(no subject)
I'd all but forgotten about this little corner of the internet. Spent an hour or so reading through all of the things happening in folks lives that I've missed, and I have to say I really miss reading about the goings-on in other people's day-to-day. This past week especially I've felt helplessly stuck in swirling tidepool, unable to see anything beyond my predicaments (or perhaps, more accurately, unable to legitamately care, which is far worse). This marks the first night in over a week straight during which I haven't drank myself silly for no reason other than to escape the re-run of my life. Any former interest and drive to self-improvement on the large scale has effectively died - one day is already too many at a time.
Just about the only positive achievement made in the past few months has been with my weight/figure. It's improving by a noticeable amount. I keep getting comments from people about how much weight I'm losing, although I'm having a harder and harder time seeing it. For a good while my diet was great, consisting of almost nothing but home-cooked meals and smartly laid out portions. The past 2 weeks have seen a great slackening of that, however. My body feels less healthy for it. I've also been playing excessive amounts of DDR, burning through nearly $100 a week (since I can't play at home due to having a third floor apartment). I've been riding my mountain bike alot as well, but this past Friday I managed to destroy a tire which I've yet to replace. Soda has been almost entirely cut from my diet (introduced only when accompanied by alcohol). The result is... well... I'm back in 38" waist pants (down from 44") and can comfortably wear a skintight t-shirt without feeling like my stomach is roaming like a big black woman's unrestrained boobies. Also my face appears thinner, which resulted in my changing my hair a bit. Oh, and got some new glasses. Basically, I've been working on my image a bunch, as far as changing my wardrobe away from button-ups and black dress shoes to jeans and t-shirts and sneakers. It's kind of wild, I haven't remade my image in these ways in half a decade. It's neat to try something new.
The past 4 months have kind of been a hiatus in the photography realm. I'm not taking it very seriously these days, nor engaging in any serious shooting. I'd like to change that, though. Pretty much all I've done is drag my camera around when I go out to the bar or out with friends and snapshoot wherever I end up. It's been too long that I've taken to serious shooting (with the exception of the trip I made to Pittsburgh last month, though it only produced a couple "keepers"). I think the months and months and months of reading about every single piece of camera equipment, philosophy surrounding the process of taking a photograph and technology behind bodies and lenses I've burned myself out of any interest in new equipment whatsoever. I simply can't be troubled to care when the market is as bumblefuck-ish as it is. The stuff that matters I've known about for years anyway, and the only way I can be convinced to "upgrade" is if someone is willing to pay me to do it. There are things I'll use much more often that cost much less and have tons more retention than another body or lens.
Todd's desktop finally blew up. Literally. MOSFET had a huge ball of dust on it and the thing burned up, surged and popped. So I sold him my laptop (which I only had for a whopping 3 months). I still wanted to have a laptop, however, so I picked up an Alienware M11x netbook. It's a little ridiculous... a netbook capable of playing modern PC games without much hassle. More power than a netbook has any business having. It seems to be the fit I was looking for all along, with the power of a 17" gaming laptop and the form factor (and battery life) of an 11" netbook. Really quite perfect, it's the niche product I demanded but simply didn't exist until now. Maybe Nikon will surprise me and produce something similar (an EVIL camera) before my current camera body finally decides it doesn't want to return the shutter anymore. It'd be a nice bike ride companion, and I know someone who would love to have my G10. It's kind of funny, I was demanding these niche products over a year ago and it's only now that companies are finally producing the results I want. Maybe next time I'll send in e-mails to their R&D departments when I come up with a crazy idea so they can get on the process of engineering it faster.
Todd bought a Wii. This has been an awesome thing, introducing a new element of entertainment to the apartment that is so simple but so engrossing and fun. As plain and simple as Wii Sports is, it's loads of fun to play with Todd, and I picked up Metroid Prime 3 yesterday at the mall and that has been loads of fun. We picked up the Netflix disc for Wii as well so we've been streaming movies and shows randomly (since our Comcast issed DVR is hardly functional due to pending hard drive failure that Comcast just doesn't seem to understand or believe me about). More than a couple nights I've spent in the living room chatting on the lappy and playing something on the Wii. It's not that it's particularly novel or inventive or some kind of new experience - in fact, it may be the opposite. It's a return to gaming based on a straightforwarded reward system.
Playing Prime 3 has been more entertaining than any game I've played in (probably) over a year simply because it doesn't follow the Skinner's Box design that so many games today have latched onto. For the past couple months I've been playing WoW pretty steadily and jammed out hardcore to Bad Company 2. They are so Skinnerian that I've nearly forgotten what it was like to just play a game for the sake of playing the gaming as opposed to unlocking achievements and items and farming for loot or running the same raids over and over for the off-chance that an enemy would drop this one-in-a-million item to complete a gear set. I'd gotten so used to pulling the lever hundreds of times to be rewarded once that returning to a game design in which patiently pulling the lever once offers a reward feels like a kind of gaming renaissance. Instead of developers designing games to keep the player playing (and sometimes paying) longer without providing any actual new content, studios used to design games to be so visually and emotionally engrossing with rich environment and plot as to make the player want to actually complete the game and build anticipation for the next content-rich title from that studio. Games were better back then, more like works of art instead of thinly veiled media exploitation.
Work has mostly been the same. Only I've been more lazy. I'm not sure why, not even sure if I've been lazy or if my workload actually hasn't been that high, I just know that I spend most of my days chatting on Anthrochat.net and occassionally I can be of some service to someone. Last month I applied for a new position within the company but was turned down because I was considered too young (despite being plenty qualified) for the post (instead they opted to hire and fire 3 people in the time since my interview who were apparently poorly educated on how to use a computer, which was 98% of the job). I've yet to apply elsewhere since but have all intentions to do so, just a matter of time till the next opportunity presents itself. I haven't held my position for long anyway, it would do me well to put at least 2 years into this position before jumping off to the next odd job I can tolerate for some period of 12 months or more.
The first four months of this year can only be described as being chock full of overwhelming lethargy. I don't want to do anything. The only thing I seem capable of caring about is killing time playing DDR and drinking (a habit that is bordering on unhealthy). This past week I did not go to sleep sober once. Not one single night. Originally this was because the state of drunkeness made it much easier for me to sleep (something else I've been unable to do well lately). Drinking till I pass out every night for a week straight, however, is too much. Beyond too much. Tonight I am pleasantly sober, but feel disgusting because of having eaten poorly, which in some bizarre way makes me want to drink to feel better about myself. It doesn't make much sense, really, but I recognize it's a pattern of thought that must be nipped in the bud.
Anyway, it's pretty late, and I'm too tired to think of more to write about, so I'm going to head to bed. To anyone who read this far, thank you! And to those of you who didn't, well, good night anyway. :)
Just about the only positive achievement made in the past few months has been with my weight/figure. It's improving by a noticeable amount. I keep getting comments from people about how much weight I'm losing, although I'm having a harder and harder time seeing it. For a good while my diet was great, consisting of almost nothing but home-cooked meals and smartly laid out portions. The past 2 weeks have seen a great slackening of that, however. My body feels less healthy for it. I've also been playing excessive amounts of DDR, burning through nearly $100 a week (since I can't play at home due to having a third floor apartment). I've been riding my mountain bike alot as well, but this past Friday I managed to destroy a tire which I've yet to replace. Soda has been almost entirely cut from my diet (introduced only when accompanied by alcohol). The result is... well... I'm back in 38" waist pants (down from 44") and can comfortably wear a skintight t-shirt without feeling like my stomach is roaming like a big black woman's unrestrained boobies. Also my face appears thinner, which resulted in my changing my hair a bit. Oh, and got some new glasses. Basically, I've been working on my image a bunch, as far as changing my wardrobe away from button-ups and black dress shoes to jeans and t-shirts and sneakers. It's kind of wild, I haven't remade my image in these ways in half a decade. It's neat to try something new.
The past 4 months have kind of been a hiatus in the photography realm. I'm not taking it very seriously these days, nor engaging in any serious shooting. I'd like to change that, though. Pretty much all I've done is drag my camera around when I go out to the bar or out with friends and snapshoot wherever I end up. It's been too long that I've taken to serious shooting (with the exception of the trip I made to Pittsburgh last month, though it only produced a couple "keepers"). I think the months and months and months of reading about every single piece of camera equipment, philosophy surrounding the process of taking a photograph and technology behind bodies and lenses I've burned myself out of any interest in new equipment whatsoever. I simply can't be troubled to care when the market is as bumblefuck-ish as it is. The stuff that matters I've known about for years anyway, and the only way I can be convinced to "upgrade" is if someone is willing to pay me to do it. There are things I'll use much more often that cost much less and have tons more retention than another body or lens.
Todd's desktop finally blew up. Literally. MOSFET had a huge ball of dust on it and the thing burned up, surged and popped. So I sold him my laptop (which I only had for a whopping 3 months). I still wanted to have a laptop, however, so I picked up an Alienware M11x netbook. It's a little ridiculous... a netbook capable of playing modern PC games without much hassle. More power than a netbook has any business having. It seems to be the fit I was looking for all along, with the power of a 17" gaming laptop and the form factor (and battery life) of an 11" netbook. Really quite perfect, it's the niche product I demanded but simply didn't exist until now. Maybe Nikon will surprise me and produce something similar (an EVIL camera) before my current camera body finally decides it doesn't want to return the shutter anymore. It'd be a nice bike ride companion, and I know someone who would love to have my G10. It's kind of funny, I was demanding these niche products over a year ago and it's only now that companies are finally producing the results I want. Maybe next time I'll send in e-mails to their R&D departments when I come up with a crazy idea so they can get on the process of engineering it faster.
Todd bought a Wii. This has been an awesome thing, introducing a new element of entertainment to the apartment that is so simple but so engrossing and fun. As plain and simple as Wii Sports is, it's loads of fun to play with Todd, and I picked up Metroid Prime 3 yesterday at the mall and that has been loads of fun. We picked up the Netflix disc for Wii as well so we've been streaming movies and shows randomly (since our Comcast issed DVR is hardly functional due to pending hard drive failure that Comcast just doesn't seem to understand or believe me about). More than a couple nights I've spent in the living room chatting on the lappy and playing something on the Wii. It's not that it's particularly novel or inventive or some kind of new experience - in fact, it may be the opposite. It's a return to gaming based on a straightforwarded reward system.
Playing Prime 3 has been more entertaining than any game I've played in (probably) over a year simply because it doesn't follow the Skinner's Box design that so many games today have latched onto. For the past couple months I've been playing WoW pretty steadily and jammed out hardcore to Bad Company 2. They are so Skinnerian that I've nearly forgotten what it was like to just play a game for the sake of playing the gaming as opposed to unlocking achievements and items and farming for loot or running the same raids over and over for the off-chance that an enemy would drop this one-in-a-million item to complete a gear set. I'd gotten so used to pulling the lever hundreds of times to be rewarded once that returning to a game design in which patiently pulling the lever once offers a reward feels like a kind of gaming renaissance. Instead of developers designing games to keep the player playing (and sometimes paying) longer without providing any actual new content, studios used to design games to be so visually and emotionally engrossing with rich environment and plot as to make the player want to actually complete the game and build anticipation for the next content-rich title from that studio. Games were better back then, more like works of art instead of thinly veiled media exploitation.
Work has mostly been the same. Only I've been more lazy. I'm not sure why, not even sure if I've been lazy or if my workload actually hasn't been that high, I just know that I spend most of my days chatting on Anthrochat.net and occassionally I can be of some service to someone. Last month I applied for a new position within the company but was turned down because I was considered too young (despite being plenty qualified) for the post (instead they opted to hire and fire 3 people in the time since my interview who were apparently poorly educated on how to use a computer, which was 98% of the job). I've yet to apply elsewhere since but have all intentions to do so, just a matter of time till the next opportunity presents itself. I haven't held my position for long anyway, it would do me well to put at least 2 years into this position before jumping off to the next odd job I can tolerate for some period of 12 months or more.
The first four months of this year can only be described as being chock full of overwhelming lethargy. I don't want to do anything. The only thing I seem capable of caring about is killing time playing DDR and drinking (a habit that is bordering on unhealthy). This past week I did not go to sleep sober once. Not one single night. Originally this was because the state of drunkeness made it much easier for me to sleep (something else I've been unable to do well lately). Drinking till I pass out every night for a week straight, however, is too much. Beyond too much. Tonight I am pleasantly sober, but feel disgusting because of having eaten poorly, which in some bizarre way makes me want to drink to feel better about myself. It doesn't make much sense, really, but I recognize it's a pattern of thought that must be nipped in the bud.
Anyway, it's pretty late, and I'm too tired to think of more to write about, so I'm going to head to bed. To anyone who read this far, thank you! And to those of you who didn't, well, good night anyway. :)