New Year's resolutions

I have no illusions. The expiration of an arbitrary chronological benchmark does not bestow anyone with any special qualities or abilities, specifically will power.

I think resolutions are useful even so.

Especially if you post them publicly. You see, just making a resolution does nothing to motivate someone. Posting those resolutions where people you know can read them means that there is some humiliation if you fail.

That is motivating.

So here goes:
• Get the car running.
• Get good grades.
• Move out of my parents house, hopefully to UCLA, though I have little control over that at this point.
• Try MMA for three months.
• Add 60 people to my contact list. It is a measly 29 at this point.
• Get to 220 pounds at some point in the year. Yes, I want to gain 15+ pounds. That sounds easy, to those who want to lose weight, but my narcicism sends me on a diet every time my waist gets over 33".
• Get out of the country once. Might just be Mexico this year, but I need to make this a lifelong yearly goal. Next year, I'm putting a new stamp in my passport.
• Write and release one piece of software. Probably something simple for this Blackberry. Maybe an app to send data to last.fm.
• Be unemployed. I can afford it, and the opportunity-cost of taking a job is getting high I don't want to be a 30 year old student or a 40 year o-. I didn't realize that when I was younger. I worked from 16 to 24. I should have been building a life.
• Continue this blog. I don't think it is worthwhile to try to promote it and make it a source of income, but it is worth the time to me.
• Run a mile in <6:30.

Maybe more tomorrow...

Mon, Dec 31, 2007

3:38:39 AM
Mike Russow vs Roman Zentsov
Zentsov loses to blubber choke.

3:39:34 AM
Luiz Azeredo vs Tatsuya Kawajiri
Azeredo is frustrated by Kawajiri. Decision for Kawajiri.

4:06:18 AM
Murilo Bustamante vs Makoto Takimoto
Bustamante dominates every aspect of the first round, but is unable to finish. Takimoto swings like a kid chasing a butterfly, but one lands and Bustamante goes down dazed. Takimoto works hard for the KO, but it doesn't come.
Decision for Takimoto.

4:50:40 AM
Gilbert Melendez vs Ishida
Bullshit homefield decision for Ishida.

5:00:40 AM
Yoshihiro Akiyama vs Kazuo Misaki
Two crazy ring walks. I don't even care if they fight.

5:22:42 AM
That was a good fight. Post-fight was even crazier.

5:49:51 AM
Fedor by armbar.

7:03:48 PM
Okay, I suspect the rest of the day will be a blur. New Years Resolutions coming tomorrow.

Sun, Dec 30, 2007

8:06:07 AM
Dream- a guy confronts the man who had him falsely arrested so he could be used on a hockey-themed porno as an extra.

10:03:20 AM
Went to Break of Dawn for breakfast. Fantastic. Had creme brulee french toast.

11:09:56 AM
"Party girl to martyr: the evolution of Benazir Bhutto"

Mon, Dec 31, 2007
3:00:08 AM
I'm up to watch Fedor fight...but we'll declare the 30th over.

Sat, Dec 29, 2007

8:32:20 AM
I was having a dream before I got up. I can't remember it anymore. It was a bad dream. Not so surreal as the giant shark dream...but I suppose that one seemed real when I was asleep.

1:12:08 PM
Goodwill. Home depot. Pool supply. Tea. Ministrone soup. Car.

10:17:20 PM
Watched IFL and made cookies. Now I'm watching Grizzly Man...again. Love that crazy dude, and creepy Werner Herzog. Now I need to find the UFC fights.

11:49:12 PM
Fin

Fri, Dec 28, 2007

10:55:24 AM
Went out early to some of the big-box retailers, mid-way I got a cappuccino and baklava. Decent cappuccino. Now I'm on the couch. When I woke up, my mid-bacl had stiffened up, and it hasn't loosened up with activity. Got some naproxen sodium, I take twice the recommended dose. Going higher.

12:52:17 PM
I can't remember the dream I had last night. I had it when I woke up, but it has faded away.

4:58:54 PM
Sat on the couch most of the day. Puttered on the car for a bit. Hope my back is okay tomorrow. I'm working on New Year's resolutions. I've got a bunch drafted, but I'll wait and post it on the 31st or 1st.
I'll read some articles on Lifehacker and Zen Habits for a few more ideas.

5:09:20 PM
/dev/random
You're not alone.
Vagaries is my favorite word this week.
My beard itches.
Need to write a review of this vmoda head set somewhere.

12:01:35 AM
Watching hdnet fight and drinking chocolate cake. I need to go to bed earlier.

Note to self

Work on script for giant monster shark who is an Islamic terrorist in the refrigerator horror movie.

The giant shark has his baby giant shark little brother and sister as accomplices. Except they look human.

They get caught trying to steal a casserole by swimming through the fridges water filter. Giant monster shark goes insane with rage, attacks, gets caught in giant metal jaw machine.

Not sure how Islam fits in, but the rest makes sense I think.

Oh yeah there's also a scene where I get chased down a cul de sac by a guy with an AK47. I'm saved by people in strange robes.

I get the strangest mail

I have got the following promotional mail on the same day:
- Orange County's Pacific Symphony features Bobby McFerrin
- KCRW Public Radio Program Guide
- 12 Issues of Playboy for only $12

I also used to get mail from the AARP.

Mon, Dec 24, 2007

6:13:33 AM
I've been up for three hours. I don't know why. I went down and had some cereal. I'll lie here until my alarm goes off in two hours, and then I'll get up and stay up all day, no matter what. I've just got to get my sleep normalized.

8:05:17 AM
Ugg.

10:50:27 AM
Just got done walking the dog dog-whisperer style.

2 ish PM
Went and got battery cables. Special kind that screw on to the sides of the new sealed batter I got

6:55:45 PM
Christmas dinner with mom and dad at Houstons in Irvine(?).
Went and saw the tree at Fashion Island.

8:09:22 PM
Stopped at Albertsons and got hazelnut liqueur so I could make russian coffee. Cheesecake too.
Spencer Fern
http://www.spencerfern.com

Declaration of purpose

I'm trying to get back to sleep, but I've been thinking about why I write this blog.

I have a hell of a lot going for me. I've hardly done anything with my life.

This blog is a public challenge to myself. I need to reform the way I live.

It is also an invitation for other people to participate in that process.

Sun, Dec 23, 2007

10:49:06 AM
Finally getting going. Watched mythbusters and laid on couch for 2 hours.

11:20:15 AM
I need more tea.

12:03:08 PM
Had some tea...no effect, let's try coffee. At least I'll get off my butt to piss after that.

2:04:36 PM
Okay, I finally did something. Cleaned all of my electrical stuff off of the ping pong table.

2:32:01 PM
Now I'm tired again, laying on my bed. Pathetic. I've decided to go out running at 7pm and to bed before 9pm.

5:43:01 PM
I made dinner. Grilled tuna and rice.

6:51:36 PM
Okay, half hour run now.

7:40:04 PM
It was 40 minutes, but I stopped to walk for five of em. I didn't leave till seven, I sent mark cuban an email before I left.

9:00:36 PM
Good night.

Dog whirlwind

Lookin' good

It has taken me a long time to figure this out, but I'm an extremely good looking man. I won't bother justifying that statement, it is simply true.

It took me a long time to determine this, because of my strange adolescence, and my odd social behavior. My youth, and to some degree my life even to this day, was characterized by dysthymic depression. That means, I just don't enjoy life the way most people do.

In school, I didn't enjoy the praise of my teachers, so I didn't apply myself. I was considered a gifted student from a very early age, but by the time I was fifteen, it was drop out or flunk out. I had long periods of truancy, and I never did any work outside of class.

I also did not much enjoy fellowship or fraternity of my friends, so I let all those relationship fall away.

I probably could have been very good at basketball, like my brother was, but I felt that while there is no "I" in "team," there are two in "this shit sucks."

In my life, I have only pursued a few women. For a long time, I thought this was because of an anxiety disorder, but recent experiences have shown me that I have normal levels of anxiety in social situations. Indeed, in many social situations, such as public speaking, I experience much less anxiety than others.

The reason I haven't pursued many women is because I do not enjoy the attention and affection of women enough to put up with the stress they also bring. That is, unless they are extremely good looking.

So, back to the subject, because I never really pursued women, I never figured out what my worth was. An odd quirk of female behavior, at least in this country, is that women never tell a man he is good looking, unless he isn't very good looking.

Good looking women get compliments constantly, from everyone around them. Constantly. I have observed it. They usually answer to "hey, beautiful" as though that is their name.

I rarely get any compliments on my looks, except from women over 65 years of age. There is some kind of covenant that women hold; do not tell a man he looks good, he'll get a big head and become impossible to control.

But once they hit old age, they don't give a shit any more, and will say what they think.

I didn't figure out I was good looking from the words of old hags though. I have pieced it together from the few social interactions I have had, and it is the only way I can explain the way that people generally respond to me.

However, I must conclude this by saying that looking good can get you a phone number and a first date with almost any single woman, but it can't take you much further.

Women want a man who has high social status, men want a woman who has high fertility. That is the grossly oversimplified version of the evolutionary impetus for sexual attraction.

Being a tall, good looking, fit man is a kind of high social status all by itself, but when women find out I'm 25, unemployed, and living with my parents, that all falls away.

This post is brought to you thanks to an unnamed woman as well as supermodel/singer Carla Bruni and French president/hobbit Nicolas Sarkozy. May their love stand as a testament to the supposition that women are less shallow than men.

Wiring

I'm working on wiring up my LT1 today. I'm going to get this thing running before I go back to school, or die trying.

I hope this engine will make about 230HP at the wheels, and get 30 mpg highway.

If it makes a loud noise from the open headers by January I'll be fine with that.

Weekend update

We finished mounting the TV today, and did some Christmas decorating.

I guess I should add that the TV installation went as planned. My old man knows a bit about houses, and I know a bit about electronics. It would have been a real waste to pay for an installation that would not have been as thorough.

Somehow I got an A in the one class I was worried about, so my GPA as far as the UCs are concerned should be 3.65.

I don't have all my grades, but I'm pretty confident I will get As in the other classes.

Funny thing of the day

People who move their lips when they're reading.

I now plenty of people who are much smarter than me who do this, however it makes them look like they just learned the alphabet.

HD

My parents finally got an HDTV. I'm ambivalent about it. It is cool as hell, but I need to work on other things these days. Setting up and watching TV is a distraction.

I believe this is an LG 42LB5D.

Shaved my head

Showing off the receding hairline, but I ain't bald yet!

Gifts for me!

I don't envy the hordes of people pacing the aisles of shopping places around the world, looking for that perfect gift for me. I'm very hard to shop for. What can you buy for me that I can't already buy with my vast fortune?
A 200' yacht?
A Ferrari?
A summer home near the Sea of Tranquility?
Immortality?
I already possess all these things.

Instead, consider donating to some of the charities I support.


This is the leading group that ensures that governments don't take of the internet, kick out the weird cool people, and sell the leftovers to monopolistic corporations.



These guys help small business-people in the developing world get loans. Who would give loans to people who live in areas that suffer from corruption, instability, and poverty? Why YOU of course.

KCRW
This is the coolest radio station in the history of ever. They also have a lot of podcasts and streaming content.

I got this idea from this boing boing post.

Naturally, you could also look at my wishlists.

To no one in particular

I had a dream.
I was climbing an icy mountain. I slipped, slid down the slope and over the edge. But before I could understand what was happening, I was caught by my safety line.

Now I dangle, spinning slowly, and lacking the strength to climb up. Lacking also, the will to cut the rope. So I wait to freeze.

UC Application

I applied to transfer to seven UC schools last Friday.

• Berkeley - Cognitive Science
• Davis - Linguistics or Science and Tech Studies
• Irvine - Informatics or Earth and Environmental Science
• Los Angeles - Cognitive Science (Pre) or History (Pre)
• San Diego - Cognitive Science or Linguistics - Cognition and Language
• Santa Barbara - Psychology or History
• Santa Cruz - Linguistics - Computation or Classical Studies.

UCLA is my top choice. I think my GPA will be 3.64, but it could be 3.59 or 3.69. I'm just not sure at all about my Bio class.

In any case, that GPA is competitive, and I've completed much of the coursework for Cognitive Science except math.

I'm hoping to get though the first semester of calculus by the end of spring, which would leave one more course of calculus, a chemistry course, and an intro to cog. sci. type course and then I'd be done with the lower division curriculum for Cog. Sci. at UCLA.

So, I'm just crossing my fingers.

If I got in to every other school except UCLA, I'd have a tough time deciding between Berkeley and San Diego. Berkeley has a better reputation overall, and I would like being close to San Francisco. However, San Diego has the best Cognitive Scienve program, with some huge famous names like Ramachandran.

Anyhow, it will be five or six months before I hear from UCLA. The rest of the schools are just total backups. I haven't looked at every major at all those schools, but most of them don't have the kind of program I want.

Anyhow, I just thought I should document this, because when I create the Skynet AI and computers nuke the planet and begin hunting the survivors, this will be an important footnote on the chronology. Like when Hitler went to Vienna and tried to become an artist.