CUBEsMIND

So it was Friday(the seventh) of this month that I had planned as my last day at my current job. I feel like I've saved up enough and honestly it just felt it was time to get going with this whole trip thing.

Well I have been busy building and programming, but that is no real excuse to not post anything for this long! Well today seemed like as good a day as any to start working on my posts and this site again, so here we are.

This past week has just been me finishing up a couple of small things with the van and of course cleaning up my parents' house before I set out. It's been an interesting couple of days.

Without a job I just go to sleep when I feel tired, which is always what I wanted. One day it was like nine, another day it was like ten, the other night it was like eight. When I had a job it was stressful to goto sleep, as odd as that sounds. I was always watching the clock, because I knew if I didn't get enough sleep I would be forced to feel crappy all day, and even worse treat people crappy. Now without a job I'm not scrambling to try and utilize the few hours after work, which I always thought I wasted not matter what I did, or even worse laying in bed trying to goto sleep when I'm not actually tired.

I haven't been rushing around or anything, just made a list of things to do and been knocking things off one after another. It just kind of hit me this morning, well not so much the feeling of calm, but that I was being very calm and collected...if that makes any sense.

I think the simple act of not feeling like I'm constantly rushing with the clock ticking on my free time, is well making it easier to relax and just get done what I need to get done. I no longer need to count or track the hours, and so far it's like this huge weight off me that I...well never knew was as heavy as it was.

I'm curious if this feeling will persist and the ability to calmly approach various tasks will continue to increase, or if this is just a temporary effect and the dreaded task list will start to get in my head once again. I hope that you come back to check on my progress, this could be an uplifting experience/experiment.

I've finally come to the conclusion that websites and anything using logins need to just give it a rest. There is no point in forcing users to create complex passwords or having security questions or any of that stuff, because I've found that when people don't want to do something they will just find a way around it.

Case-in-point; my work got a new site to help track employee information, hours, and other such information. After about a month the system makes you change your password, and to do this you have to verify yourself with a bunch of security questions that you setup when you created your account.

I was trying to help someone with their login, and when we got to the security questions...well the first one was something like, "What's the name of your first pet?" his answer, "Max". Okay cool, next question "What's the name of your first grade teacher?" his answer, "Max"...there are something like ten questions and he just used the same thing for all ten.

Don't get me wrong, I understand it, most people can't even remember their passwords. It's even worse when a site forces people that don't want to remember a password to tell them what a password can and can not be, what it should contain, and that you need to makeup a new one each month.

I use password managers, but the average person doesn't even want to go through the hassle of learning another program to keep track of something they don't want in the first place. Then on top of that you are going to dump two handfuls of questions on them too. I mean developers kind of bring this on themselves.

I think that the most a site should do is have one of those password strength bars under the password, with recommendations on how to make a password stronger, but not force the user to do it. If a site is worried about liability, all they need to do is to add a checkbox confirming that the person wants to use a weaker password for the site. If someone wants to use a one character password and they end up getting hacked then that is on them.

I hate whatever generation has just learned about the complexities of data minning. I blame them for this current rash of every site asking for cookie permissions and asking if I read their privacy agreements.

You have to install an adblocker, then I'm sure at some point you'll have to install something that will auto accept cookies to get rid of that pain in the butt. Guess what, everyone has had your information for years. It's too late to stop that now!!

These aren't new things people stop complaining about them. The more you complain about them, the more you're going to have to complain about! People, you're ruining the internet!

All this time and I needed to be coding on a laptop to finally find a use for these key combinations. Just for those that don't know, when you are coding and you are trying to see the rest of your code that is just a bit off screen you can use this to move the page without moving the cursor.

Got some food from the mall today, and realized what I missed the most about the mall. It wasn't the stores, but the pushy little Asian lady that makes me eat samples, and eventually talks me into buying the 3 entree meal before I even realize what is happening.

I was thinking about what a good person really is. Particularly about how religion actually interfers with a person's morality.

If a Catholic believes that they are going to go to Hell for doing bad deeds, so they do good things to avoid that...are they really a good person?

If the only reason they continue to do good is for the promise of a heavenly afterlife, than are they actually good?

I'm not nearly as religous as I once was, but even now, in the back of my mind, I can still feel that concern as part of my decision making process. So how am I actually making my decisions? Am I actually a good person because of my actions? or Is that flicker of eternal damnation swaying the things that I feel I should do?

Am I a bad person because I still have to make that choice to do good things. Is it wrong to convince children that they will go to Hell for an eternity if they don't "act" good. I mean it really is an act for most of the people most of the time. I don't mean people are phony, but it behooves one to be kind and generous...so is that truely who we are or just what we've been trained to be.

You can train a dog with kindness and fear, both methods work, but which is better for the animal. The purpose of the training is to get the animal to do what is against its nature, to make the owners life easier...does that make the dog good and the owner bad?

Are your parent's to blame or is the Church to blame for the training you didn't ask for? Perhaps in one instance the Church is, if the parents also believe that truth, because they also believe they are protecting you, but then what about Santa Clause? Your parents know that is a lie, but they force that belief on you to gain your behavior, even to the extent of threatening that Santa won't come if you're bad.

Growing up my parents would constantly tell me how I have to plan for things. Not just life, but the shorter 5 or 10 year plans, even just planning for the week.

Of course over years of observing and studying their actions, I've learned why I'm such a bad planner...it's because they really don't plan like they think they do.

My father is notorious for telling my brother and I that he needs help with opening/closing the pool, or some other project that is going to take most of the day, on the day that he wants to do it. It's like Friday night or Saturday morning, and he just springs some project that for some reason has to be done that day. I didn't mind it so much when I was younger, but now I have limited time, so without a heads up I usually can't help. Then he seems to get kind of mopey, like I don't want to spend time with him.

The thing is that even if I do have time, he doesn't really have a plan. Once again, when I was a kid it was no big deal because I was mainly a gofer and I was just trying to watch and learn what he was doing. Now I'm old, my knees don't work as well, and lord forbid I try and pull a zero-to-sprint without...well pulling something. I've learned a lot from him, I can actually do work now, but he has no plan setup that isn't linear. Like most adults I don't have time to just sit there and watch him do things, while I hole a flash light. That's just not a good use of either of our time.

My mother isn't much better. She does the same thing, but with house chores. I've even tried several times to explain, that waiting until the weekend to do all of the house chorse is just more exhausting and not what I want to do on my weekend. I've experimented with making a list of chores and breaking it down into a daily thing. Spending 30 minutes or less each day after work is way easier, and leaves your entire weekend free.

Alas, my mother doesn't want to see that the things are clean and since she didn't do things during the week, she usually just ends up yelling at me for not doing anything on Saturday. She's one of those people that if she is doing something that she doesn't like doing, then everyone else has to be miserable too. She will not hesitate to berate others about how they are sitting around while she is doing all the work...even though she isn't, and by noon she will be napping on the couch.

It's no wonder that when I met my good friends Matt, I spent every minute I could at his house. Looking back I realize that all I was trying to do was to escape. The less time I spent at home, the better my mental stability.

So the more I work on trying to run DnD online, the more I realize it's a lot more work to do it online.

You have to start out by researching different systems, to figure out what capabilities they have and what is easiest for you to get working. You have to take into account things like what can your players use and if they have problems you have to fix them.

Then building maps can be a pain and makes it hard for players to focus on roleplaying because they have a screen in front of them with a map. Once you show the map, they want to see more of the map. I'm trying to figure out an easier way to do this. I've been toying with the idea of hiding the map, when combat ends, but don't think it's going to work well.

Where as in person you have one setup for a fight, then nothing else happens with the board so the players have no choice but to switch their focus to the DM and other players.

Well I've got to attend to some family time, so if I figure out a way to smooth out the bumps I'll put another entry in.

I understand this much better, since I've been trying to run a Dungeons & Dragons game. So difficult sometimes, but still having fun so hoping it all smooths out.

I was going to make a fart joke, but I held it in.

I was reading some article that said the Earth is like 4.54 billion years old plus/minus 50 million years. That made me remember something about how religion said that it wasn't that old. This led me to start thinking that maybe there was just a miscommunication between the source and the writer of the Bible.

From a couple of quick searches it looks like Moses essentially wrote the Bible, and more-or-less took dictation from God on The Beginning. This of course conjures visions of God laying back on a couch, while Moses feverishly toils at a desk trying not to miss anything, and not wanting to ask God to repeat or slow down.

Taking those bits of information I start to remember when I was younger and a large harddrive was measured in MegaBytes. The thought of anything larger was either not named or just wasn't common enough to be remembered.

This made me start to think would anyone in Moses's generation even know what a billion...or even a million was? I looked at a couple of articles that say that words for these numbers didn't even exist until we needed them. Which to me makes sense, because much like technology we don't really need to even know sizes until it becomes common place. Can you imagine someone back then trying to keep track of a million of something, they would have to hire multiple people just keep count!

Personally I vaguely know that a PetaByte is after TeraByte, but I have to look up the next two after that one. I love technology but like with most things I don't need to memorize something that I have no use for, and when personal computers get to that point it will be no problem adding the next size to my vocabulary.

I'm getting a little off track, but bringing this back around. My point is that maybe as Moses was writing all this stuff down, that God said it took him about six billion to make the Earth before he decided to take a break. Moses basically heard six and some word he didn't know so just wrote down day and kept writing.

Heck I remember growing up and I hated to talk to my parents about houses and cars and time. This was because I was a child trying to learn things, and they would keep short cutting terms. When you tell a child that a house costs 199, a child doesn't understand that you mean 199,000, because a child doesn't learn those shortcuts in school. Shortcuts are not consistent, nor good for children that want to learn!

That's kind of what it comes down to though. God is essentially like a parent in the eyes of Moses. The parent is not only the provider but the one who posses all the knowledge. Moses isn't going to constantly stop and ask him to explain every little detail, so he's probably just going to get the bulk of it and try to make a logical decision about the information he's given.

I guess my whole point is that it always seems that relgion is trying to debunk science on things like this(or vice versa), but what if the reality is that both sides are actually right? It's like two kids arguing over a balloon being dark red or maroon.

Maybe all the arguing is just from a misunderstanding that happened thousands of years ago by one guy not understanding one word. Stop trying to prove each other wrong and instead put that energy into a more productive outlet.

Google Wanted Feedback about The New Gmail, so this is what I sent them.

I have to be straight, I stopped using GMail because the interface wasn't that good. The only reason I started to use my gmail.com email again was because of Inbox. It was a clean interface, easy to use, and quick to run through my emails.

I keep trying to use GMail, but it's just not a good layout. I started to look at it on my phone, and I couldn't even find important emails that I had pinned or were waiting on. I finally started to figure out that things were just being pushed to the Updates tab...and I'm not even sure why a new email is being pushed to that tab.

I guess I just don't get it. Inbox, in my humble opinion, was just a revolutionary jump for email. I seriously saw that design as what all web based email clients would start to copy.

I've talked to everyone one of my friends that use gmail as their primary email address and I haven't heard one of them say anything positive about losing Inbox.

You're really taking a huge step back here, and I don't see any real changes that can justify putting the word "New" before Gmail to get people hyped about this change.

The only other site change that bothered me this much was when Netflix went from a clean 5 star rating system, to their current thumbs up/down debacle. I don't even rate things anymore...but lets not get into that.

A thought occurred to me the other night. If you don't eat off a dirty dish because you could get sick,  but you don't wash all soap off a dish and get get sick...then what does it mean to actually be dirty? 

Let's say I cook a chicken and take it out of the oven, then I drop it on the floor. The people seeing this won't eat it because it's dirty. Now if I take that same chicken out of the oven and pour soap on it, people seeing this won't eat it because it's dirty...or is it clean.

I guess what I'm trying to go for is that I think saying that water cleans things is accurate, but saying that soap cleans isn't, even though that's how it's depicted. 

I keep seeing the phrase "Naturally & Artificially Flavored", and I'm having a hard time with it. It just seems like they should just say "Artificially Flavored".

It's like if I have a pot of water and a pot of salt water and I pour them together into one pot. Do I have a pot of water and salt water, or just salt water?

It's like they are trying to get brownie points for the natural flavoring. Somehow that is going to make it healthier? It's like people that try to pass-off carrot cake as a healthy dessert. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the bad stuff always negates the good stuff.

If you want to continue to put this trivial label on your product then kick it up a notch and add in the percentage/ratio of artificial vs natural flavoring in your product.

I'm just saying that because you have some elderly bonnet wearing Italian lady squeezing the juice from one blueberry into each ten thousand gallon vat of your product, that doesn't count as naturally flavored in my book.

I knew it was going to happen. I've got several things going on that are important to me, and all I was thinking was that things were going too smoothly.

First my laptop failed in the middle of a Windows update and it just started to crawl after that. Luckily my friend Brian suggested that I run a chkdsk, because that had fixed a similiar issue with his computer. Sadly it took me like a week to resolve the issue. Whatever had messed up was allowing the computer to boot, but it was running at like a fourth the speed. Just getting to the command prompt took like 20 minutes of waiting for the machine to not only boot, but bring up menu to get to it. Since I could only work on it after work, it was like doing one thing a night.

I got everything running, thanks again for the tip Brian, then I was already to get back on finishing the first version of a program I'm developing for work. I just needed to do a handful of things to start an actual test at work and BAM, I get sick.

Most years I don't get sick, but when I do get sick it hits me hard. The Friday my laptop was ready to go was the day I went down for the count. I was laid out all weekend and had to take off Monday. Started to feel better on Tuesday, well enough to drag myself into work, but I was physically exhausted by the end of the workday.

I don't know how the rest of you are, with getting sick. For me I start to get better incrementally. So like when the initial stuck in bed thing is over, I basically slowly get better over the course of like a week. Like I'll wake up feeling great, and then like four hours into the day I feel horrible again. Then the next day I'll be good for like five or six hours, then feel like crap again. Eventually it gets to the point where I can make it from morning to bedtime feeling fine, and that is when I know I'm better.

Anyways, I'm like two weeks behind on everything I've been working on. Program, website, trying to startup a rpg, and van build. Currently trying to get maybe ten hours put in over this weekend to get back to where I want to be. Keep your fingers crossed people!

My constant battle in life, lack of time. Well this week has been rough. My laptop failed a Windows Update, so it was out of commission for the week. Well it would startup but was going so slow that it was unusable.

It's stressful when you are trying to fix something, but can only work on it after work. My whole work day is me trying to think of ways to fix the laptop, and then having to wait 8 hours to test what I've been thinking about trying.

Also, stressful when it gets me a week behind in a side-project, I'm doing for work. Something that could potentially help me speed up and remove some stress from my daily 7 to 3 job.

I'm excited to be working on the project, even though it's almost like I'm working two-shifts. On the plus side, I'm not being pressured from work to get it done, so aside from my own expectations of completing it, it's kind of a work on it when I feel like it.

On the downside, some days that I feel like it, I have to go into work my normal job. Very confusing, but I'm glad I chose a manual labor job because it is helping me prove one of my previous thoughts. Which is that if I am not in a job programming all day, it pushes me to program more when I'm not at work. My problem before was that after programming all day long, my mental and spinal fatigue made it almost impossible to do work at the end of the day.

My point is more that if I'm right about this, then maybe I'm on the right track with this van-life and traveling around for a bit. Here's to hoping something good comes out of it!

I don't think food critics should be allowed to drink alcohol, because when you are drinking everything taste awesome!

A lot of people think that I don't plan things, but I actually just make very vague plans. Today I think I realized why I do this, which is simply because I hate waiting. When I keep things vague it's more of a way to trick myself. It prevents this switch in my head from flipping to the waiting position.

There are two positions:

The planning position, which is more of an active state of mind. Even though everything is actually worked out and ready, this active state keeps my mind checking and rechecking things. Accomplishments are set on more of a monthly and at most a weekly deadline, but there is always wiggly room.

The waiting position, on the other hand, is a passive state. It's like I've put down the pencil and gone over everything with a sharpie. Now the only thing that has to be done is to wait it out, which is usually because I'm just waiting for the pile of money to get large enough to complete the end goal.

This is where the problem comes in, during this waiting position. At this point I know that where I currently am isn't permenant. That soon I'll be free of this mundane repetitve daily minutiae, whether it's for a week or longer I just won't have to be forced to deal with it. So when I'm in this state of mind, all that I have to think about is that I'm just waiting for the money to accumulate. With nothing to organize or figure out, it just hits me that I'm just waiting and there is nothing I can do to speed that up. 

The bad thing is that since I can see an end to my current situation, I kind of become a jerk. I just don't really care to be cordial anymore. Being cordial is actually pretty exhausting. I mean trying to stay positive, especially when you keep dealing with the same problems everyday and no one you tell seems to care. I just get to this point where I'm like, why the hell should I care, if no one else does? Why should I continue to stress myself out about these things that I won't have to continue to deal with? Why do I always put too much effort into these things?

...I don't know if I got off topic there or not, but it's late and I need to get some sleep.

The Scraper

These are the ones that put a fork in their mouth and for some unthinkable reason use their teeth to pull the food off the fork. The sound of metal scrapping against enamel can be heard, like finger nails on chalkboards, as they don't seem to know how to use their lips for pulling and teeth for chewing.

The Breather

The person that doesn't seem to know how to manage breathing and eating at the same time. These individuals sound as if they are being drowned, as they desperatly gasp for air after swallowing each mouth full, before plunging another bite into their still gasping mouths.

The Smacker

One of the lips many purposes is to create a seal that keeps food in your mouth, but for some reason not everyone understands this. With every bite chewed they need to part their lips, releasing a smacking sound of saliva and partially mashed food. Perhaps this is to alert others around them that they are feasting, perhaps it's so their teeth gain more momentum for mastication, or perhaps it's just to drive the perople around them slowly insane.

As with most things in life I'm backwards in this whole Mondays being the most difficult. For me Mondays are my best workdays! I've got three great nights of sleep, so I come in energetic, alert, and ready to get things done. In contrast Friday is my worst day. I'm exhausted, both physically and mentally. Haven't had a good night of sleep in a week, so just getting up in the morning is a challenge. All I want to do is get through the day so I can relax and not be under pressure to get anything done...I guess that's why people see me as indecisive when I'm hanging out. It's more that I relax by knowing I don't have to rush to get anything done. I get to just let everyone else make decisions and go with the flow.

Life can be difficult when you lose someone special. The easiest decisions are the ones that are black and white, where the most difficult are the ones that lay within that grey zone. The grey decisions are the ones that end up hurting the most. No matter how much you weigh the possibilities, the scales just never tip far enough in one direction or the other. I was forced to go against my feelings on this most recent one, and even though it saddens me when I think about the great person I may never get to see again...I have to believe it was the best decision for both of us at this point in my life. I hope some day we can make amends and share our stories and adventures once again.

Seems like my ankle is 99% healed at this point. Was able to walk around all day today without any swelling or discomfort. Work is going to be a little busy over the next two weeks, and then I have a vacation lined up so going to be an interesting couple of weeks. In other news I've had time to working on a laptop that I salvaged from my Aunt. Not the a top notch piece of equipment but doing what I can with it. The battery is worthless so just removed it for now. Going to have to replace it for about 100$. The vent where the cooling fan is seems like it gets excessively hot, I've never really had a laptop before but seems like I might have to replace the cooling fan, looks like it may run about 12$. The Toshiba modified WinXP OS had some issues with it, so I replaced with Ubuntu. First time actually using the OS, aside from some playing around with LiveCD's in the past. So far, so good! Still learning how to fully use it, but pretty cool so far. I need to find my old Linux book to start remembering what the console commands are, some sites are just like "type this in to fix it" and even though it works so far, I don't like entering commands that I don't have a 100% understanding of. Really hope I can fiddle around enough to get at least an average understanding of the OS.