David's Blog

Thanksgiving

Last night my family had Thanksgiving dinner. My parents are never all that concerned with celebrating special days on the exact day, so this year when some of my relatives said it would be more convenient to congregate on a Saturday than a Thursday they got what they wanted.
I'd have to say that it worked out pretty well this year... perhaps better than years past even. Stores were open so we could get last minute items more easily, there were fun events that the kids could all go to in town, and a huge rivalry to watch before dinner (but I don't want to talk about that.)
All-in-all it was a good Thanksgiving. I got two feasts this year... one with Joy's family and one with mine.

Dreamless nap

I took a nap today, which was rather noteworthy for me, because (A) I don't take "naps" normally and (B) I didn't dream at all during this nap. I remember showering, drying off, getting into bed, thinking about some things and then I was thinking about the very same things again, but hearing noises.
It turned out to be nearly an hour and forty-five minutes later. That was so surreal. I didn't even feel passage into or out of consciousness nor did I feel like I slept at all, except for feeling significantly better, which I didn't notice until after I got out of bed.

Nice...

I love being nice. It's so rewarding in so many small ways. It's especially fun to be nice and have it suprise people. It seems to me that people have come to expect teenagers to be lots of things, but nice, polite, graceful, charming, etc are usually not among those things. So, when I can do little things to make people happy in a way that catches them off gaurd I am really pleased too.
Today I woke up at 7:20 -something in the morning, I have a bit of a headache and I am tired, but I am in a really great mood, because I have already managed to make both my parents, my girlfriend, and over half a dozen people at Publix -- including a cashier who didn't seem too happy -- happier!
As Joy said, "You're on a roll this morning." I really am... so I am going to get back to that now.

Sleep Deprivation and Longing

Over the past year or more I've noticed that when I am suffering from mild to severe sleep deprivation I become prurient and long for physical attentions with strong emotional undertones. Basically, when I'm drowsy I'm roused and wanting affections of the emotional and intimate sort.

I think that this is an interesting observation, and it was something that I hadn't really had a chance to discuss with anyone other than Joy until today. Lo! A friend of mine said he's noticed the very same thing. What a choice bit of knowledge this observation yields.
Now, whether to use it for good or for awesome...

I'll be trying to use it for good until further notice.

Natural Citrus Listerine

I went to Publix last night for a typical grociery run, which included toothpaste, and I saw this new thing... Natural Citrus Listerine. I grabbed a small bottle out of curiousity and tried it out last night.
Craziness!
This stuff is so freaking good I really wanted to just go ahead and swallow it! It looks cool too. It's such a perfect sell to a listerine using Florida boy like myself.
I guess something good has come out of the Pfizer/Warner-Lambert merger already. Speaking of which, I noticed that this new bottle actually had the Pfizer logo on it. Finally, that only took three years. My last bottle was still sporting the Warner-Lambert information.

Chess... and more.

It recently occured to me that it doesn't really matter if someone is good at chess so much as it matters if someone is a good sport when playing chess.

Last night I was at a friend's apartment and I saw a decorative chess set, so I asked them if they were good at chess. I think this is my habit, but it is flawed. What does it matter if they are good? I've played plenty of games with people of all types, and when I think back, I'm realizing that the skill level of an opponent typically has little to do with the amount of enjoyment all players receive from playing the game.
This quick realization has just finished off a radical change in the way I view playing sports and games of all types. Before I saw sports and games as a challenge. I typically wanted to win, and the better the opponent the more glorious the win. Basically, I wanted to play to win and feel glorious. I wanted that near-immediate gradification. Now I feel differently. From looking back at my experiences in high school soccer, in which we would often have a jam-packed schedule of teams to play, I remember that our coach would occasionally receive or give thanks from lesser teams, because their coaches felt that our hours long trip to play them was a service to them. It probably was, because even though we handed almost every team a loss, they got to play an extremely talented and at times discplined soccer squad.
Reflecting on this and other experiences, I am thankful that my school demanded such a high level of sportsmanship and respect from us as players, because now, almost four years later, it has filtered in and I am reapplying it to other games.
Now, when I play a game like chess, soccer, Halo, Boggle, Tetris Attack, or whatever, I will see it not as an opportunity to get a quick ego boost (or drop) from the outcome, but as an opportunity to advance my knowledge of the game and my skills. I now see gaming as a practice akin to medicine, where both sides (or all parties) can gain from the interaction via enjoyment and improvement.
Now I just need to figure out a socially acceptable (tactful?) way to ask someone about their attitude toward chess; or in other words... if they are a good sport when playing chess.

Anti-media rant featuring Keyshawn Johnson

I have much animosity towards periodic, mainstream media, which should probably extend logically to the consumers of "the media" as they drive the demand which drives the media to do nearly all of the things that they do that causes me to dislike it so much.
I mention this, because I was watching an interview of Keyshawn Johnson by Dan Patrick on ESPN Motion. In the interview several issues *plaguing* the media came up.

The first thing that came up is the propensity to exact certain things from people during interviews. It makes sense that this happens, because the media has many strong incentives to get the most interesting or 'newsworthy' information out of every interview. These incentives are very powerful, and I feel that they create a conflict with journalistic integrity.
There were at least two attempts by Dan Patrick to exact specific information from Keyshawn. The first attempt was when Patrick tried to bait Johnson by asking him if he had talked to anyone from the Dallas Cowboys. Johnson challenged the question, and Patrick unsuccessfully tried to feed words to Johnson by exagerating and misquoting Johnson. Johnson immediately realized that he was being grossly misquoted and spent a good 15 seconds trying to rebuke Patrick by talking over him saying, "don't start twistin' it" among other things. The second attempt is an excellent manifestation of yet another problem that the media needs to address. Patrick again tries to quote Johnson with, "You said that you were apartment shopping in New York..." Johnson immediately protests the quote saying that he never said that, and Patrick returns with "I got it from Shelly Smith who is one of your best friends at ESPN and I have the quote in front of me." Johnson laughs and returns with, "...Shelly Smith will write what she wants to write. She can't say that's what I said." When asked why Smith would say that [if it wasn't true] Johnson said, "I think she was joking about the apartment..."
I can't say I know what happened here, but I can give my opinion, and I think that Smith probably fabricated her part. I also think that fabrication of quotes and parts of stories probably happens a lot. I've seen it happen, I've heard of it happening to friends and relatives, and I've had it happen to me. The press/media has the incentive to do this and they also have an outragous amount of power to do it too. Even when they are caught doing it they simply and descretely publish a correction which will slip under the radar of public consciousness. This second attempt was clearly an attempt to get information from Keyshawn Johnson about his future plans. It failed because Johnson doesn't have (public?) plans (regarding football) just yet.
This second attempt at extracting information also held the second issue plaguing the press... lies. What do you do when journalists simply lie? This is the topic of a recently released movie, and made headlines this May with the Jayson Blair scandal at the New York Times. This has also made headlines in the past in many major journalistic publications in the US... think Janet Cooke at the Washington Post, Stephen Glass and Ruth Shalit at the New Republic, or Mike Barnacle at the Boston Globe... remember any of these? Probably not any of them and most likely not all of them.
Yeah, so there are my two reasons that I don't like the presses today. They can lack journalistic integrity, and it is often extremely difficult to know it when it happens, because there are many times when they are able to control information. In fact, reporters and media agencies have strong incentives to have a short lived monopoly on information. They do this in "exclusives" or by "getting the news to you first."

Fitness Log

Lately I've been blogging less than I'd like, and I think that some of it has to do with the feeling that I've already blogged. Almost a month ago I started a second blog for myself to keep track of what I do in my little workouts.
So far it has been working really well for me. I've been working out more since I've created this new log than I ever have in college. I am even thinking of moving on and doing actual workouts at a gym or something.
There is a small link to the log over to the right under the search tool.
Check it out!

UPDATE 12/5/2003:
It's been seven weeks since I started this fitness log and it is still working rather well for me. I was thinking about it, and I have a few thoughts as to why it might work well.
1. I get online every day. Now, when I get on in the morning after class I think about e-mail, stocks, blogs, and then my fitness log... so I go and do something so I can add to my log.
2. Even though no one has commented on my log, and even though it is so incredibly boring to read that probably no one reads it regularly... I know that it is there. I know that Joy, a friend, or some stranger from cyberspace could pop in, take a look and realize that I've stopped. So, I have that as a small incentive for continuing on with this.
3. I like blogs, I like being able to track growth and decline (perhaps that is part of my obsession with financial markets,) and I like to type and write. So, this log really does it for me. Working out lets me add more to my blog, allows me to see growth and decline, and I type it all in there so, I'm happy.
4. Finally, I like keeping records. I like knowing that doing X number of this or that exercise means something in a small way, because it will be recorded in my log. So, that kinda spurs me on to not only do a little something something so I can create an entry, but when I have energy it motivates me to add something new... like a record setting day of some sort.
So, if you're anything like me in these respects, and you're interested in becoming more physically fit, perhaps you should try this out too.

Guess I'm Blue...

Reading

I should really be asleep by now, but I've been up reading... a lot. It all started when I checked my e-mail one last time before going to bed, and I saw that someone had commented on my site. That got me started reading a handful of political blogs all of which were written by some hilarious and interesting New Zealanders. That led me to Technorati, which led me to the blogs of a few "A-list" bloggers. Reading all of that took quite a while, and now I am beat and writing about it, which is pretty weak, I think, but... oh well.
I feel like I've been cramming for an exam or something. I need to get to bed, I've got class in six hours.

Selling My Plasma

Today I went down to the Nabi Plasma Center to try and sell my blood plasma with Ricky and Robert.
The place was pretty cool, but the lady there said that it would take a minumum of three hours for our first visit (which I didn't have time for at that point,) also Robert didn't know to bring his Social Security card, so we left.
I am sort of excited and sort of dreading going back there tomorrow or Thursday. On the one hand, I'll get to walk out with $25, which is cool, but I do have to do a lot of waiting, get a physical, and have something sticking in my arm for a while.
FYI: The way this works is that you can donate up to twice a week. The week starts on Monday and ends Saturday. The first time you go in any given week you are paid $20. The second time you go in that same week you receive $25. However, the very first time you go you get a five dollar bonus, which brings me up to $25.

Personal Productivity Desires

I was looking into PDAs again today. I already have two, but one of them is broken, and I am letting Joy use the other.
When I was looking at these PDAs at Palm.com, Sony.com and Ebay I was thinking about what I would like in a PDA, and I realized that these newer PDAs have either extra funcitonality that I will not use OR they lack some things I want. So, I thought about what I do want for "personal productivity."
Basically, I'd like a PDA, in color with optional backlighting, that had a fairly sturdy metal casing. It would also act as my phone. It would have a long (18 hour) battery life. It would get great reception wherever one could possibly get reception. It would also come with a case that could hold the following with easy access -- at least 5mm-thick worth of cash; ID cards/business cards; and credit cards.
I guess it would be easier to just get a cell with good reception, a $100 color PDA with Palm OS 4+, and something to hold my cash and cards and then put all that into a purse, but... I'm a guy. Purses aren't exactly acceptable for guys right now. Besides, Then I'd still be hunting... only for the perfect purse.

Women + Phones

I have no tested, scientific evidence just yet for my observation here, but I've noticed that women seem to talk much louder then men when they use the phone.
Actually, it goes beyond just talking louder than men. I think that some women talk much louder than they would in a normal, face-to-face conversation whenever they are on the phone... any phone. This applies to phones with perfect reception where the speaker can hear everything clearly, cell phones with poor reception, portable phones, etc.
I'd like to have more evidence about this issue -- either side of it -- even if the evidence is just anecdotal.
Also, if this observation pans out, I'd like to know what causes this. Is it a habit? Some sort of female compulsion? or is it based on some thougt that I don't understand?

The Matrix: Revolutions... First Thoughts

The first day of the release and I've already heard a ton of negativity about this movie. I was expecting it though, because there was a great deal of it right after Matrix: Reloaded. People complain about the movie and the go and tell their friends that haven't seen it that it wasn't all that great, and occasionally... they post comments on message boards. These are sweeping comments like, "...and 'true' Matrix fan is going to be disappointed with the ending."
Well, I'm a true Matrix fan. I wasn't disappointed with the ending. (The credits were longer than any non-Matrix film I've seen, but that Silver Pictures logo is cool and… who ever gets tired of the WB logo, y'know?)

I think that there will always be people who are unhappy at the end of trilogies. The first two movies leave you with anticipation and expectation while the conclusion leaves you with that feeling that comes to us when we’re young children shortly after Christmas, (or any other anticipated gift receiving event.) I suppose that sometimes fans expected Daddy to get them a pony, so naturally they're disappointed when they receive a dozen or so other gifts -- fine gifts -- gifts that are just not the pony or anything like it.
I enjoyed this movie. Certainly I had different strengths of attachment to the various characters, and so I had felt slight disappointment when my desire for more of them was not met, but I am not going to let minor disappointments accumulate and taint my view of the whole movie. Instead, I enjoyed getting to know new characters, seeing more of characters with small roles in the previous film(s), and I enjoyed experiencing the strong emotions I felt when characters bowed out. It was really great (enjoyable/worthwhile) to see Smith grow (in number and power,) but never really grow mature. He was so numerous, so powerful, but so lost and desperate too. If I were powerful and numerous I'd really relate to him -- even more than I already do.

Beauty

I was talking to an old friend of mine today and she remarked in jest, "pretty is as pretty does." This immediately struck me. It probably had something to do with the familiarity of its structure, (I'm thinking... Forrest Gump!) but I think it also struck me because it just feels so true. Perhaps it even is true!
I thought some more about this out loud with her (at her suggestion) and I have now decided to blog some of the things I came up with.

"Pretty" does...
1. ..as much as possible to make good food and drink consumption choices.
The things you put into your body are what your body has to work with in making you beautiful. So, to be beautiful you'd need to be selective about what you eat and drink, making sure there are few uglies going in, and plenty of water to wash out any uglies your body makes once things are in there.
Drinking the right amount of water helps flush out body wastes, which is important if you want to minimize body smells, skin issues, hair issues, etc etc. To look less like an impurity yourself, it just makes sense to wash out as much of the impurities yor body ingests and/or makes.
2. ..work to maintain the machine.
Exercise, exercise, exercise. We hear it all the time, and it is pretty much a given if you want to be healthy. Once your healthy you'll probably look a little better too. However, there is more to maintenence than making sure the machine runs well. You also need proper hygeine too, y'know. These are pretty obvious things. You tune and wash your car. Same goes for the person. Most of us know this.
3. ..the "networking" needed for support.
Support is important and not just for women's needs. You've got to have good friends of both sexes that care about you and support you through difficult times. Family counts here too if they lift you up and support you well. Knowing you have support builds and maintains confidence. Confidence is something "pretty" has. The imprtant thing to remember here is diversification. Don't get all your support from just one, two or even three sources. Branch out and get support from a good half dozen or so. To continue the car analogy, this is like knowing and having your own crew of mechanics in a big way. They help you out when you've got a problem, warn you when they think you might have one soon, and cheer you on when you don't have one and you're doing well.
4. ..the love thing.
Love is usually a give and take thing, but it is always best to initiate the giving and then to give and give and give. Recieving love is something "pretty" did before she ever was beautiful. You can tell when something is loved, because it becomes beautiful through loving care.
5. ..something enough to be really good at it, and then keeps on doing it.
Ability is beautiful. Abilities are often valuable too. Having special skills makes "pretty" unique and accomplished. It makes "pretty" interesting too. Develop yourself and you'll eventually be developed. Once your there realize that developed could almost be a synonym for complete or... "pretty."
6. ..a great job at managing resources.
Resource management is essential to all of this, I've decided. If you can manage your resources well (like your time, your money, your clothing, and your other stuff (intangibles?)) than you can make the most of yourself too. Women often look at other women in magazines and see that they are eye catching in some way. Well, it needs to be realized that those women have tons of resources going into their looks to get the look that the magazine wants. If a girl does a lot with just a few outfits, a little bit of make-up, and only a marginal amount of time she is using her resources well. This is an important ability for everyone and it really helps out in life -- not just in beauty.