fuck

fuck....oooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOO

I hope this doesn't get stolen

I am going to take a nap in the student union and this will be in my backpack next to me. I hope nobody lifts it while my guard is down. College has notorious thieving problems.

A Benefit of Privacy

One benefit to privacy is that when you keep your goals to yourself, people aren't pestering you all the time about when you're trying to lose weight but you eat a candy bar, ya idiot!

Video Games I've Played More Than Once

Video games is something that I'm very passionate about in general; I spend a lot of time with them, and interact with the world differently because of what I've learned interacting with games. It's very hard to come up with a standard evaluative criteria which would enable me to rank what I think are the "best games of all time," but I can apply a more subjective but perhaps more telling attribute: which games I've played through (and probably beaten) more than once.

In the order that I think of them:

-Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

-Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

-Super Mario Bros. 3

-Super Mario 64

-Super Mario World

-Sonic 3 and Knuckles

-Final Fantasy 6

-Final Fantasy 7

-Final Fantasy 9

-Final Fantasy 10

-Metal Gear Solid

-Metal Gear Solid 2

-Pokémon Blue Version

-Pokémon Silver Version

-Halo: Combat Evolved

-Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

-Portal

-Half-Life 2

-Ninja Gaiden Black

-Chrono Trigger

-Megaman X (too hard, actually, I play it through every few years but have never managed to beat it)

On the other sides of the die, there are books or movies that have the same effect, that I re-watch for love of their timeless attributes. I've also spent an inordinate amount of time with competitive and arena and MMO type games that don't really fit the criterion because they can't really be "beaten." There are also books, movies and games that I try over and over again to get into, but simply can't because they just don't appeal to me. And isn't the universe so wonderful that everything touches people on a different level?

Without a doubt, my memory is fuzzy, my funds are limited, and my reach is not expansive, but there exists a certain special quality about a game that draws users back in order to relive the first experience. There are a lot of awesome games out there that leave you shortly after you finish, and then there are games that stick with you for life. I thought I'd share some of mine with you.

How Long Does it Take for People to Stand Outside and Think, "It's Fucking Cold"

So here I am, class cancelled, plenty to do with my study time but I don't feel like it.
That's okay, but I will be cutting this short in order to work (soon).

Some observations:

-I'm losing my patience. I'm gettin' shit done, but it's exhausting when I really don't know what's gonna happen after this semester

-I need money. I've been looking forward to a potential Vegas trip for almost a year for my best friend's 21st birthday. Things have changed though, and the bros. 4 may be 3 come May

-Yes, my dad bought a 2011 BMW M3. Yes, this month will be the 1 year anniversary of him losing his job. Can't he buy a Kia and share the love?

-I really REALLY like Elliot in the Morning. I have to start calling in, doing radio contests and events. It's really entertaining
-I spend plenty of money to keep up with the video games, but I just don't have any time anymore. I've put less than 40 hours combined into Starcraft 2, Halo Reach, Left 4 Dead 2, WoW

-I need new shoes, thermal underwear, Tom Waits tickets, a piano teacher, and about 41 hours per day (that would just about do it, I think)

-Yeah, I tried the smoking thing for about 5 months, but that was pretty dumb; luckily I didn't get addicted. Literally, everything about it is true and is as unappealing as health class made it seem. You stink, food tastes like shit, I got sick all the time, stains on clothes, I'm sure my teeth yellowed, and apparently, aromatic hydrocarbons fuck your shit when trying to run

-Had an awesome run on Sunday. I should do that, like, forever. I was jumping around and wasting my energy and all sorts of stupid shit, but it was amazing, I couldn't stop

-Waited 5 weeks to travel to the coast and bump into a girl I'm curious about. Couldn't con her into meeting up with the group until the bar 10 o'clock Saturday night. The band started at 10:02. Oh well, maybe 5 weeks from now I'll be able to chat with her for 2 MORE minutes or so (ha, fat chance, this is a dead end)

I gotta record the things I want to do with my life (privately, for reasons I might explore later), so that the inevitable time I am stuck bored 2 years from now can be well spent. Honestly, if I knew how valuable the time I didn't have would be, I wouldn't have wasted the time that was mine.

Learning by science

This little blog post seeks to ask two questions: why is science used as the standard device for acquiring knowledge, and on what information do humans actually base their decisions on?

Science has been around for a couple hundred years. It involves the logical process of induction; we acquire massive amounts of data and observations from the world around us, and we try to observe patterns that can arise from this data. As a natural human aftereffect to the knowledge gathering process, we also try to apply causal relationships to observations we make.

This last step is the most dangerous part though: causal relationships that arise as a result of data and pattern research are not logically valid. Trying to develop causal knowledge really falls to the shoulders of abductive logic, which cannot present its conclusion of 100% validity, it can only find multiple solutions, ranked in order of plausibility. Additionally, while this type of logic makes the most meaningful conclusions, there is little formal theory behind constructing an abductive argument. Deduction and Induction have been pared down to the bone starting since Aristotle, on the other hand.

And this is the danger of "science." In order to seek knowledge, one has to have a very firm grasp on exactly what truths one can uncover with the data and observations one can acquire. I honestly think that almost no portion of "science class" is spent critically evaluating why this method is used, and ultimately, how limited it is. The danger of this post, then, is how poorly it is supported with evidence, and how it tries to generate overarching conclusions, from basically the dark.

And how do humans use our grand knowledge acquired through science in order to make decisions? We don't. If we have to replace the transmission in our Honda, we don't buy them because "they have bad transmissions", even though Hondas are shown to be reliable compared to other vehicle brands (there are more '97 Accords on the road still than any other vehicle from that year and class- yes, I completely made this up, but whether or not it's true it can be used to illustrate my point). Our personal experience cannot be taken as a representative experience upon which to make future decisions. For every 100 skilled tasks I perform, I estimate that I make a mistake on 3 of them. However, since I am interacting with other people in each task, there might be 97% of the total population who think I'm excellent, and 3% of the total population who think I'm a putz.

That's what I'm saying, that humans have evolved to be especially discriminatory over our evolutionary timeline. While it's important to make decisions that allow yourself the best chances for success, you've got to be able to understand when quick decisions based on limited experiences cannot make the best decision for you. This is because things don't happen the same way every time. Sometimes, sex makes a boy, other times, it's a girl.

You know when people are drunk,

all they want to do is yell in your ear about how drunk they. Man, this is the most drunk they've been in awhile. They can barely stand. They are having so much fun and they still have 4 or 5 drinks left till they pass out.

Yea, well I'm that tired. I just want to tell you about how tired I am. I stayed up till 2:30 finishing a paper and had to get up at 5:30. My head is cloudy, my eyes are dry, I'm just kinda stumbling anywhere and can't finish a complete thought.

Being with many a drunk (or tired and whiny friend, as the case may be), I've found that these diatribes are not particularly interesting, in fact, if you've heard them more than twice a year, they get really fuckin' old really fuckin' quick. That being said, here are some unrelated and hopefully more interesting status updates that I should probably add to my bio on facebook or at least cycle through my statuses every once in a little while.

Though I think of myself as being totally intellectual and rational, I have my areas of vanity; I like to dress in nice clothes and style my hair so as to appear normal and attractive for a male.

I am profiting from the fact that video games are considered "retro" and "vintage" recently. I've always liked them, so while they're at least somewhat an "in" thing, I can enjoy a slightly more robust social standing.

I think a woman falling asleep on her man's chest is the most romantic thing in the world, and despite how chaotic relationships can be, those moments should be treasured by the parties involved.

For some reason, I no longer can memorize the lyrics to most songs I listen to. I listen to largely the same bands over and over and over and over and over again but I can't keep the lyrics in my memory, which is a shame, because goddammit if I don't love to sing. By extension, if I found the time and resources to practice, I would learn and cover a bunch of Tom Waits' piano ballads for love of their lyrics and beautiful, simple music.

I really love being so constantly busy all the time. If there's a bunch of social events and gatherings I do miss, there is the other side of the coin which I don't miss, and that is having a low opinion of myself based on poor work ethic and laziness. There are tons of things I'm learning about the world and myself that help me to fit better within my own life that I wouldn't be learning if I took it easy and relaxed all the time (which tends to be the false binary I live by, all or nothing).

I am lucky to have a job which makes just enough money to keep the engine rolling. The people are fun and pleasant and the management has been extremely flexible in meeting my needs so long as I perform well in my task.

I wanna meet this girl real bad, but I don't know when I'll be able to short of some kind of break, which is a long ways away.