Blogaday 11 of 20

Day 11 - it's taking a toll.

It's 9:18 PM right now. If anybody's been watching the time stamp on my other posts or catching the times I drop, 9 PM looks like sunrise compared to when I've been writing the past 10 nights. So in a way this night has a lot of fundamental differences between it and other nights. I'm showing up three to five hours earlier than usual, but I'm also much more tired than usual. I'm less in love with blogaday than usual as well.

Last night was a little crazy. I got to bed a little after three. Nobody's fault but mine, of course, but it was still late. I've been getting to bed at three a lot lately. Most days I just accept it, because I've had a nap, and I figure that I'll survive. But I felt pretty bad about it last night because I knew I had a council meeting this morning at 6:15. I looked at the clock and realized that I had to be at the building in three hours. I was scheduled to get about two hours of sleep.

I had taken more than a two hour nap, so I thought it was a little insane that my official night's sleep was piecemeal compared to it. Things were obviously messed up.

I functioned well during the meeting and at school today. I only fell asleep during appropriate times. I had a really good calculus class, and seminary was really good as well. I got home and played some warcraft, and then crashed as I am wont to do.

And really, I am functioning. I know I've said it before, but I am not failing my classes because of my sleep. I'm not ruining relationships with people that are important to me. My kidneys are not shot because of the schedule my body is on.

But at the same time, I recognize that this can't be good for me. However skilled my body be at adapting to the stresses placed upon it, wouldn't it just be a better idea for me to get a hearty chunk of rest? Imagine what I could be capable of if I was getting a solid seven to eight hours a night, in one chunk. I think I'd be more alert and happier. I think I'd probably take better care of my kidneys. I think that I'd probably be able to use more of my brain, and that's always a great deal.

Yeah, I'm not dead, but I know this isn't the way that things are supposed to be. I definitely got carried about with the new routine of blogaday and white strips. Both things are very good for me, but both were poorly timed. I was able to not feel bad about going to bed so late because I was doing really good stuff super late. I was furthering my goals, which was awesome.

But there's a time and place for all things, and I can further my goals before midnight. I'm not going to hold myself back because this is the sleep cycle I just happen to be in. I can break out of this. It'll be a bit of a brutal few weeks as I work on it, but I believe I can do it. I want to see what it will do for me. I really think it will make my life better. I have no idea in what manner it'll do it, but I'm really excited to find out.

So here I am, with a problem. It's not monumental, but it's a problem and it's been holding me back from my full potential. It's time to get rid of that problem. Historically, I've been terrible at sleeping patterns anyways. But history doesn't matter so much, I'm going to take a stand and make it happen. It's go time.

La la la la. So what's the news?

It's Tuesday, January 8th, 2008. This has been the least upbeat of all blogaday posts so far. Perhaps it's time to change that?

I played two games of dota today. For the uninitiated, dota (pronounced [D'oh-tuh]) is a custom game type for Warcraft III. If you've been around me and my boys, you've heard us talking about it. We played incredible amounts during December. After nearly every mad performance we'd all drive home and squeeze in a game or two together before we had to be back to sing again. It's fun because we can always play together. There are seven mads (James counts) that play. Teams are made of five, so it's not too hard for us to make a few phone calls and start a game of at least four guys. We have fun playing and bonding. It gives us something to talk about when girls aren't around, and, embarrassingly enough, something to talk about when girls are around.

Now, I'm not going to go into all the mechanics of dota, because it's a very complex game that doesn't lend itself to being explained. Suffice it to say that you control one hero through the whole game, and you're trying to kill the other team's heroes. They, likewise, are trying to kill you.

We're currently teaching Glen how to play. Dota is interesting because of how very very hard it is to break into. Playing online is generally a little fierce, and if you come in as a noob it's very hard to learn anything between the death threats and various remarks about your dear mother. We've taken little Glen under our wings and are training him up to be a champion one day.

But, this training of Glen has made me step back and evaluate my own dota play. Before Glen showed up, I was the worst dota player we had. I'm still terrible. There was one week where I did very well, and I think that convinced me that I was good. I still haven't faced the roses that I'm not that great. But I'm getting there, and I've got some plans to fix it.

Dota is a good game because it is all about the flow of information. Like I said before, the more information that an individual has, the better able that individual is to make good choices. Dota is all about choices. In order to make good choices, one must know what is going on on the battlefield. One's got to know where the enemy heroes are and how strong they currently are. They've got to know the limits of their own hero. How much damage they can take, how much they can dish out. They need to know where their team mates are and their capabilities and limits.

Above all, it's important to know where to draw the line. In dota, you're constantly pushing your forces up towards the bad guys' base. The closer you get, the better chance that you're going to get ganked, or surrounded by bad guys from all directions and owned.

Glen has been getting ganked a lot lately. I have as well, but let's focus on the loveable noob for a minute here. It's easier because he has an excuse. Talking about him makes it sound like a learning experience. Talking about me makes it sound sad.

So anyways, Glen dies a whole lot. He has often been heard to exclaim, "There was nothing I could do about that. I couldn't teleport fast enough." "There was nothing I could do about that, their stun was just too much." "Nothing I could do, these guys are just too good."

And he's right. Once Glen got ganked, there was nothing in the world he could do. He's been playing with very fragile heroes, and the enemy has been exploiting his weakness.

But it's interesting to note that Rick never gets ganked like that. Kyle never gets ganked, or Levi or Dak or James or Tyrel. The only two that get ganked are me and Glen.

Glen gets ganked because he doesn't yet know when to turn back and get onto our side. There's a certain sense that one develops over time, a sense that tells you "Ah crap, there's five guys about to surround me, isn't there? I should b before it's too late." (By the way, to "b" is to get back to your side all careful like)

Glen has an opportunity to survive, every time. But Glen keeps putting himself in situations where the enemy has a great chance to surround him and take him out. Glen isn't as well-versed in dota, and so he hasn't been watching our warnings to b. He isn't able to ascertain all the enemies' locations like the more veteran guys have. One time today the message came up saying that the scourge had slain roshan. That means that all five of their guys were at one specific point on the map. We all knew that. Glen, not so much. Glen was actually really really close to that one specific point. We knew that at any moment five mean heroes would storm and fall all over him. He still had a second to get away, so we called b left and right, but to no avail. Glen stayed, and got hosed.

You can replace "Glen" with my name, and it's the same effect. We are both guilty of this.

In any event, what's the moral of the story? The moral of the story is that success in dota relies entirely on your ability to decode the information that you are getting and to make responsible decisions based upon that information. It's been said that if you never die in dota, you can't lose. That's not one hundred percent true, but it's dang close. Information is key to success in dota.

There's two applications for this moral. My life, I figure, is a lot like Dota. Yeah, there's no creeps, and my special boots don't give me +50% move speed. I caught a butterfly once and couldn't evade anything. But the principles that govern success within dota can also apply to life.

One must always be on the lookout for information. One must use that information to make responsible decisions. In a way, we must react to the environment, placing ourselves in prime position to succeed. If there's an enemy hero running away cause he's low on health, and you can manage to get yourself between him and his base to kill him, you'll do it. You want to strategically place yourself. Likewise, if there's a golden opportunity, the job of your life just opened up for one day for the first person to apply, you will strategically place yourself at the doors as soon as they open. It's rare that one is able to place themselves in the exact right place without knowing the information first. It does happen, from time to time, but reading the signs yields success nearly one hundred percent of the time.

So, just like Dota, one can watch for opportunities to dominate in life. It takes constant vigilance, and one must be aware of their surroundings for it to work. But the basic principle, that information empowers us to make better choices, and that better choices make our lives better, is the exact same between Dota and real life.

And just as one can look and see opportunities to gank an enemy in dota or to land that sweet job in real life, one can use the information to sense when they themselves are about to get ganked.

Now, generally when one gets ganked it's a pretty rude thing. You're almost always "pushing", that means moving forward to kill their stuff, and that means that you're earning gold. Earning gold is vital, because with gold you buy items to make your hero stronger and better able to win. You get ganked when you push because you're putting yourself on their side where they can see you and easily sneak behind you to cut off your escape. One needs to watch the information to know when this is going to happen so they can run before it does.

And just like that, we can see times in real life when we're about to get ganked. I feel like my three AM bed time was just about to get me ganked. It was the same idea, really. Here I was pushing- posting and whitening my teeth, doing good things- but doing them at the wrong time and the wrong place. I haven't been ganked yet, but even if there are no signs pointing to a gank being on the way, I am an incredibly easy target. I'm right next to the enemy's tower and I've got low hp. I might as well paint a target on my face.

One can't play dota always on the defensive, but there's a time and a place to push and a time and a place to back up and defend. I was being a little too aggressive with my blogging and staying up. I have the same problem on Dota.

My body's been sending messages about this sleep thing. "You're going to get ganked come third period, you know it." It's been risky. I'm doing my best now to back up and take a healthy place on the map.

I'm going to be less aggressive with the sleep. That's going to make me die less, and that's going to mean I'll have more gold. More gold means better items, and better items means more kills. More kills means more gold. More gold means more items and more kills and a win at the end of the game. Not dying is pretty important.

So that's the lesson that I've got to take from Dota today. I think it'll make me a better player and a better person. I'm happy to say that I'm on my side of the river right now, hugging a tower. It's 10:07, and things are winding down. I had a big nap today, and so I'm not sure if I'll be able to sleep tonight like I want to. I will do my best, though. I'm going to try to make it happen.

I do respect Dota for what it is. It's entertaining, it's a challenge, and above all it's a good time to play with your buddies. There will come a time when Glen and I join the ranks as viable players. I know that we've got it in us. Glen just needs more time, he needs to develop that feel. I've got the experience, I know exactly what the feel is, but I need to start actually listening to it. When Kyle says b, I think I probably will b. There's a time and a place to take a stand and fight, and there's a time and a place to turn tail and run like a little girl. In Dota, there's no shame in running like a little girl. In life, there's less shame in running like a little girl than people try to tell you. There's a time and a place to run away.

I just want to be on my toes. Getting the information and then acting upon it. The information is surely coming, it's just a matter of whether or not I will act upon it. It's 10:10 PM, and I'm ready to close up shop for blogaday day 11. I feel good about this post. With this completion here, I am 55% done with the most ambitious project this blog has ever seen.

Tomorrow, I work on scholarship stuff. Tonight, I've got one beautiful calculus assignment to tackle before bed. I didn't know if I was going to do it or not. But I think I am. It's an opportunity. One could say I'm going to gank this calculus assignment. Doing so will give me more gold, in a sense. It'll make me better able to gank calculus in the future. My information says that this is a great opportunity, and I'm going to take it. Calculus is so dead. Alt+G click, Alt + G click. Gank calc, gogo.

Blogaday 10 of 20

Day 10. Monumental, really.

There's two things that are pretty interesting about this whole business. The first is that I knew from the moment I woke up this morning that I would end up here. I planned to come and post. It has been my routine for the entirety of 2008 so far. I live a day, and then I begin the end process so I can live one more day. The contacts are out, the whitestrips are in. I'm here to post. We all knew it'd end up like this.

The second interesting piece is how very traditional and normal this seems to me. As far as my subconcious goes, I've been doing blogaday forever. It has always been the norm for me to sit down before writing in my journal and bust out a post. I know that this has only been going on for 10 days, but underneath higher reasoning, this is just the pattern as it's always been.

I tend to do that, I find. I adapt myself to the current situation and give myself to it wholly. Very soon it becomes my natural style. Days when I'd run after school, I'd feel like I'd always run right after school. Now that I'm not, it feels like that's always how it's been.

It's just interesting how very quickly I forget the way things were in favor of being better suited for the way things are right now. I'm sure that this way of being has its ups and downs. It does lead to forgetfulness, which is damaging. It's easy to forget the three years I spent on the nerd team, or all the races I've run for cross country. It's easy to forget what sophomore jazz band was like. All the forgetting, I think, makes me better able to succeed in the environment I'm currently in, so it's not all bad. I'm not running around super emotionally wondering where my youth has gone, or what happened to the good old days.

And I don't think that I've forgotten, but the good old days just aren't constantly on my mind. I don't sit down to post and think "You know, this is significantly different than how the vast majority of my life has gone. Weird." I just sit down and post like it's normal. Things aren't forgotten, they're just not part of the processes that are natively running in my mind. When something triggers them, they can still come forth.

But here I am, feeling pretty comfortable and secure in my blogaday routine. Rolling right along.

Interesting to note is that it's 1:40 AM, and there is an official no one online for messenger. This hasn't happened in a very, very long time. My contact list has an official 69 contacts. A few of them are duplicates. Some are on missions and haven't been online in a year and a half. Some are people I know very well and never talk to online. Others are people that I've never met but share similar interests who I used to talk to but don't ever talk to now. Some are people I don't really talk to in real life and will never talk to online either. Of all my contacts, I'd say that there are 10 that I actually talk to with messenger. I could prune the list, but I don't necessarily see the need to.

In junior high I used to pride myself in having a maximum of 25 contacts. Me and Jason would talk online, and he'd be like "Hey, how many contacts do you have online?" and I'd say that I had three or four, and he'd say he had nine. He always had more contacts than me. I never felt like I had the shorter end of the deal though. I'd rather have 25 golden contacts that I actually talk to and care about than 60 that I don't.

This online communication is very interesting business. A lot of my life has been played out with the help of MSN messenger. I don't regret that. There has been much good done. There's also been some bad stuff done too. It's got its ups and downs. I believe that it, like everything else, is about balance.

I remember how last year Harward made the statement that messenger wasn't really a valid form of communication. He said that no real meaning was ever transmitted, and that we were all just wasting our time. I didn't stand up and say it at the time, but I strongly disagree with that statement. I've seen it happen, I've been there. Meaningful stuff does happen over msn messenger.

And I think that that's one thing that an older generation is going to have to come to terms with. The way that we are meeting our needs is changing. We are adapting. There are people who embrace it and people who reject it. For a very very long time I rejected social networking sites as a matter of principle. I still vehemently reject myspace. There will come a time when I do create a facebook account though. That time will not be for a few months at the very least, however. But it's a decent tool that I think will help fulfill a need, so I'll go for it.

This blog is a prime example of something that couldn't really have existed seven years ago. Realistically, it could have happened seven years ago, but probably not for free and probably not this easy. 15 years ago, this wouldn't have ever happened. But just because this opportunity has only been made available to me in the past 10 years doesn't mean that it's illegitimate. This blog has meant a ton to me. Individuals that classify all blogs as useless and irrelevant are probably good people, but I think they might be a little misguided. I used to be one of those people I think. Not necessarily with blogs or any of that, but classifying all of one thing as useless without any back up.

Let's be honest. I don't understand dance, at all. I've done a very very little bit of it. I've danced at region dances, and I danced in the day of celebration. I enjoyed both of those experiences a lot. I don't understand why some individuals devote so much to dance. It's not something I really get.

But at the same time, I can respect it. I think in my younger days I might have said that dance was stupid, or dance was worthless, or dance was etc. etc. But now, I can recognize that it fulfills a need of whoever is dancing, and therefore it's probably a good thing. I don't get it, but I can respect those that do. I'm not going to classify something as terrible without ever really being there.

Which leads to two points that I've discovered. I believe these points are true. There's a chance that they're not, however. It's just something that I think. If I'm wrong, well, I'm wrong, and I'm functioning and making decisions based upon fallacies. But isn't that the case with every idea that we have? Every feeling about life, every "Yeah, that's how this works..." is vulnerable to that same judgement. It's what we think, but it might be wrong. We're willing to accept that. We will take the risk of being wrong and exercising in fallacy if we've got a chance of being right and understanding. That's just how we roll.

Anyways, potential fallacy number one is thus. Anything that leads us to understand ourselves better is generally a good thing. That doesn't mean that it always is, but journeys of self discovery are usually good. This blog has helped me understand myself better, which has been great. High school helps us better understand ourselves. That's good too.

Potential fallacy number two is all about meeting those inner needs. Anything that helps meet our needs is generally a good thing. I always find it interesting to see how people have their needs met. I love our skill at having them met. Call it an evolutionary response or just plain out reasoning, but if our needs aren't being met, we will invariably change the situation to have them met. If a kid is in the drama organization because he has certain needs and the drama club is meeting those needs, and suddenly the clan stops meeting those needs, he's going to leave and go elsewhere. It's an almost automated process. We will go where we need to go to survive and flourish. I ran cross country for four years. It was beautiful. I love cross country. Part of the reason that I left was because the needs that cross country used to be meeting vanished to an extent. It was no longer a necessity, and so I took the opportunity to free myself.

A lot of things that wouldn't meet needs for me might meet needs for other people, I figure. There are reasons that people dance. I don't dance, but I suppose that if I had the same needs as those people, or if I had no other means to meet the needs I have, dance could work out.

I think the moral of my story is that one shouldn't judge an activity. Harward's premature analysis of messenger was a little surprising to me. I'm willing to wager that Hardward never had any needs met by msn messenger. But here I am, a functioning part of society, and I have. It's not for everybody, but it's clearly not for nobody.

We started a multimedia presentation in English today. I do love multimedia presentations. Nick pointed out that I was bound to hijack the whole operation to our group today, so I'm glad that we're at least on the same page. This is one of those places where I probably ought to draw the line further on their side than on my side, but it's very tempting to just say "Wow, check out this great idea, let's run with it!"

Multimedia presentations in school are always delightful to me. I remember that we used to do presentations in elementary school with Corel presentations, just doing slideshows. That was a really good experience for me, because it taught me a lot about it at a very young age.

It has been my experience in school that most people are not going to create an incredible multimedia presentation when given the chance. It's an unusual format for most, and that unfamiliarity makes stuff difficult. I see these projects as an opportunity to shine. When most people are struggling, I'm going to get out there and do my very best. I'm going to pull out something great. I love multimedia opportunities.

Multimedia, by its very definition, is cool to me. Multi, meaning many, or multiple, and media, the plural of medium, or the means by which we do something- in this case, transmit information. So basically, using lots of different ways to get a message across. Like we discussed a few nights ago, layers. Multimedia lends itself to incredible layering. That's why slideshows are so incredibly useful for teaching a class or a seminar. You've got the speaker doing his thing, and the slideshow backing up everything he says. It adds at least one more layer, and that layer adds efficacy.

Multimedia is cool because we can have so many layers. For this project we get to use pictures and audio primarily, but we'll manage to sneak a bunch of text in as well. The trick will be to consolidate all three of them into one effective message. I'm excited for the challenge. We've got an excellent group, and we've got some pretty bold plans. I do hope it works out.

You know what's an incredibly cool word? Intrepid. My online sources define Intrepid as: "resolutely fearless; dauntless". How cool is that? Resolutely fearless? That's incredibly cool. I really like the fact that it's resolute. One can be fearless on accident, or through ignorance. Resolutely, though, that implies that whatever this intrepid being is had to stand up, square his or her shoulders, and become fearless by choice, knowing full well what lay ahead. Intrepid, now that's a good way to be.

I do hope that blogaday is still functioning as well for everybody else as it is for me. It's surprising how very similar all these posts end up. I think that each night has had it's own unique content, more or less, but all the posts seem to be following the same general pattern. I'll start out by talking about blogaday mechanics-- wait a minute, have I authored this paragraph before? I sure did! Last post's last paragraph was about the same idea.

I find that if I talk about the mechanics of blogaday for long enough, something will generally pop up.
-Me, like, last night.

Rahahaha. I think that's one weakness that my blogaday posts have though, the conclusion. I talk about blogaday for a bit, and then I'll usually hit on two individual ideas about life. And then I'll struggle to end the post. Though, I wouldn't really call it a struggle. Blogaday by its very nature is pretty free of struggle. If I wanted professional posts, there could be struggle. But I'm only doing this to talk and to understand and to meet the challenge I laid for myself. Whatever happens will happen. 20 terrible posts would simply be 20 terrible posts that taught me something about myself. 20 amazing posts would be 20 amazing posts that taught me something and might have done the world a little bit of good. I am doing this for many reasons, and I will not cease doing this until the time is right. Whether I produce gold or lawn manure, I will write.

And I think there's a sort of noble invulnerability and innocence in that. It's kind of like the ceilings of a few nights ago. Things that exist in a pure form, not relying on anything else to give them meaning, are pretty beautiful. I don't think that anything can really exist like that, not one hundred percent. But there is much to be said of finding worth in existing as opposed to finding worth in your critical acceptance by others.

Well friends, it draws late. It's blogaday day 10, hooray! Halfway there. That's not a bad feeling. Calling 20 days was awfully ambitious. But once again, I'm really glad that I did it. It's been a great adventure, and I'm excited to see what tomorrow brings.

Have a good night everybody. Good luck with the things you're facing in life. Keep your head up, we're gonna be alright.

Blogaday 9 of 20

Good gravy, day nine. Not a day to take lightly.

The successful completion of blogaday will mark a pretty intense day for The Other Dentist. Two of the days came in December, leaving 18 for January. With those 18 posts, January 08 will become the second most posted-in month ever in the history of The Other Dentist (behind august 06, as it were). If I post just one more time outside of blogaday, January will tie. Two more times and it'll take the cup.

Traffic for the past eight days has doubled the previous eight days. I'm getting more comments than usual, not necessarily per post, but per day. People are reading the blog, and that's a good feeling.

Most importantly, I feel a strong sense of satisfaction and accomplishment at what I've achieved so far here. I'm only nine days in, and I feel like a million bucks. Here's to 11 more, eh?

So current time is something like 1:39 AM. I had a 50 minute nap today, but aside from that have been up since nine thirty-ish. I feel fine right now because of the nap, but I know that it was deceptively short, and I'm betting that tomorrow will suffer because of it. I'm definitely going to need to get to bed early tomorrow, and will probably end up taking a big nap too. We'll see what happens.

I do worry about my sleep schedule sometimes. It functions pretty well for me, but I know that it's not exactly practical for the future. It'll never fly on the mission, that's for sure. I think that's primarily what I'm worried about. I could swing it for college I bet. I'm going to work on it though. It's a hard cycle to get out of, and I'm not positive that I want to right this minute. I don't feel like it's ruining my life, but I do believe that change is in order. I shall have to think on this.

I made a sandwich tonight. I only finished half of it. That's pretty surprising to me, because I almost always finish the whole of whatever I'm eating. Now granted, I had already had quite a bit to eat before it, and I had just filled up with lots of fluids, but still. It's currently sitting here right next to my keyboard. I wonder what will come of it. I know that if it survives the night it'll just get tossed tomorrow. There's very little chance that I'll get around to eating it tonight. I've already started my night time cycle, and food rarely fits in once the ball gets rolling. It's not a terrible sandwich, but definitely not a masterpiece. As far as sandwiches go, it's about a 3 on the 1 to 10 rating. It's just too dry, really.

So what's on my mind tonight? To be completely honest, I've got about an 80 percent grasp of what's on my mind. The other 20 percent I haven't quite pegged yet. That fifth is still floating around on the outskirts, not quite formulated yet, but definitely there. I'm aware that it's there, but I haven't categorized or imaged or worded or anything'd it yet. It's just out there.

As for the eighty, I've got a pretty good idea on it. I mean, I know it's basic subject at least. I'm not quite sure exactly how I feel about the subject, which leads to interesting things on my mind.

It's not a bad thing by any means. It's the way things are tonight, and that's not too shabby. I'm just mentioning it because it's blogaday- I've got to mention something.

Which is an interesting question that blogaday raises. I ran into it the last time I tried one of these, way back when. Of course, that was a seven day blogaday, which I've already far surpassed. (Two days is far surpassing in my book). ((And yes, I did just use those parentheses incorrectly. These ones too.)).

In any event, the question blogaday raises is something like this... I have to write something every day. Sometimes I have something to say, and other times I have nothing to say. Sometimes I can find something to say, and other times I can find absolutely nothing. I think the question is whether blogaday fuels thinking and ideas or whether it's just a way to get existing ones out. I like to think that it fuels new ones, but what if it doesn't? What if all I'm doing here is venting that which I already have, and blogaday doesn't do anything for production?

That would mean that once I'm out of ideas (right now), blogaday would become a detriment to the blog and the reader. I'm going to write no matter what, but if I produce a post that's nothing but boring, the reader will be less inclined to visit tomorrow to see what I have to say. I lose readers that way, and fewer readers (as vain as it is...) means less motivation to write. Under this scenario, blogaday has potential to destroy the blog as we know it.

But I do like to look on the brightside, and hope that blogaday really does fuel new thought and understanding. If that's the case, even if I do lose all my readers because it got boring after the first eight, at least I'll know I'm a better person because of it.

Blogaday has interesting mechanics. I've considered writing a few posts as drafts when I'm feeling very throughtful, and keeping them in reserve for nights when I don't have time or don't have any particular ideas. Does that break the rules? I really think it does. Blogaday is about stretching me and helping me think and ponder more. It's about giving me an opportunity every single night to explore myself and the world around me. Saving posts up would be like skipping a day of eating or sleeping. It looks good at the time, but it wouldn't be beneficial down the road.

I see the question between saving posts up and doing it every night as the division between say, a high school play and a play at Hale. A high school play aims to be incredibly good and to make some money at the door. More importantly though, it aims to teach the kids something. That's the high school play's number one goal. It's all about the kids. Hale is all about the money. Sure, maybe there's something about the community thrown in there, and maybe there's something about promoting the arts or whatever. But at the end of the day, it's a business, and it must run very professionally. It's going to be about making money.

So the question is whether or not this blog is about the kids or whether it's about the money. The kids being me, of course. Is it about my progress, or is it about impressing the audience and gaining more readers? If it's about me, I can't cheat and save up posts. If it's about the audience, it'd make sense to save posts for a rainy day.

I find that all very interesting, that balance between professionalism and training. We deal with it a lot in council. Brother Coleman is the kind of teacher and leader that thoroughly believes in letting us learn on our own. He gives very very little instruction concerning what we ought to do in what situation. I really think he'd rather see us fall flat on our faces and learn something than do a great job and learn nothing. It takes a lot of courage to be like that, and a ton of self-control as well. I think it's in most of our natures to step in if things are getting hairy for somebody else. Coleman is awesome enough to let things get at least a little bit hairy before he'll save the day. He's all about letting us learn.

Udy, on the other hand, is more of a director. He's still a big fan of us doing our thing and learning, but his priority is the successful operation of the seminary over there, whereas Coleman's priority is our education and our enlightenment. Both of them are of course working for both of those priorities, but it's pretty easy to see where they both are drawing their proverbial lines in the sand.

It's interesting to see those lines in high school. Most classes will have them. There are a small few that don't, but most that I've been in have some form of it. It's interesting to note that teachers are not the only ones that have to draw lines, but kids as well. I draw lines every single day. Any time there's any form of group work in school, I have to decide between the absolute performance of the group versus the participation of all individuals. That's really the question. Whether we will do what it takes to make the best product possible, or whether we will sacrifice some product for more education for the participants.

Lit mag last year was a perfect example of the line question. If Wessman put himself in charge, he could produce a mighty fine lit mag. The production process would be organized, deadlines would be met, and we'd probably turn a profit on the thing. But instead, Wessman puts his editors in charge, who in turn give the other students responsibilities. There's a long chain that goes down, that ultimately results in a litmag of imperfection. It can still be an excellent lit mag, but it's not going to be as great as the Wessman edition would have been.

As an editor last year, I had to draw lines as well. I had to decide how soon we needed something down and of what quality the job needed to be. There were students who I knew could handle any job I gave them, so I gave them the pressing difficult stuff. If there was stuff that was a little lighter, I'd give it to a few who still needed to prove themselves. I knew that some assignments I gave out would come back unsatisfactorily. But that was the line. It wasn't about the absolute lit mag, it was about the experience building it.

T has to do that with her choirs as well. If she was about absolute sound, her choirs would be super small and super strict. If you sucked, you'd be out. If you weren't going to work, you'd be out. But T is obviously not about absolute sound, as is apparent. She does care about the sound, but she clearly is more about the students than the performance. Is that a good thing? I believe so. T obviously believes so. But it's a personal question that everybody must determine for themselves.

Where does the high school draw the line? Where does a seminary council draw the line? What about professional businesses? Things get really confusing with businesses, because then we have to start analyzing the economic impact of those decisions.

It's crucial for a company to continuously be training their employees and future leaders. The best way to do that is to allow them opportunities to grow in the field. Those opportunities are almost always coupled with opportunities for them to fail and cost the company a lot of money. So what's the choice? Do you turn the project over to your very best employee, the man you know will pull it off and make you money? Or do you turn it over to the new guy, and give him a chance to prove himself? He won't make as much money, probably, but he might learn something and be able to make you more money in the future. He might bankrupt the whole adventure, too. It's a difficult line to call.

And perhaps we all have personal lines of that nature. Except instead of choosing whether we let the new guy learn something or the old guy dominate, we choose whether or not we'll try something new or whether we'll stick with the proven. Will we put ourselves out there on a limb? Success on the limb would definitely benefit the future, but failure would damage the present. Where do we draw the line?

Lines have been increasingly important in my life as of late. This is just one of the lines I've begun to notice. It's important because I find my opportunities directly related to how whoever is in charge chooses to draw their line. At this stage of my life, I am the new guy. I'm waiting to prove myself. I've done it in a few places. I've had successes and I've had failures. I'm still the new guy though, and it's interesting to see where different people put their lines. To be honest, I feel like I'm ready for more people to relax their lines a little bit. I wish that I had more chance in my classes to teach. I know it's kind of stupid, but I feel like I've got something to offer Calculus and English and what-have-you. I think most people probably do. I hope that once I enter the business world, that I'll be given a chance to prove myself. It'll be interesting to see.

I use the word "interesting" quite often. What does interesting mean? I think, to me, it means something that teaches something about that which is beyond our own selves. Things which are purely mundane are never interesting. We already know the mundane. When I say that something is interesting, I say it because it leads me to believe that there's something bigger than me out there. And whether that something is the movements of the economy as a whole or just one other individual or the divine, it is still interesting.

Interesting is, well, interesting.

And I believe that that, my friends, is enough for blogaday day nine. Once again we find that I got somewhere in the end. I find that if I talk about the mechanics of blogaday for long enough, something will generally pop up.

What am I? Why am I doing all this? I'm doing it because I feel like it's the right thing to do. I figure that's a pretty good reason. Be it entertaining or enlightening or a pile of dung, here it is. Is it for me? Is it for you? I believe it's for us both, in a way. It's an adventure, no matter what the mechanics of it all.

Good night friends. I hope things are going well for you. Keep up the excellent work.

Blogaday 8 of 20

Wow, day eight. I think that makes this the longest blogaday I've ever done. That's a lot of days consecutively blogging. Look at me go.

Welcome to January 5th, 2008. It's currently 1:18 AM. That's officially January 6th, but I've never really bought into all of that. I understand that the new day has to start sometime, but I've always felt that that should be sunrise.

Sunrise is such a beginning. Can you imagine going outside to watch the sunrise and not feeling like there's been a fresh start for the world? I think there's something inside of me that just knows that the sunrise means rebirth and new beginnings.

Midnight doesn't have that for me. I don't feel any different between 11:50 and 12:10. It doesn't feel like anything has changed for me.

I think there are probably people out there that would be upset if I were to claim that it was still the fifth. It's not the fifth, I know. But to me, inside, it's still the fifth. The sixth won't start until tomorrow comes. It won't come until I'm ready to get up and face it. There will be a distinct time when I know that it's tomorrow, and that time has not come yet.

And so, happy January fifth, friends.

I worked tonight with mom, moving the university mall Jolene's. They had to move from one spot to another spot. That happens every so often with the stores, so I go and help move. I've been all over most of the major malls around here, excluding fashion place.

Business has always been fascinating to me. I like to go and see how different businesses are doing different things. I like to see their approach and the philosophy they have behind what they do.

The University mall is a very nice mall. Of all the malls that I've been to with jolene's business, it's definitely the nicest one. They've obviously spent a lot of money to make it an attractive building. They have a domed ceiling through all the hallways, painted with yellows and oranges. I'm no artist, and I'm no architect, so I'm going to end my description of the ceiling there, but it's very cool. It sends a message. I like it because it says "Hey, I'm the ceiling, and I'm not the absolute most convenient ceiling to build. I'm not uniform. Somebody spent time and effort to make me the way I am." But at the same time, it's not a ceiling of "Ooooh, look at me. I'm incredibly expensive. With the money they spent on me, we could have cured AIDS." It's a modest and attractive ceiling.

As a sidenote, ceilings are incredibly cool because of how very little they are looked at. Maybe that's the reason that I've always been so drawn to them. When I put my name on the choir room ceiling, I didn't really do it so everybody would see my name all the time. I didn't want to be constantly in front of everybody. I wanted an effect whereas when people did chance a glance up, which they rarely do, they would be a little surprised and impressed. Had I wanted to be in front all the time, I'd have found a way to burn my name into the whiteboard.

But ceilings don't want to be in front all the time. They are very very content to be themselves. I love ceilings because they don't exist for everybody else. They are the way they are because they want to be that way. I think that that lends ceilings a lot of nobility and pride. They are not there to catch your eye and sway your vote or make you buy. They are there to serve a purpose. They are strong and resolute. They, above all else, have integrity. There are no gimmicks behind a ceiling. The ceiling has no reason to lie to you. Ceilings are not billboards and they're not display windows. They are simply ceilings.

And I know, they're ceilings. They don't have feelings. "They" as a group don't even qualify as a group. I'm running around here personifying them when really they're not even them. It's a ceiling.

But it still means something to me, a ceiling. It's that beautiful idea of purpose. A ceiling has a role to play, and it plays it. A ceiling, I really believe, is something that I'd like to emulate. The ceiling is the ceiling no matter the circumstances. No matter who the ceiling is with, the ceiling remains the ceiling one hundred percent. The ceiling does not adapt and mold depending on what jokes his friends are telling. The ceiling doesn't act a certain way when one certain girl is looking. The ceiling is steadfast. Yea, the ceiling is stalwart.

The ceiling isn't beautiful to attract attention or even to make anybody happy. The ceiling is excellent for no reason other than that excellence is the right way to be. That's what's so incredibly cool about it. To be excellent just because. That's impressive.

I want to be like the ceiling. Ceiling is a stud.

You know what's interesting? I've deleted large sections of this post two separate times tonight. That very rarely happens. It's the first time that it has happened with blogaday.

But I feel good about this post. I really do think that ceilings were the thing to talk about tonight. Inconspicuous excellence; that's a ceiling. More than just being sneaky about it, though, is that ceilings are doing it for the right reasons.

If I were going to be a piece of a building, I'd definitely want to be a ceiling.

But since I'm just a guy running around, I'm going to do everything I can to learn from the ceilings. Ceilings have got it figured out.

Blogaday 7 of 20

Day Seven - Still Truckin'

Tonight may be the hardest night so far. I find myself in a similar situation as last night; I'm fine to stay up as late as I want to writing, but I don't necessarily have one specific thing that I want to say.

I am confident that something will materialize, and I hope that its quality will be fine. I'm starting to think that I'm going to need to make some changes to the way that I do things if I am going to succeed here though. I think that if I'm going to write something worthwhile, I'm going to need to spend more time during the day thinking about what I'm going to write.

Because some days inspiration just hits, and I'll make a mental note and then come home and write it. Thinking about that, I might have actually had a beam of inspiration today. But I've forgotten it. Moments of inspiration are amazing for posts, but I can't necessarily count on them to just appear every day. I need to be thinking more, and engaging in more activities that lend themselves to inspiration.

By all means, I could go another 13 posts without any real insight. I will finish blogaday, even if the rest of my posts are devoid of any worth.

But see, I'd rather not do that. So, I go seeking inspiration. It'll be a fun adventure.

Along those same lines though, if there are any requests out there, I'd be glad to take them. I don't guarantee an answer, but if ever there was a time where you'd have a great shot at me writing a post about what you really wanted me to, now would be it. I'm not about to officially request requests, and I don't necessarily feel like a questions thing. I'm just letting you know that if there's something you've been dying to see a post about, I'd be willing to give it a shot.

I went through a phase a few months ago where I stopped posting inspiration, and instead I would just write inspiration down on yellow half-legal pages. That was really good for me I think. It also means that I've got a backup of ideas, in case I need them. A few of them really mean a lot to me, so maybe one day they'll be published here. It's difficult though, because I'd like to do them justice, so they'll take some work and preparation.

Do you ever get the feeling that all this is just one extended self reflection like the ones we've done in English? Who knew that every blogaday post would be about blogaday?

Speaking of English though, I am pretty excited to talk about my essays next Thursday. I've received absolutely no feedback on anything I've "officially" written this year, except that Mwo thinks they're intimidating. Apparently intimidation is a common theme among the ladies and I. But I digress. It'll be good to see what I've done well and what I need to improve upon. I'm pretty excited, because I really love feedback. It's a great feeling to hear that you've done a good job, but it's also very beneficial to hear where you've got some issues and need work. I'm a big fan of appropriate feedback.

I think I may start branching out with these posts. I've got one thing I know that I want to try, and I might try my hand at a few things I've done in the past but not for a while. We'll see, eh?

So what's the news? I think I want to talk about layers.

See, I think that everything is presented in layers. Let's take a poem for example. A poem, in its simplest form is probably just a paragraph of free-verse. It is nothing but words. It works to present its message, and probably does a fairly decent job at it.

But one can add more layers to that poem to make it more effective. If the poem was about injustice, you could add a bunch of irony to the beginning and end to illustrate how very unjust it is. That way you have words that tell the story, as well as irony that backs it up. Irony is an additional layer on the original piece to effectively convey the message.

One could go even further, and arrange the words and text of the poem on the page to represent a symbol of sorts. If the poem is about the injustice of the death penalty, and the words were arranged in the form of an electric chair, that'd be one more layer to get the message across. It's still the same message, but now it's got the basic words, some irony, and some ASCII art to make sure we don't miss it.

One could go further. I'm not going to, because I'm out of ideas for the poem. But you get the idea.

I think that's the same way that we present everything though. Very little that we do or say comes out in only one layer. Not to encourage Adult Roles, but we talk about communication, and the impact of our nonverbal communication on conversations and relationships. We've talked about how our posture, gestures, facial expression, tone of voice, eye contact, distance from the individual, etc. etc. all play a role in the way the message is sent and received. It's the same message, but as communicators we've all adapted more ways of backing up the message we're sending. We send multiple redundant messages to ensure that there's no way they can miss the idea. We're waving our arms wildly and shouting and doing various other things which all really mean the same thing. They come together as layers to complement each other and effectively convey our message.

This stuff is incredibly important in video editing. The effective creation of a video, at least for me, is all about layers. The documentary I made last year was risky. I chose to present an outright lie as scientific truth. I brainstormed for a very long time to find out what I was going to actually do my documentary on. I finally decided to do the leg shaving for a lot of reasons. I wanted, first and foremost, to show that documentaries can be a serious load of tosh. I can make any person say anything I want them to say. Nothing that I showed in that documentary was based on truth, to be honest. I wanted to make that point above all else. But I also wanted to poke fun at the leg shavers, stand up for the old school hair and all that. I wanted to have some fun and make some people laugh. I wanted to experiment with my own film-making and see what I was capable of. It was a style I'd never done before, and I was pretty happy with the result.

In making the film, I couldn't just come out and say that leg shaving was going to bring about the end of the human race as we know it. I had to start out with pseudo logic, by quoting a long-since assassinated politician. I used him to lend credibility to what I said. I manipulated quotes from classmates, and showed up later with image-based evidence. I busted out a few graphs, made in MS paint. Throughout all of this pseudo-logic phase I backed everything I said up with bulleted lists on screen. Behind this I put music to fit whatever we were currently doing. The tense intro music definitely plays on emotion, at least for the guys in the room. 70 percent of all guys recognize the halo 2 theme song immediately, and yes, I made that statistic up. When we were talking to patriots who love leg hair, we played good oldschool colonial style music. When we talked to terrorists, we had very ominous bad stuff. I made very liberal use of the American flag as a backdrop to show what a true American I really was. When it came time to make my conclusion, I shocked the audience with a picture of the Arlington National Cemetery, and the incredibly emotional "Better Days" by Goo Goo Dolls.

All of those layers came together to make my point. I could go on for a lot longer, analyzing what I did and why I did it. It reminds me of AP English in junior year. We analyzed rhetorical strategies for the whole class. I absolutely hated it for the first half of the year, but grew to love it like crazy as time went on. Rhetorical strategies aren't necessarily the most important thing, but they do teach a good lesson about layers. We could take a piece of writing and see all the strategies, or layers, that the author used to get their message across. We were looking at a very small sample, being relegated only to literature, but we still learned about layers.

We can take what we did in AP English and put it everywhere. Every message we send comes in layers. He who is good at manipulating layers is good at sending messages. And he who sends the best messages convinces the most people. Once you've got people convinced that you're right, you can get them to buy your product or be your friend or give you a ride home from school.

I do like layers, yes I do. I really like the way things have been coming together the past few nights. It seems that everything I've been writing about comes back to a common theme: Everything we do is connected. Tonight it's all about how our messages and signals are connected, and the more connected we can make them, the more effective we'll be. Last night was about how all my history connects itself to make me the person that I am right now.

So maybe that's the moral of the story. Or at least the thing that I've been thinking about. Connectivity is beginning to be more and more important to me. My future is coming faster than ever, and one can't help but worry about it. I've got college to pay for, a mission to prepare for, and then a life to pay for. The only way I can make it happen is by playing as connected as possible. I'll need every skill that I've got to be successful in the real working world. I'll need every credential and experience I've ever had to convince people to give me scholarships. I'm finding more and more often that one single event won't necessarily mean the difference between success and failure. More likely, it will be the precipitation of many events over a long period of time that make me the person I'll be.

To put it in terms of basketball, which I think would be appropriate, would be to say that when the game is tied at 75-75 with 12 seconds left, and you've got a chance to take that last shot to win the game, that that shot is not what makes the game. That game has been made by every single play down the court since the tip-off. Every point and possession has been important. They have all come together to put you in the situation that you're in right this very minute. The game would not be tied at 75-75 had you missed just one of the shots that you made previously. The situation would be entirely different, and even if you did make that buzzer-beating shot like you wanted to, it wouldn't give you the edge, cause you wouldn't be tied, you'd be down. Fourth quarter play is incredibly important. Most will make the argument that it's the most important. But I disagree. Every single play is important. Expanding, every layer is important. Every job we do and every choice we make will indeed factor in to the final score. We will find ourselves in the position we find ourselves in, no matter what quarter or time of day, because of what we've done before.

One could accuse me of pontificating. And I agree. But it's the only way I can really write right now, so here I am.

Yes, I do think that will do for tonight's post. I learned a bit more about layers, and I'm pretty happy about that. I must say before I go though, that blogaday is incredibly c0ol because I learn so much about myself. I had a long talk with Olsen today, talking about scholarship stuff, but then just shooting the breeze with the guy for a while. My post last night came up. Of course, he hasn't read the post. I didn't tell him about the post. But we talked about my experiences programming in VB, and what it did for me. It was cool to have that on hand when the conversation called for it. I wouldn't have had that had I not written it last night.

So here I am, learning. It's a very good feeling. I've made it through one week. My first post was a little weak, but things are moving right along. I'm glad I made this decision.

Well, once again, I hope things are going well for you all. Let me know what's on your minds and if there's anything I can do for you all.

Have a dandy existence, friends.

Blogaday 6 of 20

Day Six. Still kicking!

Tonight marks yet another circumstance that makes blogaday such an interesting endeavor. It's 11 PM and I'm entirely awake. I took a large nap today, so I know that I've got at least two good hours in me before I start to get tired. I don't plan on using them, but I'm ready to run at 100 percent for 120 minutes if I really have to.

Tonight's challenge is that I'm entirely capable of writing a good post, but I don't have anything I'm dying to talk about. The last five nights have been very easy from a content perspective. I sat down and stuff started to flow out.

Tonight isn't quite like that. I'm going to roll with it though, and see where it all takes me.

This is one of the reasons that I love blogaday so much though. It's an opportunity to explore myself. Nick always comments on how very stream of consciousness my posts are, and he's right. That's the way that I write posts. It's going to be interesting to see where this post goes tonight. We all know it'll be stream of consciousness, but where will it take me? I usually have some sort of goal that I'm shooting for, some point that I want to get across. Tonight doesn't necessary have a goal, and I find that both frustrating and refreshing.

I worked a lot on that Micron scholarship that I'm applying for today, and that felt pretty good. It was nice to get some work done on it. I really think that I've got a decent shot at it. It's only awarded to two individuals per state; one guy and one girl. It's only for Utah, Idaho, and Virginia too.

But it's cool because it's a technology scholarship, and it's not need based or race based or any other kind of based. It's based on achievement and academics.

And maybe I don't really have as good of a shot at it as I like to think I do. As my Sterling Scholar portfolio will attest to, I don't have much extracurricular activity in the realm of science and mathematics. I'll be going up against every other applying male in the whole state for this baby. Statistically speaking, I'm dead in the water.

I think what I love so much about the scholarship is that I've got a straight shot at it. There's no jimmying around that isn't my fault here. Everything that goes into this application will be entirely my fault. This application has nothing to do with what my dad makes in a year. It's just about me and what I've accomplished, and I really love that.

Part of the application asked about work experience. The only job I've ever really held was those summers ago when I ran mad carpet for Sharpe. I wasn't sure on years or months, so I had to dig back through my journals to figure it out. I love opening my old journals, it's so very invigorating. It's so cool to trace the person I am now to the person that I was then. A lot of important stuff happened those two summers. It was the summer between eighth and ninth grade that I worked the first time. It's so fun to go back and remember what I was doing back then and what was important to me.

That summer, 03-04 I think, I still wanted to be a programmer when I grew up. That was the summer that I really worked hard on snake. For those that don't know the story (there's only like, two that do, and I think they stopped reading a long time ago), I used to program in Visual Basic. Michael hooked me up with the software and some introductory knowledge, and I just played around and made some cool business. He'd suggest little applications for me to build, and I'd try and build them. They were usually little retro games, really easy stuff to pull off.

I'm not sure if it was he or myself, but one of us decided that I should try to do snake. I sat down and whipped up a functioning single-player snake in a day I think. It wasn't a ton of fun to play, but it functioned with all of the game mechanics correctly, so it was a success. I decided after how much fun that was to program that I'd try my hand at multi-player snake. I'd make the arena bigger, and spawn two snakes instead of one. They'd race to get the food wherever it spawned, and any time a bigger snake ran into a smaller snake the bigger one would steal a bite off of the littler guy.

The game mechanics of the multiplayer were kinda cool. It still wasn't a terribly fun game to play, but it was cool to go through the process of trying to balance it all out so it wasn't incredibly boring. Because the bigger snakes could eat the littler ones, once one snake got significantly bigger than the other one the game would never change from that point on. He'd always be big enough to steal from the little guy, so he could just tail him and break the game. To counter that, I had to introduce the idea of decay, whereas if a big snake didn't eat a food unit in x number of seconds, he'd lose one off the back of the tail. The number of seconds that would pass before he'd lose one was determined by how big the snake was. The bigger the snake, the more often he'd have to eat. I had to change it so that instead of dying when a snake ran into a wall, they'd just lose a piece of their tail. So then I had to deal with the original food spawning at random locations, as well as decay pieces that were edible and wall-break pieces that were edible. It got a little complicated, and I never did finish it the way I wanted to because I shot way too high into the sun.

See, around this time my brothers (who are both programmers) were working at a call center together. Work was tedious and incredibly boring, so they decided to program a little game to keep them occupied. They programmed dots, the game where you make a grid of dots and then take turns drawing single lines to make boxes. He who has the most boxes at the end wins. The challenge they had was that they were obviously on separate computers, so the game had to bust out some networking so they could play against each other. It had to be passive enough that when they were actually in a call they could ignore it, but when it was ringing or on dead time, they could open it and play. They also needed it to run undetected, just in case supervisors came by or anything like that, so they made it fairly sneaky. It took quite a bit of troubleshooting, because they had never worked with the winsock protocol before (that's how your make your applications network around in VB) and they were used to C++ instead of VB. In the end they pulled it off, and it was way cool.

So, I saw that, and I also saw that playing multi-player snake on one keyboard was super super tedious. One person would have the arrows as their classic control system, but someone else would have to use WASD, and that got cramped really fast. So I'm thinking, hey, they pulled the networking off, why can't I? So I tried it, and had a lot of preliminary success. I ran into problems later though, problems that would lead to the demise of the whole project.

I figured out how to do TCP/IP connections (the TCP/IP protocol, by the way, just celebrated it's 25th birthday on the 1st of January) through winsock after much trial and agony, and so I was effectively communicating through the network. The problem that I eventually ran into though was that I was sending a ton of messages really really fast. The snakes were moving squares a few times a second, and I was supposed to be sending their location on the board across the wires every single time. TCP/IP is great for sending bytes and all that, but it's a fairly secure deal, so it'll send the message to the receiving party, the party will get it and send a message back saying they got it, and then the original sender will acknowledge that they got the acknowledgment. It happens incredibly fast, but just not that many times a second fast.

There is a protocol that would have done it for me, UDP, but I didn't know how to use it. I kept trying with TCP/IP for a really long time, but got frustrated and quit when the time was right. I tried to start the project again a million times, but never did get back into it.

So why the long story about snake? It was an important era of my life, and it's interesting to look back and think that I really wanted to be a programmer one day. It was cool to see that I was actually working towards my career goals way back in the day. I did invest quite a bit of time into learning it, and I'm happy about that.

I never did graduate from VB. The plan was that I'd learn visual basic first, because it's extremely easy to jump into, and then I'd graduate to C++ and eventually Java. I tried to learn C++ at least twice, but never got past the first week of the "learn C++ in 21 days" book.

I'm not going to be a programmer, but I don't think that any of the time I spent learning C++ or tooling around in VB was wasted. See, programming is so cool because it's extremely mathematic. Everything must follow the rules exactly. There is absolutely no room for any creative interpretation on the part of the computer. You have to be exact, or things don't happen the way you want them to.

The stuff I was doing in VB gave me a lot of trouble with that initially. Because I was dealing with little retro games, I'd start with a box, and that box would generally move depending upon stuff that you did. In VB, a box is only identified by it's name, height, width, and the locations of it's top side and left side. The bottom and right side were never really stored as info. That ended up being way cool, because in order for me to find out when my box would run it's right side into a line I had drawn, I'd have to draw an equation up that says something like

if box1.left + box1.width = line1.x1 then...

With snake and a few of the other things I did, there was a ton of that going on. I had to check and see if the snake1's head's left was the same as snake2's head's left, and then make sure their tops were both lined up, and then I'd say that yeah, one just ate the other. It really wasn't that big of a deal, but it really forced my brain to begin to visualize everything very spatially and algebraically. When I'd go through and debug, I'd look at those lines of code and have to figure out what was going on weeks after I'd initially written the particular line. Box1.left + 135 wasn't just the right side of the box to me, it was literally the box's left x-coordinate plus 135 units. I got pretty smooth at understanding how that baby was running.

And to this day I blame much of my love and understanding of algebra on those days spent messing around in VB. Having to manipulate variables, and then having to use variables to manipulate variables, got that stuck in my head before I ever took an algebra class.

So that's reason one that I love my days programming, because it made me love and appreciate and understand algebra.

The second reason I love and appreciate those days is because of the problem solving skills that it instilled in me. I think that's one of the main draws of programming to me, the fact that you're always (well, not always....) faced with problem solving. Successful programmers are those that are clever problem-solvers.

It was really quite cool, because I'd be faced with an issue, and I'd only have x many tools that I knew how to use, and I'd have to find a way around it. I remember when I first wanted to find out where the bottom of the box really was. I could see it when I ran the application just fine, but there was no way that I knew how to say "When the bottom of the box hits that line, oh boy, do something good!" I remember considering putting an invisible line one box length above the line I was shooting for, so I could just say "When the top of the box hits the invisible line, then do something great!" It wasn't until Michael showed me that I could just solve for the bottom of the box algebraically that I really got it. I'll admit, I didn't think of that one. It was cool to see though, that as time went on, I started needing less and less input from my mentor to solve problems. Problems would loom, and I'd look at my toolbox and then patch seven of them together in order to solve the problem. It was a beautiful thing.

Rahaha, I'm remembering all of this stuff for the first time in years, so excuse me while I go giddy over it.

I remember when I was working on snake, trying to get around the fact that the TCP/IP thing was holding me up. I had been sending the location of the snake across the wires every single "turn", or time the snake moved. So, a fifth of a second would go by, and one app would say to the other app, "Hey, snake 1's top is at 0," and another would say, "and snake 1's left is at 100. Have a great day." The other app would respond in kind. I'd grab those messages and then the app would say "Alright, put snake 1's top at 0 and snake 1's left at 100. I am having a great day." And that made a lot of sense to me. Both app's needed to know where the snakes were, so I was telling them. It was basic, and it worked aside from the time constraint.

But once the time constraint kicked in, I realized that I needed to find a way to send fewer messages that told the same story. I thought about it a lot, and realized that I could actually send one message, just a big old number, and then have the receiving app decode it to make sense. I'd take all the info and put it into a number in a certain order. I'd take the top, we'll say it was 100, and the left, we'll say it was 300, and make a number like 100300, which is just the two values put right next to each other, and send that instead. The app would get that number in the mail and divide it by 1000. It'd take the answer and from there know that 100.3 meant that the top was at 100. I'd then do a mod division to deal with the 300, and figure out the left was at 300. It was brilliant, and I effectively cut my message sending in half.

I was really proud of that, but it still didn't solve the problem. I kept thinking about it, and I figured out later that instead of always sending the exact coordinates to the other guy, I could figure out both of their starting positions and just say what direction they're traveling in. That was a pretty big breakthrough, and I was way proud of it. I'd just assign a direction a number value. 1 was up, 2 was right, 3 was down, and 4 was left. Any time it changed a message would be sent across, and the app would send it in the right direction.

That solution still didn't do the trick, but it was cool because it was a completely separate and foundationally different solution to my previous attempt. Before I had been using math to simplify a complex message set, and now I was using logic to simplify a complex necessity and make it a much simpler problem to tackle.

For having nothing to talk about, this post is extremely long.

The moral of my story? Programming helped me be a better person. I'm more able to solve problems, and my spatial reasoning is much sharper than it would be had I not done it. I am extremely glad that I did it. Even though I never plan on becoming a programmer, I know that the time I spent programming will help me in my schooling and in my professional career. The things I did back in junior high are still having a big effect on how I'm doing right now.

And I think that's really the thought I've been hitting against most of this evening. Every time I'm asked to make a list of clubs I've participated in or anything like that, I'm always reminded of how diverse and rich it's all been. I really have had a lot of opportunities to gain skills through this public education system. Nerd team, journalism, engineering (*cough* slave labor *cough*), cross country, jazz band, choir stuff, seminary council, PLC, carpet work, etc. etc. It's interesting to note how very much "all over the place" I've been. I ran for four years, but I'm not doing it this year. Nerd team would have made me an amazing FBLA kid, but I never transitioned into it. I worked on the trombone for a lot of years, but am no longer doing it. I did journalism is junior high, but not in high school. I sing now, who saw that coming?

One could accuse me of being a quitter, or perhaps a flip-flopper. But I don't see it like that. I love the fact that I've learned so much from each of these activities. I think that I take a lot away from them, still. I wonder if I'd stayed with stage crew in high school, how things would be now. Would I have taken even more from it? Yeah, probably.

But I think that's my style, my approach. Get skills all over the place instead of being profoundly good at one thing. Yeah, it does mean that I'm not profoundly good at "one thing", but maybe I can solve problems that require more than "one thing." I think it's a bit like the snake thing. There are problems that are going to come up, and there are going to be a lot of ways to get around them. I have a toolbox here that allows me to bust out any number of skills and traits I've picked up over the years and apply them. The best part is that I'm able to tape skills to other skills in the event that I need to.

Maybe it's that I've been working on that application today, and maybe I'm just trying to sell myself as a good investment for Micron. I kind of feel like I'm making my own sales pitch, not gonna lie. But you know, it's been good to write about it. It's blogaday, I'm allowed to go a little tangential, aren't I? But maybe that's something that I could do, just go through and talk about each one of those activities I used to do and what I learned and what it meant to me. I always thought I could write a book about nerd team. I just wrote a novella about programming, why not?

So maybe you'll see some of that in some future days. We've got a ton left, we'll see what comes up.

Moral of the story? I've been picking things up for a really long time. The things I've picked up in the past are helping me out right this very minute.

More importantly though, this teaches me that I need to be picking things up today. If what I did back then was so important, what I'm doing today is going to be incredibly important tomorrow. I need to get out there and stretch myself, like I've done in the past. I think that I've been able to do a little bit of that with mads this year and council and some various other stuff.

Oh how I love self-improvement. I know I'm not that great at it, but I can't help but feel happy when I work on it.

Ladies and gentlemen, this has been blogaday day six. Thanks for reading. I hope things are well for you all. If there's anything I can do, let me know. I do appreciate you all, for the people that you are. While I'm not positive I'm aware of all the people who read my blog, I've got a pretty idea of who's out there. You guys are cool, and I appreciate you. Keep up the good work.

Blogaday 5 of 20

(8) Day Five, stayin' alive. (8)

Today's the first day that might break blogaday. It's a school night that is on the tails of a school morning. I can't stay up till a billion writing this baby. It's already a bit late, but I think that writing this post is important. I'm making this blogaday work. It's important to me, and I want to talk about why.

There's a quote out there that's attributed to Aristotle that says,

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

I agree with the quote. If there's one thing that I think I've done to put me where I am today, it's been the habits that I've developed. I'm not saying that I've got anything intense going on here, but I've made it a habit to brush my teeth every morning and night. I believe that this habit has been the root cause of my lack of teeth problems for the last 9 years of my life. Good habits yield good results.

Blogaday is a bit like that. I have a fairly extensive night-time routine. It has changed a bit since Christmas, due to the introduction of Crest White Strips (which I love, by the way). Blogaday has also modified it, but the concept remains the same. I take my contacts out, toss in the white strips, sit down to post, write in my journal, read my scriptures, read two other books, brush my teeth, and then go to bed. Before the break, it was just teeth brush, journal, scriptures, bed.

That's one thing I'm really excited about, the expansion on my night time routine. Yeah, it's longer, and therefore means less sleep if I do a poor job managing things. But it also means more progress for me. I have really been loving these past few weeks' nights.

I feel really good about this blogaday business because it's stretching me. It's forcing me to write something every single night, regardless of the situation. I've made the commitment, so I will write.

This sort of thing has been really successful for a lot of "artists" over the past few years, especially with new media. Jaron had a post that talked about how he's going to do something creative every single day. It's a brilliant idea, and I'm positive that it'll make him a more creative guy.

Jonathan Coulton is somewhat of a troubadour. He used to be a programmer, but quit his job and decided to do music full time instead. To make a name for himself, he started a project called "Thing a Week", whereas he'd release a new song on his website every single week. 52 songs in a year. A few of his songs went pretty big on the Internet, and by the end of the year he had made a good name for himself online. He gives a lot of his music away for free, and licenses most if not all of it under creative commons, which lets other people make stuff with it really easily. This approach to listeners has allows him to make a living doing nothing but his music. I admire the guy because he took a new approach to his industry and nailed it big time.

He's a talented artist, that's for sure. His Thing a Week project stretched him and made him a better artist, but at the same time it was getting his name out there and sending out a product. He was nailing several birds with one weekly stone.

Scott Johnson of ExtraLife has recently started his Sketch-a-day for 2008. He is going to make a basic sketch a day, and post it up. Scott's already a successful webcomic-dude and runs a very entertaining blog. His project is for himself and his community, as he's going to stretch his artistic capabilities and give all his readers something new to look at every single day. I have no doubt that his sketch-a-day will make him more popular and successful.

Looking at those two examples, one that we've seen go full circle and be successful, and another just starting, we see that both of them are giving their talents out for free. It costs people nothing. It's a brilliant business model. By getting their names out for the world to see, people will recognize their mad skills and hire them away. Popular Science commissioned Coulton to do a few songs for their sep. 2006 magazine. Scott is currently doing a lot of commission artwork for fans and all that other cool stuff. Giving out their stuff for free has been smooth for both of them. It helps the community have some fun, it helps the artists get better, and it helps the artists make money down the line. It's a smooth business model.

That's not to say that everything ought to be given away for free, that's just to say that giving some stuff away for free isn't a terrible idea.

Side note ~This post is interesting because it's pulling from three sources. Coulton's life story, Extralife, and Zenhabits, which is a very good site. Most of my posts just come straight from me. ~ End side note.

So here I am, not an artists. I recognize that I'm not an artist. I do like to think, however, that I'm a little bit of a thinker. I know that my life story isn't very similar to these other guys', but I like to think that what I'm doing here is a tiny bit similar.

I'm taking my supposed talent, thinking, and doing it once every day for at least 20 days. I'm throwing it up online, and I'm giving it away for free. Now I don't go so far as to assume I'm giving something substantial to the community like the artists do, and I don't expect this to ever come back directly to make me money.

But here I am, at my computer, stretching my limits every day. I'm hoping to become a better thinker through blogaday. I'm hoping to get my name out a little bit more. I do expect traffic to increase through blogaday. I'm hoping to entertain my very very small community, at least a little bit.

Blogaday is important for me because I see it as a tool of self improvement. I think that writing every night is going to help me better understand myself and the world that I live in. It's going to help me get better at expressing my thoughts and communicating with others.

Blogaday is everything that blogging was and is for me. I used to post very frequently, and it feels good to be back. I feel like the sophomore version of me again a little bit.

Blogging like this feels good. I'm very happy that I'm doing it. It's been doing good things for me, and I hope that it can do at least a little bit of good for the community. It's good to think.

So, here I am, signing out for the evening. I've thought a bit, and I'm about to hit the publish button. I hope that this post finds you well. Good luck with everything you guys are facing, we're gonna make it through all this. It's been a spectacular day, and I'm just as excited for tomorrow. Let's take this baby to the moon.

Blogaday 4 of 20

Day four. The last day of break-nights. Tonight's ability to produce a post was a given. Tomorrow night will be the real test.

Two of the four allies have produced year posts. Jaron's was a halfyear post, but I'm giving him credit anyways for his tenacity. Nate did an outstanding job, and I'm hoping that Nickmo will do one soon as well.

One thing that I find interesting is where our years overlapped. I'm yet to post my year-post, and it won't be taking the same form as the other allies', but there are a lot of times when we can see our lives affecting each other.

For example, three of the four allies worked on the literary magazine. That means three of the four allies hung out with the freakin' coolest leprechaun the world has ever seen every other day.

Two of the four allies were madly in love with our good friend Courtney. It might be three, if Nickmo has been holding out on us.

Three of us have suffered at least minor crushes on another single girl at one point or the other through the year.

All four of us really did try to make the alliance fly.

Three of us worked on the "Audacious Plan" for sweethearts.

All of us went to at least one region dance.

All of us have been in Parrish's class during 07.

Three of us are in concert choir this year.

Two of us are currently writing sonnet cycles.

All of us did some form of fiction during 07. Jaron wrote a novel (sick kudos, by the way).

There's a ton more, obviously. I just think it's pretty funny on the girl thing.

It's pretty cool, considering how diverse the four of us are. I mean yeah, we're four guys from the same highschool, but as far as personalities go, we're all over the place. All of us are in one way or another musical. Jaron's a rockstar, nick compws's bad guys, and Nate's in love with a man named Enesco. I pretend to sing.

So why all the talk of the allies? Just because I find the fact that we can call ourselves the Allies really really cool. I'm friends with all of the other guys, but being Allies ties us together where otherwise we might not be tied together at all. We haven't necessarily done anything as Allies for a really long time, but I still think we're cool. With a name like that, how can we not be cool?

So what's the news? It's 2008, and we've got a lot of skill between the four of us. It's a wide open world out there, and I'm looking for a way to leave a mark on it with my Allies. We've got an official six months before graduation. All four of us are in town till at least then, right? I'm thinking we need to pull off at least one awesome thing before the school year is up. You boys in?

Blogaday 3 of 20

Day Three. So far, so good.

Long breaks from school are always interesting to me. They're not my favorite. Call me a heretic for saying it, but long breaks always mess me up. I love the idea of having a break, and getting away from school and the common grind for a bit is a necessary deal. There's a line for me though that long breaks always seem to hit, and after that point breaks just drag me down a bit.

Not that I'm saying I hate this break, because I surely don't. I'm just observing that during long breaks I tend to be sad more often than during school time or short breaks.

What's the underlying psychology there? I think it's two things. The first being that I tend to define my value with the work that I do. If I'm working hard and moving forward with life I feel really good about myself and the world around me. If I am stagnant, as is so common during long breaks, I start to get lazy and sad and less optimistic.

The second psychological part, which may or may not have anything to do with psychology, is just about lines. I think most things are about lines and balance. The difficulty is striking the balance between work and recreation, progress and relaxation. It's generally easy to find the line during school time, but during breaks I always overshoot the whole sleep till noon part. Lines are important.

~

I played a ton of basketball this morning, and that was incredibly fun. I got up and at 9 played ball with my dad and brothers for an hour. It was a good time, just classic half court stuff, good times. At 10 I went and played on the scout team against the sophomores at the high school. The assistant coach decided that his sophomores needed a chance to play against people because they hadn't had a real game during the break, so he called one of his buddies who was assigned to round up guys to come play. There were a bunch of guys that had graduated a few years ago, lots of guys I knew, so it was fun. I was the only kid still going to high school on the scout team, but I played fairly decent. It was really fun to get out there and play hard intense ball against a real team. Granted they're sophomores, and haven't played together too much yet, but it was still cool. My team had obvious size advantage, and we were working together pretty well. After seven quarters the score was 75-75, but I still figure we won. Assistant coach wanted to teach instead of win, and since he was on our team he managed to *lose* the ball to his sophomores pretty often. It was still a great time though, and good exercise. It's good to be out there with good people playing good ball on a full size court. I can't wait for Junior Jazz.

That was a long paragraph. Hmm.

So, I do want to do a post that recaps 2007. This year has been incredibly important. I'm not sure what words really describe it. Heavy might be my favorite right now. Crucial, maybe? Game-changing? I dunno, 2007 was a really really big deal. Important, for sure.

And because it's so important, it's going to be important for me to understand it better. I don't currently understand it the way I'd like to. I know it all happened, and I've got a decent idea on the timeline, but I want to sit down and analyze it for sure. That's going to involve some digging through my journal, but I'm excited about that.

So maybe soon you get a good year post. I hope so. If not a good one, at least a few thoughts on it.

One day left of break. That's a cause for celebration, but also a little bit of worry. That means tomorrow is going to be homework and getting to bed early. One of the great things about break is that nights are endless. They can be exetended as long as I need them to be. Night time is perhaps the best time of day for me. It's when I get to settle down and write and study and all that great stuff by myself. Even if the rest of the day has been terrible, I get to pause and make some progress late at night. Break has allowed me to spend forever doing that, and I love it. I spent about a solid hour a few nights ago writing in the journal, and that's not something that I get to do often. I've been reading more and cross referencing everything. I've had time to post, which has been great. I'm hoping to be able to preserve that once school starts back up. I think if I start "going to bed" earlier, say around 11 or 10, I can keep the current style night time up. I've averaged post 3AM for the whole break, and I need to at least slide that to 1AM for school. So I've got some work to do on that, but it won't be impossible.

January is looking good. We've got some good stuff coming up. Junior Jazz starts this Saturday. We've got a morningside coming up for seminary. That means that one, we'll get a cool morningside, and two that we'll have some good stuff that we need to do as a council. That's always good news. Second term ends, and with it comes the semester break. I get to go hang out with sophomores,w00t. Sterling Scholar portfolios need to wrapped up by the end of the month, and a few scholarships I'm working on applying for are deadlined. With any luck we'll get a frisbee friday in too.

It feels like a new life is starting once school starts, honestly. I'm working on being ready for it. I feel like the old and tired of school version of me laid down sometime during the break, and now I'm ready to get back and hit it all really hard. I've got five months to really thrive out there. There's much work to be done to be ready for it, but I want to make it happen.

I've only got one shot at January 08. There will be at least 17 blog posts for January, that's pretty smooth. I really think that blogaday will help the new year start right. I'm glad that I decided to go for this.

So, ladies and gentlemen, merry Tuesday. I hope things find you well. I've got me some study to do, some sleep to get under my belt, and then a full day to get some homework taken care of. I've got time to get things in order before I launch myself at the rest of my senior year. We've made the virtual half-way point. Master Chief said it well, let's finish this fight.

Blogaday 2 of 20

It is but day two.

But what a day two it is!

I have previously pondered the question of, "When did I start being me?" I believe I even wrote about it here before. Much of this may be recap then. I'm going to do it anyways.

That question is so interesting to me because it is entirely dependent upon the way in which we choose to characterize me. Do we characterize me based upon an eternal identity, like some sort of super social security number? Am I me based upon my lineage, my parents, my friends? Am I me based upon the education I've received, the titles I've aspired to?

I love the question because it reminds me that I take my identity from the actions I pursue. More than who I am, it's the way that I am. I find it refreshing that decisions are what help me know who I am.

So when did I start being me? How long have I been making decisions the way that I'm currently making decisions? How long will I continue to make decisions like this?

I think that I'm constantly changing. Who I am, based upon the criteria I've looked at, is never the same two days in a row. Minute to minute I believe I'm a different, albeit only slightly, person. Factors like my health, the amount of sleep I got last night, my hydration levels, the mood of my friends and associates, the weather, all factor into the way I make decisions, which factors into who I am.

So what is the struggle? I believe the struggle is to find out who we want to be, and then, above all, to be exactly like that. To be just like that, even when you're thirsty. To be like that even when your throat hurts and you've got a slight fever. To be like that even when things didn't go well in calculus. The struggle, for me at least, is to be the person I want to be no matter the circumstances. It's not too difficult to be me when everything is coming up roses. It's the trying times that help define who I am. It's good to be a good guy when the sun is shining, but who are you going to be through the perilous night?

Integrity and congruence and persistence, those are the keys to the answer that I know I'm looking for. Integrity because I've got to know who I want to be, and I've got to stick with it. Integrity makes me happy to be one person, and only one person. Integrity won't let me be two people. I've just got to be a heck of a whole person to make it stick. Congruence because I've got to be the same outside as I am inside. Fenton said it well when she spoke of congruence being the key to healthy self-esteem. It is when we find ourselves living in discord between what is true within us and what we project without us. Be we happy or sad inside, let us be happy or sad respectively on the outside. There is no peace when we are so clearly lying to ourselves and others. If I am going to be me, I have to be the real me. There can not be an inner me and an outer me. I must be me throughout, or there can be no real me at all. Persistence because the sine graph of life reminds us all that we must remember. There are good days and bad days, and I must work through them all. Persistence because bad days will inevitably follow the good days. Persistence because I want to be me on the ups and the downs, no matter the amplitude. I will rise and I will fall, but persistence and the sweat of my brow will keep me me.

Blogaday 1 of 20

Hey everybody, Happy Saturday.

I've decided to do another blogaday. This is number three, I think. The past two were fairly successful, lasting a week each. This one aims to be more ambitious, something like twenty days. I expected to roll this baby out with a big announcement and some super cool post, but I'm not really in the mood for all that right now. In fact, maybe I'm not even in the mood to start blogaday 20 tonight.

So, that's what we'll do. I'll see what this post does. If I post tomorrow, blogaday is officially on. If I don't, it's postponed till later. I like that plan.

Yep. It's just not flowing out tonight like I'd like it to. Perhaps it's a combination of factors, but I think that I'm going to get some sleep and try again tomorrow. Tomorrow looks like a pretty great day.

So, therefore verily, I wish you all the best. I hope things are going alright. It feels like I've been gone for quite a while, but I'm excited to get back. Breaks do that to me I guess.

It's time to get back to life. Let's do this thing.

Sonnet 4

I feel left out.

IV

Countdown to Region Dance:

3 days. Score it!

Porpoise

I fear that I've used that title before. I have that fear a lot, it seems. Titles are important to me. They mean so much and so little. A title can go a long way. This title reminds me of dolphins. But the post has nothing to do with dolphins. It's called porpoise because porpoise sounds like purpose, and this post has no specific purpose. I mean sure, it has a purpose. The purpose is for me to say what it is I have to say. But I don't necessary have an overriding theme for the post. There's no official outline of what I'm going to say, so there's no official "purpose". Purpose didn't seem like a good title, and I might have used it before anyways. That's why I chose porpoise, because it sounds like purpose.

Yeah, titles are pretty cool.

So what's in the news? Merriam Webster just named "w00t" as their word of the year. That doesn't mean that it's going into the dictionary, but it does mean that it's got a better chance in the future. A lot of people are a little upset about it all. "w00t" isn't necessarily even a word, judging by the fact that it's spelled with two zeroes and all that. People have come to expect something epic and relevant from Merriam-Webster's word of the year. A few years ago they had "truthiness" as the word. It was penned by Stephen Colbert, and represented not only the gap between what one perceives and what is reality, but a culture that was willing to reject the shackles of grammar for effective meaning. It was a good word.

But what does w00t really mean and represent? When I first heard the news that it was selected as word of the year I was pretty overjoyed. I use w00t all the time. It's plastered all over this blog. It's a gamer term, and I take pride in having that whole culture be a part of my upbringing. I am the way I am, at least in a small way, because of the battle.net forums.

I've begun to wonder if it really ought to be the word of the year though. It does represent a cultural shift, obviously, towards a new generation with their own slang that is influenced heavily by recreation that our parents never even fathomed. The world is changing, and our language has a tendency to change with it. w00t encapsulates that.

I think one of the things that turns so many people off from w00t being the word of the year is the relatively small community that it's associated with. If an individual is over the age of 25 and doesn't have teenage children or play video games, he or she has probably never heard of it.

Most journalists are over 25, don't have teenagers, and don't play games. They therefore run about slamming on Merriam for selecting w00t.

I tend to think that w00t wasn't that bad of a choice. Yeah, a lot of folks out there haven't heard of it. A lot of folks are still running around with the idea that anybody that says w00t is some pasty LCD-monitor-tanned weirdo without friends. I've got to wonder about people like that. It's generally considered bad form for journalists to generalize and insult an entire group of people with no regard. I think it's hilarious that they're doing it to gamers. I suppose they figure none of us read the paper.

So here we are. Apparently I'm a recluse with no tan that plays D&D all day long simply by the virtue that I use w00t. Bahahahaha.

I feel pretty good about myself. I know that I'm a pretty decent person. To that, I say w00t.

And so, therefore verily, I'm going to set about on a quest. I'm making it my person goal to prove that those of us who w00t are not all social rejects. One day, when I'm rich, I'm going to complete one heck of a business deal. I'm going to shake hands with some other moderately wealthy individuals. We'll hold a press conference announcing how rich we all are.

And I'll say w00t. That's what I'll say. I'll say it right into the NYTimes reporter's audio recorder. Maybe I'll even spell it out. Or, I could say something smooth, like "w00t! Business merger FTW!" and see what they make of that.

Because I feel like a fairly successful person. Don't take this for arrogance, but I know that I'm not a failure at life. I'm out to prove to all the naysayers that I'm not scum just because I say w00t. I'm going to do it.

Does w00t deserve to be the word of the year? I don't know, really. Merriam didn't just make an executive decision. There was voting and all that good stuff. There are 20 or so other words that were runner ups. But here we are, it's 2007 and w00t is the word of the year. The issue to me isn't it's WOTY status, it's the hilarious insults being tossed my way by the ignorant press.

Now, really, most of the insults have come from columns, not actual stories. Most stories have been very objective. But all you column writers. You just watch out. Cause you're gonna get pwned by a man that says w00t. Oh snap!

Need

I find myself wondering what to do next. This week has been an entertaining one, albeit an entertaining one lacking in the progress department.

But here I am, on saturday, wanting to make progress. But I don't even know where to start!

And so I think I need a list. A list of things I want to be and things I want to do, and the things I need to do in order to get there. I worked on some scholarship apps today. That was good gravy. I figure I've got a decent shot at some cool ones.

But yeah, I need a list of things I need to get done so I can get working on them. I also need to post more. And higher quality and all that.

Yep.

Placeholder!

A good post is coming tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy a picture that's been posted elsewhere, but is still pretty cool. Much love for the fence.

College Race - Update

I like to keep tabs on what colleges are sending my mail. I think it's an interesting business, this college mail stuff.

In any event, BYU, as of today, is now in first place in the category of "Coolest things I've ever received in the mail from a college."

They sent, in their trademark blue bubble-wrapped envelope, a CD.

"Echoes of the Sabbath" is their promotional CD. It showcases the best pieces of all of their choral groups.

This CD is amazing. There are 13 tracks. Of those 13, five of the songs are personal favorites. Every other song is rapidly climbing the list.

I got to hand it to BYU. They sent a DANG effective piece of recruitment. I'm very attracted to the music programs at BYU. Not that I'm a real musical guy, but being in men's chorus would be one of the coolest things in the world.

Maybe BYU sent this to everybody on their list, I don't really know. Maybe they flagged me as a music loving guy somehow. Either way, they nailed it. I had no idea, but apparently this was what I wanted for Christmas.

Yeah, I'm very impressed with their CD. And I love BYU for sending it to me. Will I go to their school? Yeah, probably not. But heck, they've got a better chance because of this amazing CD. Thumbs up for you guys.

What I Want to Be

I've always been fascinated with my own future. Recently, though, it's become much more of a concern to me. I've been thinking about it a lot. I'll admit, I fear I'm more worried about the financial aspect of it all than I should be. That stuff is very important, but I don't believe it's the most important. I've been trying to remedy that. I want to try something a little different tonight. It's been a while since I've made a list, and I think that that's just what's in order right now. What follows is an on-the-fly list of how I want to be when I grow up. We'll see how it goes.

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• I want to park my car really far away in parking lots. I'm very capable of walking, and I don't mind the cold. It's good exercise for me, and I can save the good spots for old ladies.
• I want to run in the mornings or evenings. I want to hit Jordan Parkway or some equivalent until I'm back to being strong, then go trail running in the mountains. There's nothing better than a trail run during a summer morning.
• I want to keep my email inbox clean, and respond to people in a super timely manner. I want to correspond with friends.
• I want to drink 1 percent milk.
  
• I want to carry a water bottle everywhere that I go. Kangen 9.5 baby
• I want to be a real blogger. I want to keep this blog alive, but I want another one to run like a business. I'm not sure what I'll write about yet, but I'd love to do it.
• I want to be one of those guys that trades work for work. "Yeah, I'll do your roof if you'll fix my car"
• I want to be one of those guys that goes to the library. I want to use my tax dollars to the utmost.
• I want to be trained in first aid and CPR to the max. I want to be confident in my abilities to respond when necessary.
• I want to plant trees.
  
• I want to have hazelnut bushes and fruit trees in my yard. I want to use that as often as possible. I want to bottle and I want to share.
  
• I want to recycle.
• I want to compost like there's no tomorrow. I'll have such a heap; it'll be a beautiful thing.
• I want to ride my bike whenever possible. Bikes are good for me and the environment. I know that if I ride my bike, I'll be a happier person.
• I want a tomato garden.
• I want a green roof. You know, a garden on my roof. It'll be isolated and so serene.
  
• I want to mow my lawn with a push-mower. I want a state-of-the-art manual mower. I love mowing the lawn.
• I want to utilize google docs, google calendar, and all those other great and free google services.
• I want to take full advantage of that which is free.
• I want to donate money to Granite Districts Academic League fund. I want to make sure that nerd games never stop.
• I want to go to community plays during the summer at outdoor amphitheaters. Same goes for concerts in parks.
• I want to genuinely help people.
• I want to go on my kids' field trips.
• I want to be one of my kids' field trips.
• I want to do 20 push ups every night.
• I want solar panels on the roof (not in the garden). I want my house making money when no one is home.
• I want to shave every day.
  
• I want the doors and windows of my house open as often as possible. There's nothing better than fresh air.
• I want to read books.
  
• I want to do projects outside of work.
• I want a strong extended family. My family now and the in-laws.
  
• I want to surprise people with good things.
• I want to have a piano in my house.

I'm confident that there's more. I will add to the list as life goes on. Kind of a fun list to do.

Those are all long term kinds of things. Maybe I'll do a short term one soon.

It's important to realize that the existence of this list doesn't really mean much of anything. It would be remarkable if I could pull all of that off. It would be remarkable if I could pull almost any of that list off. But hey, it's how I want to be, and it's my blog. Sue me.

There it is. What do you wanna be when you grow up?