Over the past 24 hours, I needed to run some fairly intensive server processes for a business that I still oversee myself as it’s mostly automated. I managed to make it so efficient that I turned 21.18 gigabytes of data into 176.9 megabytes of data; a reduction of 99.17%. I still have quite a bit…
I’ve never smoked. I hate the taste of alcohol. I’ve never done drugs. I did well in school and became successful at an early age. I save way more than I spend, growing my family’s investments every year. I’m far more productive than the typical person in my country. Specifically, the average American spends a staggering…
Yesterday, I mentioned that we should make some sort of stew or pot roast so the house was filled with the warm, inviting scent of roasting meat and vegetables for most of the day. I didn’t think anything of it, and figured it would happen later in the week, but upon waking this morning, I heard grocery bags being unloaded and discovered the process had already begun to try a new pot roast recipe that included carrots, celery, potatoes, parsnips, beef broth, chicken broth, a finish of red wine, herbs, and a few other ingredients. As I’ve sat here going through some work I need to finish, the fragrance keeps getting stronger; it feels like a home should.
After writing about mental models earlier today, it made me realize how this approach to life becomes second nature to examine your own thoughts and feelings as they happen so you are self-aware of the subconscious triggers that are pulling your thought processes in one direction or another. In that respect, even a video game can be useful as a tool.
Many decades ago, Oxford Philosophy of Language Professor J.L. Austin and Columbia philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser reportedly had this exchange: “In English,” Professor Austin said, “a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn’t a single language, not one, in which a double positive can…
Irony is one of those words you see misused all over the place. Most people think they know what it means, but they don’t. It’s irritating to those who care about the spirit of words, and has even prompted New York Times articles discussing the constant abuse the term endures at the hands of society. To spot, and utilize, irony, requires, as the paper puts it, “sophisticated writing” that the author “counts on the reader to recognize”. It takes skill. It is going to go over most people’s head a lot of the time.
Playing the Sims 3 reveals both my biggest strength and one of my biggest weaknesses: My obsessive focus. I was only going to play for a few minutes today, but then got side tracked because my family bought the town art museum.
I was reading a film review by actor James Franco of the new Superman movie, which I saw at the midnight premier right before I hopped on the flight out to California for the weekend. My family wanted to go, and I’ve always like Henry Cavill’s work since the adaptation of the seminal work of Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, so I thought it would be fun. When we were in the theater, the talk turned to the actual character of Superman.
I was a victim of the generation gap tonight. I stepped into something for which I was neither prepared nor do I ever want to witness again. It was, without a doubt, the absolute worst movie I have seen in my entire 30 years on planet Earth. It was so bad, that it wasn’t even good in a cult classic redeeming sort of way.
While I’ve been working the past week or so, I’ve wanted some background noise so I loaded Netflix and began watching the 5th season of Mad Men, which I hadn’t started, yet. I forgot how much I truly hate Don Draper. I feel … contempt. I loathe – that’s a rare sentiment for me but accurate, loathe – everything about him; how he treats people, how he betrays, without knowledge or consent, the women to whom he has made a commitment and whom love him, how he refuses to open himself up to others about his past or live in any sort of authentic or honest way with his family.
