quote from work

"Optimism is just a lack of information"

How can I talk about my life? The words would fail so miserably. Words are a failure, and everyday I am reminded of this. I am stuck in this cycle of complex decisions and life reflections.

I need someone where words do not get in the way. It has been too long since I had this existence. Nothing in my life seems to be outside of the context of this, my ultimate goal.

Val is moving, I am graduating from UW, I am quickly approaching my first real full time career type job (in Renton), and I am possibly looking for what may be my permanent residence for the next couple years. End of an era.

People are my life, and also my weakness. They are my addiction, and it pains me to see how successful people are at making themselves unhappy. People think that certain types of unhappiness and dissatisfaction are beneficial in life, that it is some necessary sacrifice to be truly happy. I think that this is tragic, and because it is a minority opinion that I have that this is absurd, I am punished. Despite my most thorough efforts I have yet to sway any one's mind on the matter. People breaking up, cheating on each other, getting hurt. There is no reason for any of this.

In other news, I saw a girl from high school that I had a big crush on back in the day. She is now happily married, but looking better than ever heh. I believe she was Mormon though, so I probably had a slim chance at best :) I have been given an opportunity to bring back some old memories lately and have still managed to make some small fool out of myself. Oh well, better than inaction.

Anyway, lets push things forward.

A new...

So it has been a long time. Updates to come.

Otherwise, I am in awe of this:





The image link might not last that long, so enjoy while it lasts.

So sore...

Busy as hell

If I wasn't still recovering from the flu or whatever it was that I had I might have better survived this weekend, but overall I think I did alright.

Friday was Val's performance which was pleasant. There was a number of more technical ballet pieces that was a refreshing from more of the modern style pieces that tend to dominate.

Saturday was going to be a show at Neumo's and then the 300 at cinerama. It turned into taking an extended (but much needed and appreciated) nap until heading downtown for the movie. Sure the movie was cheesy, had gratuitous nudity and completely transparent plot lines but it was a good action flick. Racist? I'm not sure that was the intent, but some people seemed to have some problems with it. I didn't take it that seriously :)

Sunday was again a day to play catch up. Got some sleep, did some laundry (eventually) and pretended like I was ready for this week. Compline was actually a very nice end to the weekend, as it usually is. It was very calming and a great time of introspection. At St. Marks they have pictures of people and war torn Jerusalem. Some very powerful and sad imagery. I overheard a father trying to explain to his what must of been 8 year old son about genocide. I just about lost it.

I am not even going to attempt to claim I am ready for San Jose. Maybe it is better that way.

Sometimes change is hard, but necessary. Not everything in life is easy, and this is what I must force myself to understand and believe.

Sick...

well or so the theme seems to be over the past couple days. I have not been this sick in a while. It is not all that bad - it is letting me take care of some business and clean up the apartment some. If nothing else it gives me time to think.

It feels like life is cyclical, as usual For some reason I believe that this time around I am in a good position to make the right choices, instead of letting things just continue as is in the safety of the known and my own inaction. To be or not to be lol.

The prospect of moving is coming closer to reality, and I am excited. Worried? Maybe a bit, but for some reason it just feels right. There are bigger things I worry about. I secretly love to move. It is a new start. A new opportunity to reorganize your life. How often do you get that kind of chance? It is similar to rearranging your living room or something. I knew few people can appreciate the appeal of things things (as they are also usually a general pain) but they are almost therapeutic for me at times. Just like reinstalling my computer :)

Speaking of computers, I have officially bought a apple product. No laptop or anything, but a airport extreme base station. I was fed up with the last two network routers that I bought, and the airport has the ability to host hard drives and printers on the network through a usb hub. This in addition to the 802.11n support made it unlike anything else on the market (and also exactly what I needed). Unfortunately it doesn't support NTFS which means I have to find a way to dump my two portable hdd's which also unfortunately nearly full. When all is said and done it should be awesome, despite having to admit that this post, as well as all of my online presence is now flowing through mac hardware :P Sabrina is tapping her fingers satisfied in step one of her evil plan to convert me. Just one thing to say, not until I have unlimited disposable income!!! :) Oh, and when you go to their store, they will email you a receipt instead of printing one out. How cool is that?!?!

I am starting a co-ed soccer league soon. Despite being in horrible shape, I am really excited. I miss soccer a lot. A lot a lot. Oh the pain, I can almost feel it now.

Anyway, plenty more contemplations in my future. I remain optimistic.

So much to say

There is so much to say, and I don't think I have the energy to say it all. It will be a picture post.

Portland was great. We did well - better than any team I have ever been on. It was exhausting and fun.





Our kids are great.




I went to a party in Bothell. It was suburban, but it was fun.











Need I say more?

Critical!

Question is, what symbol is so critical?

lol John Mayer

Here is one of John Mayer's jokes: "Everyone thinks Brad Pitt has it great because he married Angelina Jolie. I think he has it terrible, because when Angelina Jolie is giving you a blow job, what do you tip your head back and think of to help you finish? You have nothing left -- just Jesus on a polar bear in the middle of the snow, saying, 'You greedy motherfucker, I've got nothing for you.'"

Done

And so I am done with my 5th build season of FIRST. This year was the best ever. More support, better mentors and kids, and a better robot. This I feel is our best chance of being in one of the top spots at Portland especially, and hopefully San Jose and even Atlanta. I get my life back now, yea!

Also, at Sun Liquor they have fresh grapefruit greyhounds - omg so tasty. Now I fear I have to go back again, and again.

I need to make a list to clean up all of the loose ends my life has acquired over the past while. Soon things should be back to normalish.

yikes

soon to be 7 days left...

Mind dump

Wow, writers block or something. I haven't been able to really post an update. Maybe I am just too busy to deal with it.

Can my whole life pretty much fall into the categories of school, FIRST, social life, family, and hobbies? I guess when you blend any number of those you get a pretty diverse gradient.

I have been working ~40 hrs a week (usually 6am to 3pm) which means I wake up at 430, get home by 4. Then on what is turning out to be tuesday through friday I go to robotics which means I barely have enough time to eat and shower before leaving, and I usually don't get back until around 1130. So 5 hours of sleep a night (which usually ends up being 4). Then on saturday and maybe even sunday we will schedule another 8-16 hrs on the robot. Just those two roughly take 100-110 hrs out of my week. If I only account for 6 hours of sleep average a night add 42 which brings you to 142-152. This leaves about 10-15 hours of actual free time a week where I get to cram in my social life, family and hobbies. For this I apologize to all my friends, and I hope you understand ;) I would never willingly give up FIRST but that doesn't keep me from missing the time with others.

Needless to say - I called in sick, wrapped up in a blanket and installed vista on my desktop. This is something that my brain needed. See reinstalling my computers is almost therapeutic for me. I don't understand and couldn't imagine many others would either, but it is one of my favorite things to do with my free time. I am just a huge fan of organization and optimization and when things get a bit too cluttered I have to break down and start from scratch.

I went to Ellensburg for Adam's birthday last Sunday. It was a lot of time taken out of my schedule but it was fun, and always good to tear him away from his busy schoolwork once and a while. By CWU there has developed an absolute ton of hoar frost on everything, antennas, trees, fences, Christmas lights. It is amazingly beautiful and if you have the chance (not sure if it still around) I recommend checking it out. It is a fairly rare phenomenon, especially in that quantity. My mom and my step dad beat my brother and I at euchre, that should not happen. We had horrible luck.

I hate sandblasting.

Yesterday, I found out that someone I knew didn't believe in global warming. Heh.

I wore a tacky t-shirt to work the other day, its one from Hawaii that my dad and step mom got me. Its so clever in that it looks like the Budweiser logo but in actuality it says some Hawaiian shit that I have not taken the time to read. Funny thing was however, one person complemented me on the shirt and another said they had that same exact one! I was laughing so hard on the inside.

A friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer the other day. I hope she is doing okay although I feel like talking to her about it might make me seem either cold or invasive and the chances are low that she might divulge much more information.

This might get edited a bit for a while. I want to include a list of stuff I have been meaning to do, but have yet to accomplish.

A day to relax

So I took at trip to Bainbridge island today with Sabrina. It was quite pleasant. We went to the streamliner diner which was very tasty - I will have to go back for a waffle sometime soon :) We visited a couple stores, and walked down by the waterfront. Something about life there is very appealing. I have this idea of starting an online company of some sort and have some property where I can work on projects, start a garden and enjoy both the small community and also the city just a short ferry ride away. I had thought that I could never get away from the city, but maybe this is an acceptable alternative.

One of the most peaceful things for me is falling asleep outside, hearing the dull passing of people in the quad, or hearing the leaves blowing in the wind. Today while riding the ferry back to Seattle I fell asleep in the car listening to Nora Jones while we slowly rocked back and forth and made our way across the water. This for me, was very calming. I think it is notable being able to feel comfortable enough with someone to fall asleep in such a way in their presence.

It's alive!

So we finally got it driving. It is sexy, silent, robust and has the lowest cg of any chassis I have been a part of. I am tired, but things are moving along.

Inching along...

So we are officially 6 days behind. This is not to say that we are not ahead of every other season, but we are still behind schedule. This has been a year of doing things right, and having the time to do so (this makes me happy)

For example:

This is the beginnings of our new control board. Things are well organized, and it wont end up being the lowest priority and therefore a huge rat's nest of wires.

I am working again tonight (up to 4 days a week now). I have generally been getting to bed at midnight, and waking up at 4am. I wonder when I will crash. I seriously need a day off to clean and get things back in order since the whistler trip, not to mention catching up in the sleep department. I don't want to give anything up, but it is going to get harder to keep up with all of this and still consider my sanity and my sleep.

Back from Whistler

I went to Whistler for the annual IUGA ski trip. It was a blast. I made some friends, drank too much, got beat up on the slopes, and broke in my new board. I am amazed that I can have like 9 drinks in a couple hours and be almost completely sober. I swear, in touristy Canada they have perfected watering down their drinks.



I can't say the trip was overly eventful. I mean sure there was random strangers, drunken debauchery, and having our bus get sideswiped by a stupid minivan in Canada (we had to wait for the mounties lol)

Trips like this are generally stressful for me, but this one ended up fairly well. I decided that I would just do what I wanted and not get caught up in trying to tag along with anyone's specific plans. I still suck at snowboarding so breaking off from the group was exactly what I needed. No pressure, and some time for some peaceful self reflection of sorts. The mountains are beautiful and pushing myself physically is a rush.

I really need to get in better shape. Boarding killed me, and I think my difficulty is maybe 75% fitness. By the end of the day I was more confident and was getting better, but not till after some decent crashes, bumps and bruises. It's all good though.

I feel like there are big thoughts going on for me now, but it is hard to verbalize. Maybe it is just that I always get this way after trips. It is an escape from your normal day to day, and they are usually accompanied by some sort of marked exit from, and entry back into your life. Riding the bus for 5 or so hours back from Canada gives you plenty of time to sit and look at your life as something external, something you are for some reason now able to look at from the outside. I do the same thing flying back from Michigan, or wherever I am visiting.

It is also a very nice feeling when you have friends you can call on, even if it is for a ride home after a long weekend.

Either way it seems like my life is changing at an accelerated rate, and it feels like finally I am in a position to take advantage of the opportunity.

And so now for a random quote that I hope someone will get: back to life, back to reality

Believe in me as I believe in you, tonight

Life of course remains hectic.

FIRST is going well - the game is interesting and heavily relies on strategy which is my strong suit. We are actually holding ourselves to our off season advice and planning ahead and leaving ourselves some time to get stuff done.

Socially, things have gotten better. I am much appreciative of this new group of people that I hopefully will soon be calling friends. I feel it is not frequent that you meet people like this, and I plan on taking advantage.

It is so nice not being in school. Generally I wish I was more productive at work, but I think for some reason this is my being burnt out week or something.

Having about 2o hours of free time a week is a little stressful, and I am pretty sure my sleeping habits are suffering, but that is okay.

Some things are harder to put into words.

I have once again been swept into the beauty and complexity that is life. I am not afraid, and will not turn away.

So It Begins...

Cool Project Idea

This guy took a flatbed scanner and made it into a digital panoramic imager. [Link]


There is another person that is attempting to link the progression of the scanning element in the scanner to a rotating lens directly, so when you ran the scan, you would get an instant panorama image. [Link]

Retro

I want one of these!



The score is the actual time. I think I would spend way too much time staring at it though. I would always know what time it was!