Snowboarders and Skiers

Now forgive me if this has been touched on in this blog before. With only twenty-four posts it would be a simple feat to look back in history and double check, however since this is a sore subject, it's going to get a bit more attention.
This has always been a bit of a ingrained hair to me, the whole, this way of getting down the hill is better than that way of sliding down the hill, those people a bd for the mountain, debates of this sort used to be fun to sling mud in. These days though, I just feel that, screw it, everyone is having fun, there are pros and cons about both, and we all have our bad apples, so shut the hell up, and slide down the hill and mind your own damn busines.
Coming from that new enlightened perspective of mine, which was easily grown out of necesity, since those around me continually poke,prod,bully and gang up against my choices of snow activities my recent eavesdropped conversation in the gondola makes me want to throw up.
There were two skiers conversing about how bad snowboarders are for the mountain, how they shouldn't be allowed there, how they are ruining the olympics with all their new events, and really the crown piece of biggotry, was when they said that because of snowboarding, there are not enough people going into ski racing, and that's why America was getting beat in the olympics.
That was the line that did it. It was as if a light shown down from the heavens upon me and made me understand something new about human nature. Be it from skiers hating snowboarders, surfers hating windsurfers and windsurfers hating on kite surfers, this is the root of all of it.
It is bigotry, and hate. There is no reason for it, and a skier blaming silly shit on a snowboarder or snowboarding is nothing different that a white person hating a black person, or blaming them for all the social retardededness of our country.
If the analagy between snowboarders, skiers et all is compared to the racism and biggotry in our world, between any other social group, I think that it says something poor about us as individuals and as a whole society.
People really need to learn to not care so much about what other people are doing. You are black, so what, you are on a snow hill with two feet on one instrument of fun, so what. Is any of this really harming other people? No?
Fine, shut the fuck up, be nice, and have fun. Is that so much to ask?
I fear for us.

When in Doubt

What is an empty page really? In high school there was a time when once a week, in an English class, we were assigned to fill a page with writing. There was no topic assigned. Just write one page on something.
That had to be one of the easiest assignments I've ever had. Here is a blank page, fill it with your ideas! Write down a fictional story, write down how you made a sandwich this morning for breakfast, write about a conversation you had while rushing to fill the page with text. Just write it down!
In another English class, AP English to be exact, the only bit of knowledge I crisply remember was to just start writing. The teacher was training us and preparing out youthful minds to take the AP exam. That test involved several essays on whatever topics the Education Board had decided we should discourse upon.
In a scrunched up period of time were were to fill page upon page of document full of handwritten verbal spew. The board went so far as to even hire handwriting specialst to decipher some of our hieroglyphic like cursive. So the advice was to just start writing. Don't think about writers block or wait for inspiration to strike.
Start with one sentence and work through to the logical conclusion of the tome of papers that was to be the answer.
I found that all through my life that stuck with me. Don't let an empty page get into your head, conquer it with writing; bad writing is better than no writting at all, and even in bad writing there may be something worth expounding on that develops into something great.
So, if you want to write a book, just start somewhere, isn't that first step the hardest? Want to learn something, just start somewhere. Want to lose weight, want to do anything? Just begin.

Take the first step and the rest may fall into place, but even if they don't, you may still find something worth writing about later.

Grocery Store Shenanigans

I hate lines at the store. Don't you agree? They have to be the most annoying thing when you are hungry, when you have other things to do, whenever, a line always seems to present just a negative feeling on a person. There might even be studies about how bad lines make people; how a long line will actually make people not want to do whatever it is they set out to do until they found said line.
While standing in a line today at the store, a thought occurred in my usually vacant, mind. I wonder how often a similarly bored persons in line stole from the people in front of them. When the cashier is busy scanning and bagging, and while the customer is bagging trying to get out of the hell called a line, or queue, have you ever seen something in the persons pile of groceries that struck your fancey and put it into your group of items?
Wouldn't it be easy to snag an avacado or a lemon or a yogurt from a persons shopping cart and put it into yours?
It struck me as something funny to do. Is it really stealing at that point? Ethically probably, easy to rationalize, absolutly!
Get out there people, and play the Loki!

Credit Cards

Owning a house and having expensive hobbies is not the best way it seems for me to live. Adding to that complexity of finances, I also have picked up a nasty Home Depot and Lowes addiction. I almost have everytool known to man now, which I have gathered through necesity!
This is what seems to happen with those large stores just 5 minutes of driving away; having a grotesque kitchen in need of remodeling does help with the accumulation of debt. However terrible this situation seems, its really not all that bad. It is however quite dissappointing to know that I let money get out of control, spend spend spend. The fruits of my labor so to speak are a new kitchen, wow, how amazingly drole.
The question is though, how long can I go from card to card creating new ones to transfer balances to? This is a curious question to be sure, and one I fully intend to explore with creditcards.com. I count over five that I can apply for an transfer balances to interest free for 12 months! Who even knows what other deals there will be in another twelve months. That's what over 5 years worth of interest free loans. At this rate I may actually pay off the cards and not have spent money on financing charges.
Its too bad that I can't transfer a Home Depot Card balance to these other cards. That one is going to hurt in another few months.

I'll keep everyone posted on this little scam(?) of mine and see how it turns out. Hell I should put a paypal button on here and get people to help me pay this debt off so that I don't have to go through the hassle of opening new cards and moving money around and then closing cards.
There something that has not happened yet though, closing cards. If I logon to certain sites I actually find that I have several cards I didn't even know about.
The funny thing is they send checks for 3-5$ to turn on services for free for 30 days that they then charge for.
Today I even cashed one for 20$ to turn on their service. Too bad I'm canceling those cards tonight when I figure out how to, its hard without the account number! But really, if they keep sending me those checks, I might even be able to pay off this balance with their money! How crazy would that be. Of course, luck would have to grant me 200 of those turn on this serivice check for 20$ a piece.
I'm amazed at the world we live in.

Death, Life and Experience

What happens to a person that suddenly finds out from the doctor that they only have a few years left to live? The older one gets, the more they find out that statistics are against them. That the grim reaper is sharpening his special scythe just for them.

What of the younger generation though? How would would a member of that group fair upon finding out: "Mr. Barney, your physical turned up something we'd like to run more tests."

Weeks go by.
"Mr. Barney, I don't know how to tell you this but you have x,y and z wrong with you. There's nothing we can do to help. You will die in at most 3 years."

There it is, three years left. What to do what to do? Continue to work at IBM, making money and just living each day to its fullest? Is that really possible though? Do people really do that? How can one live each day to its fullest and still have a budget? Isn't that what I'm doing already? Doing as much as I can with my time, to travel and have fun with friends and loved ones?

Whats the next step? To kill the budget and live beyond it? Why not right? Burn bridges and take no prisonors? I have no kids nor any dependants that will be stuck with my debt. With no strings like that what could I do?

The list of things:
Professional working at IBM with lax WAH policies.
No mortgage and 16 months left of car payments.
Minor credit card debt issues.
Girlfriend that is willing to move.
Three years to live.
Life in a country with lax Bankruptcy laws.
Savings from working at IBM ~40k(to pull a random number out of thin air)

So what would one do given the propisition and the list?

Computers

I did it! I ordered a new Dell. My girlfriend got cable, and now we are going to have a bunch of tv stations, and broadband. Finally starting to feel like a geek again. It has been a long long while since I've had fast internet at home, or a computer at home. Such a big change. Might even have to buy a desk!
Funny thing about Dell though, if they don't get the correct extra credit card number off of the signature panel they end up failing on the credit card so they won't ship the computer. They do offer their own financing though, which makes things easier. Here's what happened. I had to call thier credit number, and tell them to cancel my order, after which I just went back to the site, found the computer I wanted again, and then ordered it with their financing. Easy as pie! It didn't even take that long to wait on hold to cancel the order.
Later that day, while at the mall with a friend doing the geek walk around best buy, my friend pointed out his graphics card and talked about how bad ass it was and how he was going to get a new motherboard and processor just to finally take advantage of the cards potential. I told him to get a dell, that he should be running pci-e instead of AGP if he was going to upgrade, and that his card was over a year old, that the cheap card on the dell was prolly just as good if not better than his card.
This of course led me to do some research back at work. We all know that I don't really work that much at work, a topic and book all of its own. Well, after some quick google searches, and some reading at tomshardwareguide.com and a few benchmark comparisons I was back on the phone with Dell.
See, it wasn't really sitting well that I had ordered a Dell, it wasn't making me happy that I own AMD stock and I wa getting an Intel based computer. It also irritated me that I ws using Dell's financing, and prolly going to get screwed on the interest rate. Plus I really wanted to build my own computer, like the old days. Tinker with it and what not. My grandfather was a tinkerer and I think that whole take thinks apart and put them back together gene is in full on effect in me.
While on hold with Dell, trying to navigate their menu looking for the person to cancel my order with I got fed up. They really don't make it easy to talk to people if you don't have a "real" problem. A bit of clevel thinking on my part and I called up the credit/order problems number again and talked to someone out issues with my credit card. This person said that the order was fine, that it was getting built as we speak and everything was good.
"ok, thanks, could you cancel that order?"
"ahh, yessir"
"thanks,bye"
There it is, it was that easy if you lied to the number punching machine and had my second order canceled in under a minute. AFter which I hopped back onto the web and went though notes I had previously made about building my own from zipzoomfly and newegg and had everything ordered an on the way in an hour.
Of course when all the parts started arriving, the case was broken. Guess what? NewEgg doesn't do cross shipping anymore. I have to now wait until the broken case gets to Californa by UPS ground, gets processed and a replacement part gets sent back before I can play with my new toy.
How much does that suck?
Tomorrow fun with Time Warner!

Gym Stories

It's an easy admission for me to make that I'm not the happiest person at my current gym. I feel completly fucked over there for a number of reasons. First of all, I started dating one of the trainers at the gym, and I hear her stories about the owner and how the head trainer there was a complete bitch.
Granted, that's politics at the work place for my girlfriend, and nothing that really concerned me, other than me having to put up with an unhappy woman. Fine,I can deal with that, if that was just it. Now my girl quit and started work at another gym that she really likes, with cool people there, cool owners and a better work environment for her. Super.
Let's fast forward for a few months. The best trainer at my current gym, who gave me a few free training sessions, chatted with me and was generally one of the most genuine and honest person I know, was fired or pushed to leave by people at the gym. I don't know the full story, but since he was left without a job for a number of months, I can easily hypothesis with a fair bit of certainty that he was fired or quit over something hateful the owners or head trainer pushed him to .
Before he was pushed out of the gym, I had lent him my gravity boots. After he left, the gravitiy boots were still in the office at the gym. Well, about a week after that, they vanished. Head trainer blamed good trainer that he took them. Well, that's definatly not the case, since I contacted that trainer, and now I train with him at his personal training studio.
Its nice, that something out of the trainers office, was stolen. I have heard stories about this trainer from another gym that she stole stuff from that gym. Its as easy jump in logic to figure that she's a dirty bitch and she either stole my stuff, or threw it out.
On top of that, the rates at the gym, were somethign like $39 a month, with a one time sing of fee of about $80. Well, partway through the summer, they decided that they were going to switch their franchise. They are now a "Planet fitness" and they also made all their current members resign up, for a cheaper $15 a month, which would have been fine, but they threw out all their dumbells above 85lbs, and they installed a "Lunk" alarm, that goes off if a person is judging another person, dropping weights or grunting.
Something like that on its own would be completly assinine and worthy of being ignored, but on top of that, they also charged everyone who wanted to resign up for a membership $100. At the same time, they didn't tell people that if they just resigned up with 5 other people they could have earned a corporate discount, something in the area of a $40 dollar sign up fee, and less monthly charges.
My feelings for these people are currently extremly jaded. When I spit my gum into the water fountains or leave a few weights on the leg press machine, it doesn't really bother me. Although when I get yelled at, while in the shower because i left 3 plates on the leg press machine. Something that i feel damn near anyone ought to be able to do, women included, and i get told "Don't make me tell you again." It seriously rubs me the wrong way. Espcially since I have been known to clean up other people's left out weights in the past. AND I wasn't the only person using the leg press machine.
I did go out to pull stuff of the leg press machine after showering. I did not feel bad about filling the bottom storage bar on the leg press machine with 45lbs plates. Then, on the absolut edge of falling off, I put a 100lbs plate. I did that on both sides of the leg press. A person is goign to have to stand a bit away and drop the plate off the bar to get at the 45s. I don't think anyone is going ot be able to lift the weight off, because as soon as they get their fingers between the plates, the plate is going to have fallen off. It's hanging on by just a hairs breadth.
My own little project mayhem at the gym.