Stop the Negative Vibes

The world is full of negative people, and we need to fight them, or we
will end up becoming them.

If someone talk down about everyone else to you, they probably talk
down about you to everyone else, so stand up for everyone else, put an
end to the negativism. Add a little optimism to the world.

Investing in Life

In my high school sophomore math class, I remember learning about compounding interest. It seemed totally boring to me, until we got to the word problems. The problem asked about what the difference would be in how much money someone would have if they started saving when they were 18 vs 20, and I was floored. The difference was so huge. That year I started saving money.

The concept of investing is a good way to illustrate something in life that is hard to explain. So hard, in fact, that we don't usually notice it -- and if we do notice it, we don't understand it.

The way we live our lives is an investment in our future, and in our happiness. It's not as obvious as our financial investments, It's not like we get a statement in the mail every month, and there is no annual taxes to force us to look at how we've done this year.

Like investments, the good that we do now is not just put away and buried in the ground. It is an investment, and it grows and has returns. When we do nice things, it makes the people around us happy, and it promotes the behavior. Often times, this results in more happiness in your own life.

In this same metaphor, there is also debt. Doing mean things is like spending our money. And we can easily spend too much and go into debt. Like with card debt, we have to pay interest on what we owe, and what we have doesn't do as far because we're too far in the whole, and are busy just trying to break even. When we build a mean world around us, and we try to start being happy, you will be brought down by the mean nature of the world you've created. It's not like you can just start being happy, and the world will change. You need to keep working at it for quite some time before you break even and can start saving.

Moral of the story? Start promoting happiness now. Don't wait till you are older. If you build a bad world, you have to live in it, but if you build a happy world, it will hold you up even when you feel down for a little bit. Help to build a world that will help you live happily!

Happy Post

I promised a happy post a little while ago, and I never delivered :) but that's only because I've been incredibly busy being absurdly happy.

well some of the time anyway :)

I had such good luck this week. I brought my car into the shop, because the check engine light was on, and the mechanic told me that the problem was extreme, and that there was no reason to repair it: that I might as well sell my car for scrap. This news was so bad that I didn't even react bad. I just kind of laughed it off as incredibly bad luck. The funny thing is this: it was good luck, in disguise.

I went down to the shop and talked to the mechanic. He told me that the engine was misfiring, that the PSI on the cylinders was about 100 on 5 of them, and like 250 on 1. He told me that this meant that there was internal valve damage, and it would be major work, which would result in costs that were more than the blue book of my car... This is where it gets fishy: He offers to buy the car off me, and offers to "Help me out" with the bill I had with him, if I wanted to sell it to him. He indicated that the price he would give me was around $100. I told him I could sell the rims on ebay for more than that, and that I would spend a few days considering my options.

I called them up, and paid for their "Diagnostic" over the phone, and had a tow truck pick up my car and tow it to VW. When it got to VW, they told me that there was just a short in the spark plug wires and that it would be easy to fix.

They replaced the spark plug wires, and the coil, and gave it a full service for $1,600 (after tax).

Now here is how I see it: If I had brought it to VW from the start, I would have been mad that I had to pay 1,600. I would have thought that I was getting robbed... but thanks to the good people at Purcell's, I was expecting to be out about $10,000 on the deal, so $1,600 sounded great to me :)

How lucky is that?

positive?

I was looking at this blog, and I realized how hateful I sound. I rant on here pretty often, cause its a nice way to unleash, but I really don't have nearly as much hate in my heart as I would seem to from reading my own blog :)

I think my next post will be about something positive... More to come tomorrow.

Love My Work, Hate My Job

I love the work that I do, but I hate my job.

When I say that I like the work that I do, I don’t just mean software development, though that is part of it. I mean the exact work that I do at my current job. I develop applications for phones, I write code to integrate with google earth, I write web applications, I write windows applications, I get to do basically everything I want, and very little that I don’t. But even though I love EXACTLY what I am doing, I hate my job.

Many people around the office have this heir of entitlement. They all seem the think that though they don’t do anything, they should be promoted, respected, and empowered because they think they are somehow entitled to be. They have this idea that everything they do is right, and everything everyone else does is wrong, and everyone thinks they could do everyone else’s job better. They keep their noses in the air, and don’t listen to anything unless it comes out of their own mouth. If you have a killer idea, they don’t like it until they repeat it and coin it as their own.

I think we all know and hate people like this, but through some freak occurrence, they all ended up working here. Maybe it is this place that changes them.

When I started, all I wanted was what I had, plus a little raise every year. But I find that the more time I spend here, and the more I am attacked by these people, the more I become one of them in defense.

This attitude is poison, and it’s infected my entire office… thought I love the work I do, I need to exit before I let this poison take its toll on me. What a shame... give up something you love to protect yourself from becoming something you hate.

Rock 'n' Roll 1/2 Marathon

Well the 1/2 Marathon has come and gone... I always figured it would be harder than it was. You really don't have to kill yourself, it's not even as long as it sounds. That being said, the recovery time, would tell a conflicting story. My knees were pretty soar for about 5 days after the run.

About two and a half years ago, I trained for a 10k which is less than half the distance of this race. When I finished, I just kept running till I found a trash can, and I puked my guts out.

Now it's not like I've been training for 2.5 years straight for this, I only decided to run in it late November, and in the 1.5 months I had to train, I only ran 6 times (see the training log at the bottom of this entry). Though the training helped me build some muscle, endurance, and helped me find my style and pace, I think that there were two factors that really helped me out on this one that happened outside of the realm of training.

First off, I lost 40-50 lbs over the last 2 years, which makes a HUGE difference. When you can carry 170 lbs, compared to 220, its a world of difference.

Secondly, I read I book on how to run. It promoted the idea that running style was not all it was cracked up to be, that if you cared what people thought of you when they saw you, you would look better, but waste energy and cause injury. I focussed a lot of my training on finding as style that would keep my ankles, knees, and back comfortable, and would minimize the work I spent bobbing up and down. I tried to spend all my energy moving forward. I think that it really worked out. Day 4 of my training was the first day I figured out the style that I used in the marathon.

Anyway, it was a good experience, I don't feel as accomplished as I thought I would, but it felt pretty good to cross the finish line.

For anyone who is interested, here is my GPS training logs:

• Day 1 (4.93 mi, 0:50:02)
• Day 2 (5.86 mi, 0:53:58)
• Day 3
• Part 1 (?.?? mi, 0:30:01)
• Part 2 (?.?? mi, 0:35:04)
• Day 4 (9.88 mi, 1:50:14)
• Day 5 (3.68 mi, 0:38:48)
• Day 6 (5.90 mi, 0:58:49)
• The 1/2 Marathon (13.10 mi, 2:13:23)

A father's love could change the world

Father,

Help me show others the same love that you show me.

You do not reject me when I go against your will.

You never give up on me, even when I give up on myself.

You love me when I disappoint you.

You listen to me, even when I talk back.

You don't snap at me when I snap at you.

You don't fight back when I fight with you.

You will not hate me, even when it seems I hate you.

You bring peace into my life.

You love me just because I am.

Help me learn to love everyone, especially those who it is hardest to love, like a father loves his son.

Drama-rama

I think that many humans, especially in successful cultures, have reached a state where they have no real problems anymore.  But instead of being happy about it, we find ourselves bored, and wishing that more was going on.  So what do we do? 

We invent problems. 

I've started to use the term Drama-rama to describe this phenomenon.  People get so bored that they start to try to find anything to fight about or be down about just so they can escape the monotony of leading a dull life.  I think that the only solution is to this problem is to find something else to occupy our time.  I've found that when things get busy, during finals for example, the drama-rama effect is at an all time low.  When people are stressed naturally, we actually get along better.  It's a bit cynical, and I'm not 100% sure it's accurate, but I think that it can be seen often in my own life. 

Example:

At work one day a co-worker confronted everyone in the office trying to figure out who used the last paper towel in the bathroom.  It's a particularly small operation, and there is no staff to refill things like that, so we keep a stocked closet in the bathroom with plenty of refills.  I've personally been in the situation many times where there is no more TP or paper towels, and I have to grab them from the closet, but it never occurred to me to try to figure out who used the last one.  In this case, when I was confronted, even though I knew I was not the guilty party, I let myself feed this drama-rama and it turned into an epic argument about the ethics of what things in the office should be refilled, and why.  It was a totally bogus argument, but then again, being drilled about whether or not I was the guilty party was equally, if not more absurd.  :)

Things like this happen every day,  even as simple as giving weird looks, or wondering about why others are giving you weird looks, why do we do it?

Extremes vs Averages

History judges us by our extremes not our average. We don’t tell stories of normal moments, we tell stories of things that are better or worse than normal. Furthermore, we usually let the bad beat out the good.

If you hate your parents you would point out the moments when they were at their worst: the meanest things they ever said, and the worst things they ever did. You will tell them about the time they were stressed out and said they wish you weren’t born, or the time they slapped you for talking back to them. You won’t tell anyone about how they packed you a lunch every day in elementary school, or how they always picked you up from your sports, or how they always made sure you had clean clothes. You will judge them from their extremes, and you will tell stories that reflect those extremes.

Likewise if you love your parents, you would point out the greatest things they ever did for you, how they stayed up all night helping your build your science project because you waited till the last minute, how they loaned you the money you needed to get your first car, how they nursed you back to health when you got your wisdom teeth out.

We are a drama driven people, and though we should give people credit for their good moments, and deduct credit for their bad moments, that shouldn’t be how we judge them..

98% of the time we are at our average.

Pride Kills

It happens on every playground, and even when we are grown.  People advance at the cost of others.  From giving wet willies to spreading rumors, cc’ing the boss to fighting for covered parking, these prideful outbursts happen throughout our whole life.  We let ourselves think that we deserve more than other people.  We think that we’ve tried harder, or done more, or were born in a better place, and we blindly let our nature take over and go whatever it needs to do to prove our superiority.  If you think about this and say “No, that’s not me”, then you are exactly who I’m talking about.  You have such a high opinion of yourself that you are unwilling to even consider the fact that you might actually do the things I think of.  We all do, all the time, it’s basically something that you can’t avoid.  Even when you have the lowest self esteem in the world, you are still in the same boat.  You think, “Why is that person so secure? What do they have that I don’t have?”

 

Pride is so bad for that exact reason; it makes us blind to recognize it. 

 

Pride makes the world a bad place, because when people are oppressed, their pride will usually cause them to drop to the level of their oppressor, and fight fire with fire.  But they are usually so mad about it and get so worked up that they up the anti a little, and this creates a cycle that is very hard to break. 

 

What’s the solution?  Just have Sympathy for your oppressors, be kind to them, they are only doing this because it has been done to them, and they are blind to what they are doing.  If you let yourself be a victim, you can hold onto the hope that they will start too have sympathy for you.  That is a medicine that might cure this curse of human nature.

Apologies

Why do we need apologies? What is it that we hope to get? Why can't we just forgive anyway? Being mad causes a horrible cycle. when two people who are close to eachother fight, it causes both of them to be mad, and both of themdecide that they deserve an apology. But the truth is probably that they are both right. They both overreacted and they both owe eachother an apology. But in the mean time, while they are waiting for one, they will just look at eachother with mad eyes, thinking about why the other person won't give it to them. But if we just notice this, and stray from our nature, we might realize that these mean looks are worsening the situation. They have become the fuel that keeps this destructive fire blazing. It we changed out nature and just forgave them and put on a big smile instead, they would look at you, probably with a new confused look on their face, and the cycle would be broken. It might take a while to break through to the otherperson, but I imagine they will eventually come off their stuburn anger, and join you with a smile. Just break the cycle, otherwise a stupid little fight can become an epic battle.

And They're Off!

I have been keeping a blog on my own server for a while, but it just seems stupid to waste time maintaining my own server for this, when there are services like this that do it faster and better. I have no plans to move my old blog over, but if you know where it was, I have no plan of removing it.