents as the main celebration of my father's 60th birthday.
I have to find a new, cheaper place to rent out by the end of June as my current lease is up and I can rent for less than half the price I am currently paying. It'll be great to save all that money every month.
Last weekend I hit someone's taillight with my sideview mirror while backing out of a driveway. I took out the lens on the turn signal and cracked the brake light, but the lightbulbs were intact. I talked to the owner and told them to call me and I'll reimburse the cost. I got a call earlier this week saying that the estimates were 1000-1200 dollars. No f-ing way, I barely scratched my sideview mirror and I looked at the damage I did. All plastic on the taillight. I found the entire tail piece for less than 200 and it requires 2 screws to remove/install and playing around with the lightbulb mounts. 30 minute job max. I sent them the install directions and a link to the part, and I haven't heard back since. I'm going to have to take care of that before I'm incommunicado on the cruise.
I've come to the realization that I sit crooked in chairs, and have been doing so for years, especially in front of computers. I think it started when I got a room my sophomore year that was incredibly tiny with barely room for a twin bed. I put my computer on a shelf that was adjacent to the bed, and I had to sit crooked to use it. Since I spent a lot of time on the computer, I ended up spending a lot of time twisted sideways...so yeah I sit sideways a lot now. I also can't stand my ghetto computer stand right now. I've got a CRT monitor on a tall barstool with one of those small fold-up plastic teevee dinner tables in front of it to hold my keyboard. I use one of the wooden dinner table chairs. It is so incredibly uncomfortable, and I'm realizing that one of the main reasons that I sit so crooked is I am on the computer so much and I have to sit crooked with this arrangement. The fold-up table has crossed legs that don't allow me to have my legs directly in front of me, nor does the barstool that the CRT is on. I think I can afford to splurge on a decent desk, a decent chair, and maybe a flatscreen. That way, I might actually start getting some work done at home (my crazy side projects) instead of spending lots of time uncomfortably clicking away.
I need to get a storage facility for the move out of this apartment because I have so many books. Chances are I will be rooming with someone else, so there won't be room for my 200 or so books that I have here. Maybe I'll stop buying books if I don't see my bookshelf anymore and force myself to only have the books I am currently reading/referring available. I'd also really like to cut down on how much crap I'm lugging around.
A lot of people have moved away from Vegas recently, including some (very) close friends, with more to come. This town isn't horrible, a lot of the people I have met here are interesting and I have fun spending time with them, and I wish I had an idea of what was going on with this job. Layoffs, paycuts, tight wallets, I don't want to be frustrated about it any more. Things could be so much better here. The economy could also be improved in many ways but it won't be, and I have nothing to expect but more of the same for at least another year.
I don't want to end this post on a down note, so I'll go over a few of my accomplishments over the past year.
Last year about this time I was having difficulty walking from my broken leg...now I'm doing 200lb deadlifts and not having much more than the occasional pain from rock climbing and dancing.
I started last year with 45lb kettlebell chest presses and am doing 110 pounds now. I also recently did 60lb turkish get ups. Those were scary.
I traversed the entire rock climbing gym last week. I've been getting really good help from one of my friends who is an amazingly patient teacher when it comes to dealing with my whiny and complaining self about the difficulty of grabbing onto small handholds. I've progressed faster than I thought, even though I've been going at max once every two weeks.
I've been bouncing around 13-14% bodyfat, and have plateaued there. I think the reason that I have plateaued is from abusing all the junk food at work, along with eating a large amount of fruits. I noticed that I eat quite a bit of fruit, but not that many vegetables in comparison. I'm trying to gradually change this up to get my carb count down. The difficulty for me is finding fats to replace them in a way that I want to eat them. 10% bodyfat is my big goal with this.
Something I designed at work is getting made right now, finally, after over 8 months of back and forth that includes 3-4 months of total neglect. I still think it's very cool to make engineered drawings of something and then see the end product after it's been produced at our machine shop.
There's a lot going on this week, time to watch a TED video and pass out.
I have to find a new, cheaper place to rent out by the end of June as my current lease is up and I can rent for less than half the price I am currently paying. It'll be great to save all that money every month.
Last weekend I hit someone's taillight with my sideview mirror while backing out of a driveway. I took out the lens on the turn signal and cracked the brake light, but the lightbulbs were intact. I talked to the owner and told them to call me and I'll reimburse the cost. I got a call earlier this week saying that the estimates were 1000-1200 dollars. No f-ing way, I barely scratched my sideview mirror and I looked at the damage I did. All plastic on the taillight. I found the entire tail piece for less than 200 and it requires 2 screws to remove/install and playing around with the lightbulb mounts. 30 minute job max. I sent them the install directions and a link to the part, and I haven't heard back since. I'm going to have to take care of that before I'm incommunicado on the cruise.
I've come to the realization that I sit crooked in chairs, and have been doing so for years, especially in front of computers. I think it started when I got a room my sophomore year that was incredibly tiny with barely room for a twin bed. I put my computer on a shelf that was adjacent to the bed, and I had to sit crooked to use it. Since I spent a lot of time on the computer, I ended up spending a lot of time twisted sideways...so yeah I sit sideways a lot now. I also can't stand my ghetto computer stand right now. I've got a CRT monitor on a tall barstool with one of those small fold-up plastic teevee dinner tables in front of it to hold my keyboard. I use one of the wooden dinner table chairs. It is so incredibly uncomfortable, and I'm realizing that one of the main reasons that I sit so crooked is I am on the computer so much and I have to sit crooked with this arrangement. The fold-up table has crossed legs that don't allow me to have my legs directly in front of me, nor does the barstool that the CRT is on. I think I can afford to splurge on a decent desk, a decent chair, and maybe a flatscreen. That way, I might actually start getting some work done at home (my crazy side projects) instead of spending lots of time uncomfortably clicking away.
I need to get a storage facility for the move out of this apartment because I have so many books. Chances are I will be rooming with someone else, so there won't be room for my 200 or so books that I have here. Maybe I'll stop buying books if I don't see my bookshelf anymore and force myself to only have the books I am currently reading/referring available. I'd also really like to cut down on how much crap I'm lugging around.
A lot of people have moved away from Vegas recently, including some (very) close friends, with more to come. This town isn't horrible, a lot of the people I have met here are interesting and I have fun spending time with them, and I wish I had an idea of what was going on with this job. Layoffs, paycuts, tight wallets, I don't want to be frustrated about it any more. Things could be so much better here. The economy could also be improved in many ways but it won't be, and I have nothing to expect but more of the same for at least another year.
I don't want to end this post on a down note, so I'll go over a few of my accomplishments over the past year.
Last year about this time I was having difficulty walking from my broken leg...now I'm doing 200lb deadlifts and not having much more than the occasional pain from rock climbing and dancing.
I started last year with 45lb kettlebell chest presses and am doing 110 pounds now. I also recently did 60lb turkish get ups. Those were scary.
I traversed the entire rock climbing gym last week. I've been getting really good help from one of my friends who is an amazingly patient teacher when it comes to dealing with my whiny and complaining self about the difficulty of grabbing onto small handholds. I've progressed faster than I thought, even though I've been going at max once every two weeks.
I've been bouncing around 13-14% bodyfat, and have plateaued there. I think the reason that I have plateaued is from abusing all the junk food at work, along with eating a large amount of fruits. I noticed that I eat quite a bit of fruit, but not that many vegetables in comparison. I'm trying to gradually change this up to get my carb count down. The difficulty for me is finding fats to replace them in a way that I want to eat them. 10% bodyfat is my big goal with this.
Something I designed at work is getting made right now, finally, after over 8 months of back and forth that includes 3-4 months of total neglect. I still think it's very cool to make engineered drawings of something and then see the end product after it's been produced at our machine shop.
There's a lot going on this week, time to watch a TED video and pass out.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Self improvement
As I am continuing to progress through Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, I continue to ask myself what I could change about my life, what exactly I could be a specialist in, and what my long term goals are.
First, I've been thinking greatly about what I spend most of my time doing, and honestly at the moment I can say that I spend most of it reading, mainly on the internet. I would guess that over 90% of that is non-productive reading of blogs or websites that have content that doesn't improve my life. In fact, outside of work and the few projects that I do work on, and discounting any time spent reading books, my internet surfing hasn't done a whole lot for me other than to reduce my focus and scatter my interests all over the map. It's hard for me to sit down and accept that I will not be able to know everything in the world, and do everything that there is to do. I must concentrate so that I can achieve great things and make lots of money, not achieve a whole assortment of insignificant things which nobody, not even me will remember.
Second, I need to accept that most of the technical books are tools, not friends. I have a wide assortment of physics, engineering, mathematics, programming, etc. books that I will most likely never work all the way through. I think I would greatly enjoy being able to use all of the content in each and every one of them, but I don't think that it's a realistic goal. They will be there for me when I need them as tools, but they are highly specialized and powerful tools. For example, I have a graduate level Electrodynamics book that I purchased because it was supposedly the most definitive and also most difficult book on the subject, and I wanted to learn it all just to say that I did. Now, that book represents something else to me. It is there if I need it, but right now if I were a machinist drilling holes in an aluminum plate, that book represents a precision computerized cutting machine that can make cuts accurately down to .0001 of an inch in only a specific Beryllium Copper alloy but requires a lot of time, training, and complicated controls to get any use out of it. I'm not cutting Beryllium Copper, and I certainly don't need that accuracy on my hole drilling, so why am I spending all this time drooling and obsessing about an expensive machine that I will likely never use? I have several books that I can think of in that way.
Third, I think that continuing to teach myself programming by creating a real website and adding tools that I would use on it, along with writing interesting things, will be the best use of my time. I know I could make money on a website if I put my mind to it. I would love to have passive income so that I would have time to accomplish other goals in life that are not career related, like building an airplane, travelling, and other goals. Certainly, reading books that I don't have to work problems in can be done quickly enough that I learn and broaden my knowledge without losing massive amounts of time on material I won't use.
Fourth, I must start coming up with ideas for different tools. They need to be fleshed out and thought through in enough depth that I could reasonably estimate the time requirements for them and also understand what I have to teach myself along the way. I have thought of several things, like web-based composite analysis tools, a mini FEM tool, and other such things, but I need to conceptually break those ideas down so that I can get them working on a website. The putting such tools on a website issue is the largest one for me right now.
Fifth, I realized that I psyche myself out of doing things. I tell myself that someone else will have to do something, because I am incapable. Why do I think that? Why am I incapable of doing something? I don't see any reason why I can't accomplish what I really want. I see no reason why I can't make money on the side through entrepreneurial endeavours. I can do it, and I can stop psyching myself out.
The last thing I would like to do is analyze the 30 major causes of failure that Hill listed and their application to me. I will mention only those that I think are relevant to my own life.
2. Lack of well defined purpose in life- I have for a long time wanted to build aircraft, spacecraft, etc. and also get off this planet if that is ever possible. My career is currently fulfilling the first part of that, but getting off this rock would require a massive amount of capital that I do not have. So, I need to define goals that will enable me to create that capital.
3. Lack of ambition to aim above mediocrity- I don't think that what I do is mediocre by any means, but on some projects I know that I can put in a great deal more effort to make the outcomes excellent. It will require more creativity on my part, and also some outside opinions to reveal my weaknesses.
5. Lack of self discipline- I am constantly working on this, the main issue seems to be concentrating at my current employer, which I will mention later. I would also like to stop eating junk food on random occassions, stop drinking beer (stick to non-grain and wine alcohol), and keep my physical improvements going full steam.
8. Procrastination- I will put off small, irritating tasks for far too long, even if I do feel a heavy relief when I do finish them. I notice that if I am busy, I can get myself to do things that I otherwise would hold off on mainly beause I only have time to get those small things done. So, I must keep myself busy.
9. Lack of persistence- I let myself get afraid of keeping things going, I am only just now realizing it
10. Negative personality- For the most part, I do not have a negative personality, but I do not like it when it does come out. I should spend much more time on the positives so that I can create instead of destroy with negative moods.
13. Lack of well-defined power of decision- I think this comes mainly from not having clear goals. If I am able to keep my goals in mind, so that they are always in the forefront of my mind, this will be less of an issue.
15. Wrong selection of a mate in marriage- I'm not married and I honestly don't like the idea of having a contract with some random "official" so that I could be "officially" married to someone. But I have had several long term relationships and I have learned greatly from them. I do not want to let myself slip into an apathetic relationship with someone, or suffer abuses like I have before. A lot of this is self control and surrounding myself with people that are good for me.
17. Wrong selection of associates- I made a huge mistake with my current employer, where almost all of my enthusiastic ideas go to die. Persistence will not pay off here, and it has affected my ability to practice persistence. Ongoing solutions.
20. Lack of concentration of effort- Already mentioned
21. Lack of enthusiasm- This will definitely take some practice for me. I can get enthusiastic, but it comes out in small bursts over the wrong things, I believe. I will have to consciously hype myself up over what I need to get done.
The rest I think I have a good handle on, and that's all I've got to post for now.
First, I've been thinking greatly about what I spend most of my time doing, and honestly at the moment I can say that I spend most of it reading, mainly on the internet. I would guess that over 90% of that is non-productive reading of blogs or websites that have content that doesn't improve my life. In fact, outside of work and the few projects that I do work on, and discounting any time spent reading books, my internet surfing hasn't done a whole lot for me other than to reduce my focus and scatter my interests all over the map. It's hard for me to sit down and accept that I will not be able to know everything in the world, and do everything that there is to do. I must concentrate so that I can achieve great things and make lots of money, not achieve a whole assortment of insignificant things which nobody, not even me will remember.
Second, I need to accept that most of the technical books are tools, not friends. I have a wide assortment of physics, engineering, mathematics, programming, etc. books that I will most likely never work all the way through. I think I would greatly enjoy being able to use all of the content in each and every one of them, but I don't think that it's a realistic goal. They will be there for me when I need them as tools, but they are highly specialized and powerful tools. For example, I have a graduate level Electrodynamics book that I purchased because it was supposedly the most definitive and also most difficult book on the subject, and I wanted to learn it all just to say that I did. Now, that book represents something else to me. It is there if I need it, but right now if I were a machinist drilling holes in an aluminum plate, that book represents a precision computerized cutting machine that can make cuts accurately down to .0001 of an inch in only a specific Beryllium Copper alloy but requires a lot of time, training, and complicated controls to get any use out of it. I'm not cutting Beryllium Copper, and I certainly don't need that accuracy on my hole drilling, so why am I spending all this time drooling and obsessing about an expensive machine that I will likely never use? I have several books that I can think of in that way.
Third, I think that continuing to teach myself programming by creating a real website and adding tools that I would use on it, along with writing interesting things, will be the best use of my time. I know I could make money on a website if I put my mind to it. I would love to have passive income so that I would have time to accomplish other goals in life that are not career related, like building an airplane, travelling, and other goals. Certainly, reading books that I don't have to work problems in can be done quickly enough that I learn and broaden my knowledge without losing massive amounts of time on material I won't use.
Fourth, I must start coming up with ideas for different tools. They need to be fleshed out and thought through in enough depth that I could reasonably estimate the time requirements for them and also understand what I have to teach myself along the way. I have thought of several things, like web-based composite analysis tools, a mini FEM tool, and other such things, but I need to conceptually break those ideas down so that I can get them working on a website. The putting such tools on a website issue is the largest one for me right now.
Fifth, I realized that I psyche myself out of doing things. I tell myself that someone else will have to do something, because I am incapable. Why do I think that? Why am I incapable of doing something? I don't see any reason why I can't accomplish what I really want. I see no reason why I can't make money on the side through entrepreneurial endeavours. I can do it, and I can stop psyching myself out.
The last thing I would like to do is analyze the 30 major causes of failure that Hill listed and their application to me. I will mention only those that I think are relevant to my own life.
2. Lack of well defined purpose in life- I have for a long time wanted to build aircraft, spacecraft, etc. and also get off this planet if that is ever possible. My career is currently fulfilling the first part of that, but getting off this rock would require a massive amount of capital that I do not have. So, I need to define goals that will enable me to create that capital.
3. Lack of ambition to aim above mediocrity- I don't think that what I do is mediocre by any means, but on some projects I know that I can put in a great deal more effort to make the outcomes excellent. It will require more creativity on my part, and also some outside opinions to reveal my weaknesses.
5. Lack of self discipline- I am constantly working on this, the main issue seems to be concentrating at my current employer, which I will mention later. I would also like to stop eating junk food on random occassions, stop drinking beer (stick to non-grain and wine alcohol), and keep my physical improvements going full steam.
8. Procrastination- I will put off small, irritating tasks for far too long, even if I do feel a heavy relief when I do finish them. I notice that if I am busy, I can get myself to do things that I otherwise would hold off on mainly beause I only have time to get those small things done. So, I must keep myself busy.
9. Lack of persistence- I let myself get afraid of keeping things going, I am only just now realizing it
10. Negative personality- For the most part, I do not have a negative personality, but I do not like it when it does come out. I should spend much more time on the positives so that I can create instead of destroy with negative moods.
13. Lack of well-defined power of decision- I think this comes mainly from not having clear goals. If I am able to keep my goals in mind, so that they are always in the forefront of my mind, this will be less of an issue.
15. Wrong selection of a mate in marriage- I'm not married and I honestly don't like the idea of having a contract with some random "official" so that I could be "officially" married to someone. But I have had several long term relationships and I have learned greatly from them. I do not want to let myself slip into an apathetic relationship with someone, or suffer abuses like I have before. A lot of this is self control and surrounding myself with people that are good for me.
17. Wrong selection of associates- I made a huge mistake with my current employer, where almost all of my enthusiastic ideas go to die. Persistence will not pay off here, and it has affected my ability to practice persistence. Ongoing solutions.
20. Lack of concentration of effort- Already mentioned
21. Lack of enthusiasm- This will definitely take some practice for me. I can get enthusiastic, but it comes out in small bursts over the wrong things, I believe. I will have to consciously hype myself up over what I need to get done.
The rest I think I have a good handle on, and that's all I've got to post for now.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Goals
I currently have two books out that I am seriously reading:
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Human Action by Ludwig Von Mises
Von Mises' book requires a lot of mental attention, but the philosophy presented in the book is mostly sound. I've been trying to keep track of important sections by annotating the pages myself, but there are a few questions I will have to get back to during my reading. This book seems to be going places, but I am less than an eighth of the way through it, and it is rather large.
The other book I picked up after seeing it referenced by Steve Pavlina. Steve writes an interesting self-motivation blog, and I find some of his tangents to be rather odd, but the core of what he tries to say comes across as sound. I have a strong kneejerk reaction when he mentions that his wife is a psychic reader, but you can grab noncrazy information out of his blog, as the crazy doesn't seem to be an overriding theme.
But Think and Grow Rich is giving me a much-needed boost. I've been wallowing a bit in self pity over not taking the Scaled Composites interview over a year ago because I had accepted a job somewhere else, which to my judgment was a career mistake. I'm beginning to see something else in it though. I'm having to think much more about what I really want. I'm also realizing that I have to take a much more active role in pushing for what I want, without letting stupid shit get me depressed, down, and demotivated. The main goals I can think of at this moment are:
-Get a perfect body. I mean, perfect for me. I've been working on this for awhile, and I have never been this strong before. The problem is I keep slipping up at work and eating total shit that I know is bad for me. Time to stop. I would like to hit 10% body fat. I would also like to force myself to take extremely cold showers and swims in order to toughen myself up.
-Write a book. I KNOW I am capable of writing a book and I think that I might even be able to have an audience for it. I almost wrote a small book one time in the past that was dealing with the growing relationship I was experiencing at the time. The relationship didn't work out, and I ended up getting rid of it, but because I had written so much in so short a time I know that I am capable of writing a book about my life experiences.
-Make more money. Some of this is cutting down my expenses, which is mostly governed by my rent. I can get a much better deal on rent if I'm willing to sacrifice my independence some by getting a roommate and putting a lot of my stuff in storage. I would love to save an extra 500 a month this way. I would also like to generate secondary income. I REALLY want to generate secondary income. The book is one way which that could work. It might fail, but there's a chance it will succeed as well. I also have a few ideas for creating website programs to generate income.
-Determine what I want to devote my life to. I've thought of many things, like the study of physics, pure generation of income, teaching, etc. but I haven't narrowed it down entirely. I will often drift back toward space travel, and I think that it's possible I do that. It will be a rough road ahead.
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Human Action by Ludwig Von Mises
Von Mises' book requires a lot of mental attention, but the philosophy presented in the book is mostly sound. I've been trying to keep track of important sections by annotating the pages myself, but there are a few questions I will have to get back to during my reading. This book seems to be going places, but I am less than an eighth of the way through it, and it is rather large.
The other book I picked up after seeing it referenced by Steve Pavlina. Steve writes an interesting self-motivation blog, and I find some of his tangents to be rather odd, but the core of what he tries to say comes across as sound. I have a strong kneejerk reaction when he mentions that his wife is a psychic reader, but you can grab noncrazy information out of his blog, as the crazy doesn't seem to be an overriding theme.
But Think and Grow Rich is giving me a much-needed boost. I've been wallowing a bit in self pity over not taking the Scaled Composites interview over a year ago because I had accepted a job somewhere else, which to my judgment was a career mistake. I'm beginning to see something else in it though. I'm having to think much more about what I really want. I'm also realizing that I have to take a much more active role in pushing for what I want, without letting stupid shit get me depressed, down, and demotivated. The main goals I can think of at this moment are:
-Get a perfect body. I mean, perfect for me. I've been working on this for awhile, and I have never been this strong before. The problem is I keep slipping up at work and eating total shit that I know is bad for me. Time to stop. I would like to hit 10% body fat. I would also like to force myself to take extremely cold showers and swims in order to toughen myself up.
-Write a book. I KNOW I am capable of writing a book and I think that I might even be able to have an audience for it. I almost wrote a small book one time in the past that was dealing with the growing relationship I was experiencing at the time. The relationship didn't work out, and I ended up getting rid of it, but because I had written so much in so short a time I know that I am capable of writing a book about my life experiences.
-Make more money. Some of this is cutting down my expenses, which is mostly governed by my rent. I can get a much better deal on rent if I'm willing to sacrifice my independence some by getting a roommate and putting a lot of my stuff in storage. I would love to save an extra 500 a month this way. I would also like to generate secondary income. I REALLY want to generate secondary income. The book is one way which that could work. It might fail, but there's a chance it will succeed as well. I also have a few ideas for creating website programs to generate income.
-Determine what I want to devote my life to. I've thought of many things, like the study of physics, pure generation of income, teaching, etc. but I haven't narrowed it down entirely. I will often drift back toward space travel, and I think that it's possible I do that. It will be a rough road ahead.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
A Meandering essay I wrote 5 years ago
Escapism
My escapes from reality, in the form of electronic games, served as a mirror to what happens in modern American culture. Sometimes I regret the massive amount of time that I spent playing Ultima Online, Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo, and a cabinet full of console games I’m sure. This regret, however, turns into a realization that I was only trying to find what was lacking in my own life at the time.
Video games entered my life when I was somewhere around the age of four or five, with the first Nintendo system ever made. Duck hunt, Mario Brothers, and Adventure Island were simple games that I never played for more than an hour at the time. My parents would not let me sit in front of the TV all day and allow my mind to become completely absorbed into the game. Because of this, I spent a much larger fraction of my time doing things. I built my own world in legos. I played sports with the neighborhood kids. There was an empty lot in our neighborhood that we often used to play around in to do whatever we wanted.
Eventually, we wanted to build wooden forts, and my backyard held the little triangular platform that we built from scrap wood. We used saws, nails, and hammers, and struggled to piece it together. We had plenty of time to do all of this because elementary school let out a lot earlier in the day than school would later on. The drawback, however, was that our father’s were all at work. Because of this, we did not have much guidance on basic carpentry, and our work was for the most part shoddy. Some time later, we would dig huge pits in the ground of the empty lot and cover it with plywood so that we had our own underground caves.
Around, and a little before that time, my father bought a sailboat. I still remember the day I only went to school to turn in my plaster of paris map of the Mississippi river that I had made for my fifth grade class when I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer—I was leaving on a weekend trip with my father on the sailboat. I relished the time spent on that boat, and loathed time spent in class. Of all things that my father did, my father let me, a young fifth grader, steer a 33’ sailboat for hours at a time. He taught me the basics of sailing: how to raise and trim the sails, cleaning the boat, and a small amount of navigation. Only now do I realize that he could have easily taught me enough geometry at that age to navigate the entire world, but he didn’t. I can only assume that I resisted too much because he wasn’t my “official” teacher, or that he didn’t feel it was his place with me going to school and all.
Regardless, I still crewed on the boat for races, and I have a great deal of memories from that. I had a huge responsibility on that boat compared to what school forced me into during the week. For instance, before the official start of races, the sailboats circle behind the start line in what looks like a chaotic, dangerous mess to someone who isn’t comfortable on the water. The problem is, the jib sail tends to entirely block a side of the view in front of the boat, depending on which tack the boat was on. In such tight, fast quarters before the race begins (everyone wants to cross the line or be as close as possible when the horn to begin blows, so every boat is going in a different direction and constantly turning) the helmsman needs to know what is in that blind spot at all times. This was the perfect job for me, because I was pretty small at the time, so there I was, plunging up and down the waves, riding the teak bowsprit of the boat, keeping an eye out for potential collisions.
There was also another very important thing that I learned while on the sailboat: adults are people too. This idea, though obvious to anyone that has held a job, is entirely new to a kid who rarely spends much constructive time with adults during a normal school day. A race on our boat usually meant a crew of 6 or more, so there were four or five adults present that I would not have met otherwise. I was amazed at first, but after awhile it came natural, that I was treated just like another person on the boat. I wasn’t just some annoying little person like I was to my teachers, and I certainly wasn’t incapable of responsibility like my teachers led me to believe in elementary school. I wasn’t spied on by the class helper like I was in fifth grade to make sure I behaved. I didn’t have to put my head down or not talk or be punished like I was in elementary school when my teacher wasn’t around. Her spy, I still remember her name, Lindsey, would ensure that I would not talk with my friends when the teacher wasn’t around. I freely talked with whoever I wanted to, and learned a great deal just by discussing things with the people my father worked with. I began to dislike spending school even more, because all other kids cared about was the next cool thing in school; like music, clothes, or the popular people. Everything got worse in middle school.
I went to Philip Shore, in the ghetto of Tampa, for sixth grade. There was a closer school, Eisenhower, but because of “districting” which I can only imagine being based on the color of the average person’s skin in the area, I rode a bus 45 minutes to this hell hole. Nearly all of the people that were from my area, and there didn’t seem that many, were considered “gifted” and placed in separate classes than the local children. The school was in the process of being rebuilt as a magnet elementary school. I was scared to death of going to the school in the morning.
One thing in particular seemed to bother me more than anything else. In middle school, I started getting stomach aches almost every morning. I learned very quickly that not all of the bathroom stalls in our school had locks, or toilet paper, or would flush. I also learned that if you used a stall and someone was around, they would harass you, bang on the door, or whatever gave them pleasure. Because of this, I was very careful that nobody else was around when I went to the bathroom, or I went across the campus to a lesser used one.
I also went from conversing normally with adults on the weekends to being ordered around, shouted at, and controlled by the administrators in the cafeteria. In fact, one person was specifically hired to shout at kids and make sure that nobody sat more than 4 or 5 to the table. If you sat more to a table, they would make a kid get up and sit with someone else, probably someone that they hadn’t seen before in their life. Food fights were also fairly common, with lots of shouting by the same administrators. I was lucky that I wasn’t bullied in sixth grade. For the rest of middle school, however, I would not be so lucky.
In seventh grade and eighth grade, in order to keep from being picked on, you had to be one of two people. You had to either pick on someone else, or you had to act like a class clown. I remember being picked on for wearing Vans shoes and not being a skateboarder. I didn’t even know that Vans were “skaters” shoes, but I was being called a “poser” and bullied over it by people I didn’t even know. Other kids didn’t usually like the art I made in art class, so I was also made fun of for that. Eventually, I got on someone’s bad side. I don’t remember how, but it had something to do with who could ollie higher on a skateboard. It ended up with me being forced to fight someone else’s younger brother when I didn’t want to, and after dodging fists being thrust into my face, I finally pushed the little kid away. The kid’s older brother, however, had ingeniously shattered a stray beer bottle on the ground beforehand, and his little brother fell into a broken shard, getting glass in his arm. His older brother immediately began shoving my chest, more like a punch with his palms than a shove. I went home, outnumbered, and considered myself lucky that the other kid’s buddy didn’t start hitting me as well. After that day, I began to get hit almost every day at school. The kid that started it was the one that made me fight his younger brother.
The thing about Progress Village Middle School is students are not allowed to go to class if they arrive before the official bell. So, every student was made to go into a fenced in basketball court and couldn’t leave for fifteen to twenty minutes. There were hardly any adults around, and I was scared to death of a few specific people, so I tried my best to avoid them. However, they always seemed to find me, and when I walked to class after the bell, they would punch me in the back or grab my backpack and try to pull me around or whatever they thought was funny. This caught on, and sometimes I would even be punched in class when a particularly lenient burnout of a teacher had her back turned. I was too scared to tell anybody about the bullying, because there were about five people that did it, and I’m sure they would retaliate if I ever got them in detention or anything like it. They would have found me at school; an easy target without any protection.
During this time of torment, three big things happened. One, I had less time in the day to do what I wanted to because of an hour and a half total of bussing a day. Two, my father began working longer hours and had less and less time for the boat. Three, I discovered the online game Ultima Online. Ultima Online was a social experiment for other people my age and older, which caught the vast majority of my time from then on. It was a game where thousands--at one point I think two hundred thousand--of people interacted together in an online graphical virtual world. It would have been similar to just about any other online game except for one big difference: death mattered. Normally, when you are playing a video game and you die, you go back to the save point and start again immediately. Not so in this game. A character death in Ultima Online could mean that a person lost what it took hours, days, or months to accumulate, without being able to get everything back. This in itself made the game an experiment in human psychology, which is the main reason I spent so much time playing it, though I didn’t particularly grasp everything at the time, and I still do not.
Every online game, especially since Diablo, which preceded Ultima Online, had a large group of people, completely unorganized, that logged on just to harass and torment other people. In Diablo, there was an easy way around this, just by logging out of the game, but the cost of death wasn’t really that much except for it just being annoying. However, in Ultima Online, everything in the game decayed in about 15 minutes or so unless it was in a building or a town. So if you died and didn’t make it back in time to your corpse, you lost everything on your body, which meant a lot. Traveling with friendly and helpful people was very important, and a lot of the game was spent socializing with people, creating a community. There was an in-game aid to choosing who was trustworthy, but it was a general guide and not a rule by any sort: it was a karma system. If someone died, you could walk up and start taking items off of their corpse. You could then do anything you wanted with the items, including running away and selling them or waiting for the unfortunate person to return and hand them over. However, you had to take a risk when you did this, your character was flagged grey as “neutral” when you started taking items off a corpse. What this meant was anyone could attack you without suffering a loss in karma (normal people that were not attackable were blue). So, people could definitely rob your corpse, but if someone else happened to walk by and see a grey flagged person standing over it, chances are the thief better put up a good fight or explain that he is merely waiting for the owner to be resurrected.
So, by this system, a lot of trust of your fellow man was necessary to keep from being too scared to venture out of town with a house deed (a very expensive object enabling you to place a player built house), your house keys, or expensive magic items. Actually, that armor you were wearing was probably extremely expensive, so almost any person was a target for corpse theft. There was a third karma group as well, the reds. People turned red for killing too many blue people. Normally, attacking a blue person turns the attacker grey (if the attacker was blue). If the person attacked then dies within an amount of time, they are given a toggle box upon death to report the murder. Enough counts, and the person turned red. The game also automatically reported the murder to an in-game bulletin board that anybody could read, that listed rewards for killing the murderer. Reds were also unable to venture into town, so as a red you had to work together in order to survive. Blues were overzealous in attacking any reds that they saw.
This karma system lead to a very complex contract, making the entire game community self-policing. If word got around that a person was robbing corpses and then sneaking away without getting caught (long enough to flag back to blue instead of red), groups of blues would assassinate the nuisance. Another interesting catch was that there was a stealing skill in the game. If someone stood directly next to you, they could look into your belongings and make an attempt to steal from you. If they botched the operation, everyone in sight range would get a warning “XXX is stealing from ZZZ!” and the thief would flag grey. If this was in town, computer guards could be called and the thief almost immediately died. Outside of town, however, it was up to you to protect yourself. So, people got in the habit of not standing next to each other until they knew the other person, in fear of losing their house keys or something important. Hiding was also a skill, allowing reds to stay undetected in a group, exactly like highwaymen, waiting for an unsuspecting person to walk by and get pounced upon. Travel wasn’t really instantaneous however, and word traveled fast, so swarms of blues would come to attack the highwaymen if people reported what had happened. This was all very intriguing to me, as I spent 7-8 hours a day unable to defend myself against the torment of my peers. Ultima Online was an escape from my justice deprived school, an online community with complete strangers that would gladly aid you in putting and end to those that wronged you.
I just want to reflect upon how trusting the community was of each other in the game. Almost everything that was usable in the game had to be repaired or it would fall apart. There were magic weapons in the game that you came across so rarely that they were worth as much as houses. These items, however, needed to be repaired by another character played by another person (unless you also had a character capable of blacksmithing and a house to transfer items with, but this was rare). In order to get the item repaired, you had to give it to the other person, wait for them to repair it, and then they would hand it back to you and you would provide a tip. Sometimes, people would stand at the forge and pretend to be repairing items, when they were really just taking the items from people. Since this particular action couldn’t easily be programmed as flagging a person grey, people would literally shout for half an hour or longer about how that particular person had screwed them over. Deaths of the faux blacksmith would then ensue if he happened to step outside of town. Trustworthy blacksmiths then earned a reputation, and there service needed would warrant a hefty tip. If you were a blacksmith that people knew was a good guy, you could make a pile of money from tips and making armor, because people would go to you first thing.
This complex social interaction was what really excited me. Diablo and other games were bland in that you hardly ever had a lasting relationship or friendship more complex than “wow you’re a good player” or “wow you suck!” because the game just isn’t made for it. Friendships in Ultima Online lasted years, sometimes into real life. Because it hurt so much to die, if someone saved your life in that game you made friends with them forever.
When I was in school, normalcy and obedience was enforced. I was making online friends that were 30 years old when I was 13, outside of school, and they were not abusive in the least. School almost reinforced the idea that abusive relationships were the norm, and the idea continues into college now. Schooling by age reinforces the Lord of the Flies syndrome, that children are ruthless tormentors when left on their own without adults. Children socializing and interacting with people only their own age--making friends by proximity--lose all bearing on how reinforcing and beautiful friendships can be. I certainly have older friends that I did not go to school with that I met while working, but having a relationship with someone outside of your age group while you go to school is socially damaging there. You aren’t “supposed” to hang out with people that aren’t the same grade as you, and adults are “supposed’ to be uncool or boring. This is regardless of the fact that someone over twice your age probably has much more valuable experience and more valuable lessons than you will ever learn in school. This doesn’t apply to teachers, who have become babysitters in a compulsory daycare facility. This compulsion forces students to be with others that given a choice, they would not take. It also forces them out of the eyesight of those that would truly appreciate the company and forge a true friendship.
It took an online game, and time on my father’s boat, to show me that people naturally form bonds and friendships with people that are not their own age. Thus, by its nature, the forcing of younger children into school denies them the ability to choose their own companions, and regiments their view into what is “normal” even though there is no such thing. Ultima Online seemed to be my ideal at the time as to how a community should work. However, there was a problem: Ultima Online had failed as an online community.
In order to increase the mass appeal to Ultima Online and to ultimately sell more copies of the game, the powers above decided that character’s shouldn’t lose items when they die, and other player’s shouldn’t be allowed to remove items from their corpses. They also decided that a 20% skill deduction would be appropriate for red players when they die. Finally, they segmented the game world into a place where nobody could attack you and into another one where people could. To someone who just glances at the surface of the “problem,” this sounded like a good idea. To those with a deeper understanding of what problems this would cause, this was horrible.
Another problem was the game designers decided that magic was too hard to learn as a skill in the game, and too expensive, and the supplies to buy for it too unpredictable (these were all measures to keep magic as a rare element in the game). So, they decreased the difficulty of raising the skill, lowered the price of the materials for the mages, and made the availability of reagents constant.
Then, suddenly, everyone wanted to be a mage. This wouldn’t be too bad except for one pesky problem, the recall spell. Before the drastic measures to eliminate the pain of death in the game, Ultima Online was a successful game with a steadily increasing subscriber rate. However, when the difficulty of being a mage lessened, the recall spell came into prevalent use. Why is one spell capable of causing irreparable damage? Accountability and justice. Recall is a spell that allowed instantaneous transportation to anywhere else in the game, and it was a low level spell so almost anyone could then cast it with almost no skill in magery. If you have been paying attention while reading this, you might understand the problems it caused.
Reds could now teleport into a hotspot for blues, slaughter a group of them (the reds, of course, outnumbering the blues), and continue until they tired or resistance showed. If resistance showed, and the reds were outnumbered; they could recall away instantly. Players could no longer defend themselves. You could no longer trust anyone that you met, because they were liable to recall away as soon as you handed over your favorite weapon to get repaired. Players could accomplish all sorts of what victims called “griefing,” or just making life hell for casual players. All of that community which was forged in danger, excitement, and cooperation was destroyed. There was no use in forming a posse because the people that just killed your friends could be on the other side of the world, and you have no idea where they went.
One thing lead to another, and this grief killing became so prevalent that players complained. The solution that the company put in place is outlined above. The game became completely different. Players no longer ventured in groups of friends or got to know their local weapon and armor suppliers, because the trust had been broken. Players began recalling from place to place, doing everything on their own and ignoring every other player, effectively turning the game into a modified hack and slash Diablo. If a lone player was being attacked by only two reds and he was surrounded by a large group of blues, the blues would in fact recall away in fear the majority of the time. And if the blues had stuck around and fought, the reds would have recalled away. Hence, the title of escapism. I believe that a similar situation exists in real-life society today. In fact, I think that’s one of the reasons that this became such a problem in Ultima Online—the attitude of escaping pervades our culture.
Children cannot choose to spend their time with older people any more, and are required by law to sit in rooms with dozens of other people their own age. They spend so much time with each other that they form their own catch phrases, clichés, and dialects, further isolating them from the adult world. When they enter work or begin dealing with their elders, a culture shock ensues. Both sides feel awkward in simple conversations because of the nature of the way they communicate. If children are to communicate with adults, they need practice doing so. However, if children are to be doomed to communicate only with other children…
Children are also forced into subjects so brutally that they forget they are their own best teachers. Our school structure is set up with a lecturer and listeners, and this is the same model for schooling across the country, internationally, for all grades. Is this the absolute best system for learning for everyone? If not, then why is it the only system given any credence? And if so, then why is it that every single taxpayer must support this system regardless of their views on its merits?
I lay the general claim that all children, at one point or another, saw something grossly wrong with what happened to them during school. I obviously thought that my middle school experience was a horrible one. The suicide murders of Columbine were just a reflection of what a lot of teenagers had stewing in them at the time. I hated my school, hated life, hated the teachers and administration, and hated many of my “peers,” whatever that means. I was not shy in announcing this on the bus rides to school, or to my friends. In fact, after the pain of Columbine I remember the sentiments of several of my closest friends that they wouldn’t mind going through and gunning the whole place down.
Do not misunderstand me. I personally couldn’t think of anything else but Columbine for about a week after I saw the live stream of a bleeding kid trying to get out of a classroom window to the SWAT team below. This incident could have happened anywhere. Locking up all the guns in sight would not have done a damn thing to prevent this. I was scared to death, however, that something like this would happen again. Something changed, however. Fear began to be a huge tool to administrations, at least around all of Hillsborough County. I am sure the same thing happened nationwide as well.
Bomb threats supposedly were called in almost once a week, sometimes twice a week. Every single time this happened, the entire school had to be evacuated and all of the students had to stand outside in the grass, not 100 feet away from the building itself. Searches of all the lockers and rooms would then ensure that there was indeed no bomb. I do not remember a single instance of there being a bomb, but I lost track of the amount of times a “bomb threat’ was called in. In fact, at Hillsborough county there was a code that was something like “Attention all teachers, there will be a 313 meeting today” declared over the intercom. It took hearing this once for every single student in the entire school to understand that meant a bomb threat, but still the code was used. I wonder why.
The high school I went to, it was rumored, was designed after a prison of some sort. That seemed to agree with what I observed. For instance, the cafeteria was cordoned off from the rest of the classrooms by a 10 foot iron gate that remained closed until an administrator (usually an Assistant Principle) opened the gate to let the students out. In situations like these, you cannot help but think of yourself as cattle awaiting the slaughter.
There was often a zero-tolerance policy for fighting in school as well. Apparently if someone ends up punching you, you’re supposed to just take it like a punching bag and not fight back. A lot of kids were suspended or put in detention for fights when they were merely trying to defend themselves. There was also a lot of talk like “Don’t take the law into your own hands,” which is synonymous to “leave your life in someone else’s hands.” We grow up unable to teach ourselves, unable to choose who to spend our time with, unable to leave a particular building for 7 hours a day, and unable to protect ourselves. Only at the age of 16 (legal age of dropout) or later, at the age of 18, are we allowed to do what we want to do. However, by then, the damage has already been done. Eleven years (at least) had been spent in a forced institution.
My escapes from reality, in the form of electronic games, served as a mirror to what happens in modern American culture. Sometimes I regret the massive amount of time that I spent playing Ultima Online, Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo, and a cabinet full of console games I’m sure. This regret, however, turns into a realization that I was only trying to find what was lacking in my own life at the time.
Video games entered my life when I was somewhere around the age of four or five, with the first Nintendo system ever made. Duck hunt, Mario Brothers, and Adventure Island were simple games that I never played for more than an hour at the time. My parents would not let me sit in front of the TV all day and allow my mind to become completely absorbed into the game. Because of this, I spent a much larger fraction of my time doing things. I built my own world in legos. I played sports with the neighborhood kids. There was an empty lot in our neighborhood that we often used to play around in to do whatever we wanted.
Eventually, we wanted to build wooden forts, and my backyard held the little triangular platform that we built from scrap wood. We used saws, nails, and hammers, and struggled to piece it together. We had plenty of time to do all of this because elementary school let out a lot earlier in the day than school would later on. The drawback, however, was that our father’s were all at work. Because of this, we did not have much guidance on basic carpentry, and our work was for the most part shoddy. Some time later, we would dig huge pits in the ground of the empty lot and cover it with plywood so that we had our own underground caves.
Around, and a little before that time, my father bought a sailboat. I still remember the day I only went to school to turn in my plaster of paris map of the Mississippi river that I had made for my fifth grade class when I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer—I was leaving on a weekend trip with my father on the sailboat. I relished the time spent on that boat, and loathed time spent in class. Of all things that my father did, my father let me, a young fifth grader, steer a 33’ sailboat for hours at a time. He taught me the basics of sailing: how to raise and trim the sails, cleaning the boat, and a small amount of navigation. Only now do I realize that he could have easily taught me enough geometry at that age to navigate the entire world, but he didn’t. I can only assume that I resisted too much because he wasn’t my “official” teacher, or that he didn’t feel it was his place with me going to school and all.
Regardless, I still crewed on the boat for races, and I have a great deal of memories from that. I had a huge responsibility on that boat compared to what school forced me into during the week. For instance, before the official start of races, the sailboats circle behind the start line in what looks like a chaotic, dangerous mess to someone who isn’t comfortable on the water. The problem is, the jib sail tends to entirely block a side of the view in front of the boat, depending on which tack the boat was on. In such tight, fast quarters before the race begins (everyone wants to cross the line or be as close as possible when the horn to begin blows, so every boat is going in a different direction and constantly turning) the helmsman needs to know what is in that blind spot at all times. This was the perfect job for me, because I was pretty small at the time, so there I was, plunging up and down the waves, riding the teak bowsprit of the boat, keeping an eye out for potential collisions.
There was also another very important thing that I learned while on the sailboat: adults are people too. This idea, though obvious to anyone that has held a job, is entirely new to a kid who rarely spends much constructive time with adults during a normal school day. A race on our boat usually meant a crew of 6 or more, so there were four or five adults present that I would not have met otherwise. I was amazed at first, but after awhile it came natural, that I was treated just like another person on the boat. I wasn’t just some annoying little person like I was to my teachers, and I certainly wasn’t incapable of responsibility like my teachers led me to believe in elementary school. I wasn’t spied on by the class helper like I was in fifth grade to make sure I behaved. I didn’t have to put my head down or not talk or be punished like I was in elementary school when my teacher wasn’t around. Her spy, I still remember her name, Lindsey, would ensure that I would not talk with my friends when the teacher wasn’t around. I freely talked with whoever I wanted to, and learned a great deal just by discussing things with the people my father worked with. I began to dislike spending school even more, because all other kids cared about was the next cool thing in school; like music, clothes, or the popular people. Everything got worse in middle school.
I went to Philip Shore, in the ghetto of Tampa, for sixth grade. There was a closer school, Eisenhower, but because of “districting” which I can only imagine being based on the color of the average person’s skin in the area, I rode a bus 45 minutes to this hell hole. Nearly all of the people that were from my area, and there didn’t seem that many, were considered “gifted” and placed in separate classes than the local children. The school was in the process of being rebuilt as a magnet elementary school. I was scared to death of going to the school in the morning.
One thing in particular seemed to bother me more than anything else. In middle school, I started getting stomach aches almost every morning. I learned very quickly that not all of the bathroom stalls in our school had locks, or toilet paper, or would flush. I also learned that if you used a stall and someone was around, they would harass you, bang on the door, or whatever gave them pleasure. Because of this, I was very careful that nobody else was around when I went to the bathroom, or I went across the campus to a lesser used one.
I also went from conversing normally with adults on the weekends to being ordered around, shouted at, and controlled by the administrators in the cafeteria. In fact, one person was specifically hired to shout at kids and make sure that nobody sat more than 4 or 5 to the table. If you sat more to a table, they would make a kid get up and sit with someone else, probably someone that they hadn’t seen before in their life. Food fights were also fairly common, with lots of shouting by the same administrators. I was lucky that I wasn’t bullied in sixth grade. For the rest of middle school, however, I would not be so lucky.
In seventh grade and eighth grade, in order to keep from being picked on, you had to be one of two people. You had to either pick on someone else, or you had to act like a class clown. I remember being picked on for wearing Vans shoes and not being a skateboarder. I didn’t even know that Vans were “skaters” shoes, but I was being called a “poser” and bullied over it by people I didn’t even know. Other kids didn’t usually like the art I made in art class, so I was also made fun of for that. Eventually, I got on someone’s bad side. I don’t remember how, but it had something to do with who could ollie higher on a skateboard. It ended up with me being forced to fight someone else’s younger brother when I didn’t want to, and after dodging fists being thrust into my face, I finally pushed the little kid away. The kid’s older brother, however, had ingeniously shattered a stray beer bottle on the ground beforehand, and his little brother fell into a broken shard, getting glass in his arm. His older brother immediately began shoving my chest, more like a punch with his palms than a shove. I went home, outnumbered, and considered myself lucky that the other kid’s buddy didn’t start hitting me as well. After that day, I began to get hit almost every day at school. The kid that started it was the one that made me fight his younger brother.
The thing about Progress Village Middle School is students are not allowed to go to class if they arrive before the official bell. So, every student was made to go into a fenced in basketball court and couldn’t leave for fifteen to twenty minutes. There were hardly any adults around, and I was scared to death of a few specific people, so I tried my best to avoid them. However, they always seemed to find me, and when I walked to class after the bell, they would punch me in the back or grab my backpack and try to pull me around or whatever they thought was funny. This caught on, and sometimes I would even be punched in class when a particularly lenient burnout of a teacher had her back turned. I was too scared to tell anybody about the bullying, because there were about five people that did it, and I’m sure they would retaliate if I ever got them in detention or anything like it. They would have found me at school; an easy target without any protection.
During this time of torment, three big things happened. One, I had less time in the day to do what I wanted to because of an hour and a half total of bussing a day. Two, my father began working longer hours and had less and less time for the boat. Three, I discovered the online game Ultima Online. Ultima Online was a social experiment for other people my age and older, which caught the vast majority of my time from then on. It was a game where thousands--at one point I think two hundred thousand--of people interacted together in an online graphical virtual world. It would have been similar to just about any other online game except for one big difference: death mattered. Normally, when you are playing a video game and you die, you go back to the save point and start again immediately. Not so in this game. A character death in Ultima Online could mean that a person lost what it took hours, days, or months to accumulate, without being able to get everything back. This in itself made the game an experiment in human psychology, which is the main reason I spent so much time playing it, though I didn’t particularly grasp everything at the time, and I still do not.
Every online game, especially since Diablo, which preceded Ultima Online, had a large group of people, completely unorganized, that logged on just to harass and torment other people. In Diablo, there was an easy way around this, just by logging out of the game, but the cost of death wasn’t really that much except for it just being annoying. However, in Ultima Online, everything in the game decayed in about 15 minutes or so unless it was in a building or a town. So if you died and didn’t make it back in time to your corpse, you lost everything on your body, which meant a lot. Traveling with friendly and helpful people was very important, and a lot of the game was spent socializing with people, creating a community. There was an in-game aid to choosing who was trustworthy, but it was a general guide and not a rule by any sort: it was a karma system. If someone died, you could walk up and start taking items off of their corpse. You could then do anything you wanted with the items, including running away and selling them or waiting for the unfortunate person to return and hand them over. However, you had to take a risk when you did this, your character was flagged grey as “neutral” when you started taking items off a corpse. What this meant was anyone could attack you without suffering a loss in karma (normal people that were not attackable were blue). So, people could definitely rob your corpse, but if someone else happened to walk by and see a grey flagged person standing over it, chances are the thief better put up a good fight or explain that he is merely waiting for the owner to be resurrected.
So, by this system, a lot of trust of your fellow man was necessary to keep from being too scared to venture out of town with a house deed (a very expensive object enabling you to place a player built house), your house keys, or expensive magic items. Actually, that armor you were wearing was probably extremely expensive, so almost any person was a target for corpse theft. There was a third karma group as well, the reds. People turned red for killing too many blue people. Normally, attacking a blue person turns the attacker grey (if the attacker was blue). If the person attacked then dies within an amount of time, they are given a toggle box upon death to report the murder. Enough counts, and the person turned red. The game also automatically reported the murder to an in-game bulletin board that anybody could read, that listed rewards for killing the murderer. Reds were also unable to venture into town, so as a red you had to work together in order to survive. Blues were overzealous in attacking any reds that they saw.
This karma system lead to a very complex contract, making the entire game community self-policing. If word got around that a person was robbing corpses and then sneaking away without getting caught (long enough to flag back to blue instead of red), groups of blues would assassinate the nuisance. Another interesting catch was that there was a stealing skill in the game. If someone stood directly next to you, they could look into your belongings and make an attempt to steal from you. If they botched the operation, everyone in sight range would get a warning “XXX is stealing from ZZZ!” and the thief would flag grey. If this was in town, computer guards could be called and the thief almost immediately died. Outside of town, however, it was up to you to protect yourself. So, people got in the habit of not standing next to each other until they knew the other person, in fear of losing their house keys or something important. Hiding was also a skill, allowing reds to stay undetected in a group, exactly like highwaymen, waiting for an unsuspecting person to walk by and get pounced upon. Travel wasn’t really instantaneous however, and word traveled fast, so swarms of blues would come to attack the highwaymen if people reported what had happened. This was all very intriguing to me, as I spent 7-8 hours a day unable to defend myself against the torment of my peers. Ultima Online was an escape from my justice deprived school, an online community with complete strangers that would gladly aid you in putting and end to those that wronged you.
I just want to reflect upon how trusting the community was of each other in the game. Almost everything that was usable in the game had to be repaired or it would fall apart. There were magic weapons in the game that you came across so rarely that they were worth as much as houses. These items, however, needed to be repaired by another character played by another person (unless you also had a character capable of blacksmithing and a house to transfer items with, but this was rare). In order to get the item repaired, you had to give it to the other person, wait for them to repair it, and then they would hand it back to you and you would provide a tip. Sometimes, people would stand at the forge and pretend to be repairing items, when they were really just taking the items from people. Since this particular action couldn’t easily be programmed as flagging a person grey, people would literally shout for half an hour or longer about how that particular person had screwed them over. Deaths of the faux blacksmith would then ensue if he happened to step outside of town. Trustworthy blacksmiths then earned a reputation, and there service needed would warrant a hefty tip. If you were a blacksmith that people knew was a good guy, you could make a pile of money from tips and making armor, because people would go to you first thing.
This complex social interaction was what really excited me. Diablo and other games were bland in that you hardly ever had a lasting relationship or friendship more complex than “wow you’re a good player” or “wow you suck!” because the game just isn’t made for it. Friendships in Ultima Online lasted years, sometimes into real life. Because it hurt so much to die, if someone saved your life in that game you made friends with them forever.
When I was in school, normalcy and obedience was enforced. I was making online friends that were 30 years old when I was 13, outside of school, and they were not abusive in the least. School almost reinforced the idea that abusive relationships were the norm, and the idea continues into college now. Schooling by age reinforces the Lord of the Flies syndrome, that children are ruthless tormentors when left on their own without adults. Children socializing and interacting with people only their own age--making friends by proximity--lose all bearing on how reinforcing and beautiful friendships can be. I certainly have older friends that I did not go to school with that I met while working, but having a relationship with someone outside of your age group while you go to school is socially damaging there. You aren’t “supposed” to hang out with people that aren’t the same grade as you, and adults are “supposed’ to be uncool or boring. This is regardless of the fact that someone over twice your age probably has much more valuable experience and more valuable lessons than you will ever learn in school. This doesn’t apply to teachers, who have become babysitters in a compulsory daycare facility. This compulsion forces students to be with others that given a choice, they would not take. It also forces them out of the eyesight of those that would truly appreciate the company and forge a true friendship.
It took an online game, and time on my father’s boat, to show me that people naturally form bonds and friendships with people that are not their own age. Thus, by its nature, the forcing of younger children into school denies them the ability to choose their own companions, and regiments their view into what is “normal” even though there is no such thing. Ultima Online seemed to be my ideal at the time as to how a community should work. However, there was a problem: Ultima Online had failed as an online community.
In order to increase the mass appeal to Ultima Online and to ultimately sell more copies of the game, the powers above decided that character’s shouldn’t lose items when they die, and other player’s shouldn’t be allowed to remove items from their corpses. They also decided that a 20% skill deduction would be appropriate for red players when they die. Finally, they segmented the game world into a place where nobody could attack you and into another one where people could. To someone who just glances at the surface of the “problem,” this sounded like a good idea. To those with a deeper understanding of what problems this would cause, this was horrible.
Another problem was the game designers decided that magic was too hard to learn as a skill in the game, and too expensive, and the supplies to buy for it too unpredictable (these were all measures to keep magic as a rare element in the game). So, they decreased the difficulty of raising the skill, lowered the price of the materials for the mages, and made the availability of reagents constant.
Then, suddenly, everyone wanted to be a mage. This wouldn’t be too bad except for one pesky problem, the recall spell. Before the drastic measures to eliminate the pain of death in the game, Ultima Online was a successful game with a steadily increasing subscriber rate. However, when the difficulty of being a mage lessened, the recall spell came into prevalent use. Why is one spell capable of causing irreparable damage? Accountability and justice. Recall is a spell that allowed instantaneous transportation to anywhere else in the game, and it was a low level spell so almost anyone could then cast it with almost no skill in magery. If you have been paying attention while reading this, you might understand the problems it caused.
Reds could now teleport into a hotspot for blues, slaughter a group of them (the reds, of course, outnumbering the blues), and continue until they tired or resistance showed. If resistance showed, and the reds were outnumbered; they could recall away instantly. Players could no longer defend themselves. You could no longer trust anyone that you met, because they were liable to recall away as soon as you handed over your favorite weapon to get repaired. Players could accomplish all sorts of what victims called “griefing,” or just making life hell for casual players. All of that community which was forged in danger, excitement, and cooperation was destroyed. There was no use in forming a posse because the people that just killed your friends could be on the other side of the world, and you have no idea where they went.
One thing lead to another, and this grief killing became so prevalent that players complained. The solution that the company put in place is outlined above. The game became completely different. Players no longer ventured in groups of friends or got to know their local weapon and armor suppliers, because the trust had been broken. Players began recalling from place to place, doing everything on their own and ignoring every other player, effectively turning the game into a modified hack and slash Diablo. If a lone player was being attacked by only two reds and he was surrounded by a large group of blues, the blues would in fact recall away in fear the majority of the time. And if the blues had stuck around and fought, the reds would have recalled away. Hence, the title of escapism. I believe that a similar situation exists in real-life society today. In fact, I think that’s one of the reasons that this became such a problem in Ultima Online—the attitude of escaping pervades our culture.
Children cannot choose to spend their time with older people any more, and are required by law to sit in rooms with dozens of other people their own age. They spend so much time with each other that they form their own catch phrases, clichés, and dialects, further isolating them from the adult world. When they enter work or begin dealing with their elders, a culture shock ensues. Both sides feel awkward in simple conversations because of the nature of the way they communicate. If children are to communicate with adults, they need practice doing so. However, if children are to be doomed to communicate only with other children…
Children are also forced into subjects so brutally that they forget they are their own best teachers. Our school structure is set up with a lecturer and listeners, and this is the same model for schooling across the country, internationally, for all grades. Is this the absolute best system for learning for everyone? If not, then why is it the only system given any credence? And if so, then why is it that every single taxpayer must support this system regardless of their views on its merits?
I lay the general claim that all children, at one point or another, saw something grossly wrong with what happened to them during school. I obviously thought that my middle school experience was a horrible one. The suicide murders of Columbine were just a reflection of what a lot of teenagers had stewing in them at the time. I hated my school, hated life, hated the teachers and administration, and hated many of my “peers,” whatever that means. I was not shy in announcing this on the bus rides to school, or to my friends. In fact, after the pain of Columbine I remember the sentiments of several of my closest friends that they wouldn’t mind going through and gunning the whole place down.
Do not misunderstand me. I personally couldn’t think of anything else but Columbine for about a week after I saw the live stream of a bleeding kid trying to get out of a classroom window to the SWAT team below. This incident could have happened anywhere. Locking up all the guns in sight would not have done a damn thing to prevent this. I was scared to death, however, that something like this would happen again. Something changed, however. Fear began to be a huge tool to administrations, at least around all of Hillsborough County. I am sure the same thing happened nationwide as well.
Bomb threats supposedly were called in almost once a week, sometimes twice a week. Every single time this happened, the entire school had to be evacuated and all of the students had to stand outside in the grass, not 100 feet away from the building itself. Searches of all the lockers and rooms would then ensure that there was indeed no bomb. I do not remember a single instance of there being a bomb, but I lost track of the amount of times a “bomb threat’ was called in. In fact, at Hillsborough county there was a code that was something like “Attention all teachers, there will be a 313 meeting today” declared over the intercom. It took hearing this once for every single student in the entire school to understand that meant a bomb threat, but still the code was used. I wonder why.
The high school I went to, it was rumored, was designed after a prison of some sort. That seemed to agree with what I observed. For instance, the cafeteria was cordoned off from the rest of the classrooms by a 10 foot iron gate that remained closed until an administrator (usually an Assistant Principle) opened the gate to let the students out. In situations like these, you cannot help but think of yourself as cattle awaiting the slaughter.
There was often a zero-tolerance policy for fighting in school as well. Apparently if someone ends up punching you, you’re supposed to just take it like a punching bag and not fight back. A lot of kids were suspended or put in detention for fights when they were merely trying to defend themselves. There was also a lot of talk like “Don’t take the law into your own hands,” which is synonymous to “leave your life in someone else’s hands.” We grow up unable to teach ourselves, unable to choose who to spend our time with, unable to leave a particular building for 7 hours a day, and unable to protect ourselves. Only at the age of 16 (legal age of dropout) or later, at the age of 18, are we allowed to do what we want to do. However, by then, the damage has already been done. Eleven years (at least) had been spent in a forced institution.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
FUCK ROBERT SKIDELSKY, NYTIMES, KEYNES, GREENSPAN
...and all the other robbers running the show.
From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/magazine/14wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine
" he [Greenspan] had overestimated the ability of a free market to self-correct and had missed the self-destructive power of deregulated mortgage lending. The “whole intellectual edifice,” he said, “collapsed in the summer of last year.”
Emphasis mine
What exactly was deregulated about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, wait, let me call them their real names: Federal National Mortgage Association and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation? They both seem to have roots in FDRs New Deal, 1938 to be exact. Combined, according to Wikipedia "owned or guaranteed about half of the U.S.'s $12 trillion mortgage market."
The creation of the Fed during the Wilson administration along with the criminalization of gold as currency during the second Roosevelt administration gave the federal government, wait, no, a pseudo-private but government enforced entity complete control over the national currency. It wouldn't have been so bad if it was legal to create your own currency so that there wasn't a government-enforced monopoly, but now the government can print bills at a whim, leeching value from greenbacks to finance whatever the hell they want.
In this document [credit to Billy Beck and Bill Brown for pointing this out for me] by the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the monetary base has increased from 860 billion dollars to over 1500 billion dollars, from September of this year to November. That means there are nearly double the amount of dollars in circulation due to the bailouts.
No wealth was conjured up out of thin air by printing this money. We suddenly don't have more raw materials, more industrial capital equipment like presses, mills, or forges, more cars, or more houses. What happened was nearly half of the wealth of the nation was just robbed from those who earned it and placed in the hands of those that had government cronies and government coddled media behind them. That is what is called inflation. Any savings out there that were kept in banks, inside mattresses, or hidden elsewhere will now be worth much less.
The EXACT SAME FUCKING THING happened under FDR and served to prolong the bank crash of the late '20s into a prolonged depression. Why bother saving money at all when it will be worth less a year from now? If it hurts people to save, it will be nearly impossible to get money for loans or to just plain save money for houses, cars, business, technology, science, education, ANYTHING AT ALL without the help of the government.
This is not to mention the complete utter loss of retirement accounts for everyone that bought into the 401k scam. Everything these days seems to be geared toward making you more dependent on the government for your basic needs, and every crook out there is trying to cash in while they still can. Just look at the "American" automakers pleading at capital hill for a bail out.
All you suckers that didn't pay attention in history when this same shit happened under FDR better go back and read it again. My best guess is it will be worse. But, dammit, I want to be proven wrong.
From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/magazine/14wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine
" he [Greenspan] had overestimated the ability of a free market to self-correct and had missed the self-destructive power of deregulated mortgage lending. The “whole intellectual edifice,” he said, “collapsed in the summer of last year.”
Emphasis mine
What exactly was deregulated about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, wait, let me call them their real names: Federal National Mortgage Association and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation? They both seem to have roots in FDRs New Deal, 1938 to be exact. Combined, according to Wikipedia "owned or guaranteed about half of the U.S.'s $12 trillion mortgage market."
The creation of the Fed during the Wilson administration along with the criminalization of gold as currency during the second Roosevelt administration gave the federal government, wait, no, a pseudo-private but government enforced entity complete control over the national currency. It wouldn't have been so bad if it was legal to create your own currency so that there wasn't a government-enforced monopoly, but now the government can print bills at a whim, leeching value from greenbacks to finance whatever the hell they want.
In this document [credit to Billy Beck and Bill Brown for pointing this out for me] by the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the monetary base has increased from 860 billion dollars to over 1500 billion dollars, from September of this year to November. That means there are nearly double the amount of dollars in circulation due to the bailouts.
No wealth was conjured up out of thin air by printing this money. We suddenly don't have more raw materials, more industrial capital equipment like presses, mills, or forges, more cars, or more houses. What happened was nearly half of the wealth of the nation was just robbed from those who earned it and placed in the hands of those that had government cronies and government coddled media behind them. That is what is called inflation. Any savings out there that were kept in banks, inside mattresses, or hidden elsewhere will now be worth much less.
The EXACT SAME FUCKING THING happened under FDR and served to prolong the bank crash of the late '20s into a prolonged depression. Why bother saving money at all when it will be worth less a year from now? If it hurts people to save, it will be nearly impossible to get money for loans or to just plain save money for houses, cars, business, technology, science, education, ANYTHING AT ALL without the help of the government.
This is not to mention the complete utter loss of retirement accounts for everyone that bought into the 401k scam. Everything these days seems to be geared toward making you more dependent on the government for your basic needs, and every crook out there is trying to cash in while they still can. Just look at the "American" automakers pleading at capital hill for a bail out.
All you suckers that didn't pay attention in history when this same shit happened under FDR better go back and read it again. My best guess is it will be worse. But, dammit, I want to be proven wrong.
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