Must. Stop. Drinking. Lucas. Kool-aid.

WHY DOES LUCAS FEEL THAT HE MUST WHORE OUT MY FAITH IN HIM TO PRODUCE A GOOD MOVIE?!?! *pant* *pant*

I used charter on-demand to watch "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" today.

Flaw #1, no yellow, opening text scroll and the film starts on terra firma. wait. what. Strike one. How could you possibly get into the mood for star wars without reading scrolling text about the current state of the universe followed by red/blue lasers on a black backdrop?!? Fine. Hmm, it takes place between Episodes 2 and 3. I came into this thinking that it was the bridge between 3 and 4. Nope. The Emperor is still in charge of the galactic senate. Count Dooku is still the second Sith Lord. Skywalker is still a good jedi...and in the first 10 minutes he is given a Padawan. wait. what. Ok. Maybe the padawan that we haven't heard mention of in episode 3, 4, 5, and 6 is killed by the end. Nope. They are good friends throughout and the friendship and trust only grows until the credits roll. Fine. So what's their adventure in this flick going to be. Let's see, Jabba the Hutt's baby, Punky Muffin, has been kidnapped and the jedi agree to rescue it. wait. what. How does he let this stuff through? This is a plot a 15 year old role-player could have thought up. I can't go on.

My recommendation. Pirate this movie. Pirate it hard.

I'm going to go rinse with some Peter Jackson.

Consuming Life

Does anyone else find it odd that most life survives by consuming the life of others? Somewhere right now, a falcon rips open the belly of a rabbit. A cheetah digs its claws into a fleeing impala. A dolphin feeds on a bait ball of sardines. Even the deer uproots vegetation to quiet its hunger. Only the plant survives by not ending the existance of another. Can a human survive on by-products alone which don't kill our sustenance (milk, cheese, fruit/vegetables, sunlight)?

Phantom Sensations

Ever feel that phantom cell phone vibration? I wonder what causes that? Is it the anticipation of a call, the longing of contact with another person? I must really need interaction as I'm starting to hear my GPS randomly tell me to "Turn Left" while driving even though I don't have a destination programmed in. Is my GPS leading me to my destiny? Perhaps the next time I hear the phantom instruction I will follow and see where it will lead!

Today, it is finally tomorrow.

I am a level-capped procrastinator. Every task that I need to do now, I put off until tomorrow. You know, the problem with this is that, with very little work, tomorrow never arrives (see what I did there?). Projects and tasks can get pushed back to tomorrow ad-infinitum or until the very last minute where I have to scramble to finish (or worse, abandon the project). I've lied to myself for many years thinking that I work best under-pressure. In actuality, it cripples any natural talent that I have. Imagine all the evil good that I could accomplish if I started projects early and reviewed/modified/grew the task over time! The world would see my genius and dispair rejoice! An illustration of my indispensable greatness! (click the zoom button to read)

WELL, NO MORE! Tomorrow starts TODAY! Well, it really should have started yesterday, but I decided to put it off until today (really...yes, I have a real problem...) Regardless! There will be no more looking forward to 5 pm or towards making it through Wednesday, or with an eye on Friday. Instead, I will turn my focus about and look backwards. What did I accomplish over the last hour? How did that help me reach my life/career/hobby goals and objectives?

Here are my goals and objectives:

Life:

• Maintain a clean and healthy home
• Be good to family and friends
• Stay financially sound and on track for retirement

Career:

• Provide excellent customer, technical and peer support
• Pursue educational and advancement opportunities

Hobbies:

• Enjoy the journey in Lord of the Rings Online (No way I would give up my #1 hobby!)
• Rebuild my Honda del Sol
• Learn to play Saxophone
• Start Flight Training

A life a little more done

I had an epiphany while emailing a friend today. A tough, but rewarding career is really the perfect career. A tough career will keep you from becoming bored and complacent. A rewarding career keeps you looking for new challenges. I currently have a tough and rewarding career. Yay for me!!

I give up

I purchased a fun sized bag of doritos while out during lunch today. I've noted it before, but decided to look at the serving size again. Hmm, fun sized is enough for 4 people. 11 chips per person. No way there were 44 chips in a fun sized bag of doritos. NE-way, my next thought was, you know, let me just eat 11 chips and put the rest away for an afternoon snack. 20 minutes and one bag later I realized fighting the junk food industry is HOPELESS! These dang manufactures intentionally make junk food addictive. There is no way to escape the marketing they spend BILLIONS on per year, but then to load products with seasoning, and salt, and sugar, and crunchy-goodness, and possibly heroin is just criminal. TV and junk food. Corruption of mind and body. I wish I could quit you.

Considering a companion.

I've been wondering over the last 6 months if I needed another living creature in my house. Something besides the spiders that I capture, release, only to capture again. This afternoon I went to the Humane Society with the intention of only getting the application and determining the cost. Let me tell you that Humane Society workers know what they are doing. After I remarked that I'm considering adopting, there was no sales pitch, no here are the costs or an introduction to what the Humane Society does. It was, "Let me show you the puppies." You know, the ones in the small cages with eager but sad puppy dog eyes. "Hold on." I said, "First, let's talk about the application process." So after explaining how adoption worked, I decided to take a quick peek at their dogs.

Miissssssttaaaaaaaaakke. I was greeted by a 10 month old, pure bred chocolate lab that bounded upon the cage door when I walked around the corner. Do I need a dog? It would be nice to have something to motivate me to walk/run everyday.

Do dogs like seaplanes?

I shall call her Seawolf...

http://www.iconaircraft.com

It only costs about $3,000 to get a sport pilots license. The restrictions are speed (<130 mph), altitude (<10,000 feet), weather (only on clear days), time of day (no night flights). There is no restriction on range. I think this would be awesome to fly up river and camp every night over a week.

Reply to all...

Ever accidentally email a company of 40,000? I didn't, but someone else did today. What's remarkable is what happened next... A string of "reply to alls" that 1) notified the user that they "replied to all" and 2) asking the user not to "reply to all", which lead to others "replying to all" asking those users not to "reply to all"...this could go on forever. I'm starting to fear for this organization.

Google Reader

http://reader.google.com

Anyone else use this? It rocks! About a year ago, I found that I was wasting alot of time browsing to my favorite sites sequentially. Google's RSS aggregator allows you to point to the RSS feeds of all your favorite sites (including blogs). You then only browse to Google Reader to see articles. I found today that since Google owns Blogger, any blogs your 'follow' are automatically added to Reader. Here are the sites I keep up with through Reader.

IGN PC - http://scripts.ign.com/rss/ign.PC.2.0.xml
Gamespy PC - http://scripts.gamespy.com/rss/gamespy.PC.2.0.xml
Massively MMO Gaming - http://www.massively.com/rss.xml
MMORPGDOT - http://www.rpgdot.com/team/rss/rss13.xml
Tobold's MMO Blog - http://tobolds.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
MMORPG - http://rss.mmorpg.com/rss/mmorpg_news_rss.xml
Kill Ten Rats - http://www.killtenrats.com/?feed=rss2
Heartless Gamer - http://hgamer.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
AFK Gamer - http://afkgamer.com/feed/rss2/

Life Lessons

• If your lawn mower is sputtering, the gasoline station probably isn't cutting the gas with water. You should check your air filter for obstructions.
• If there is a thick, fishy odor coming from your dishwasher, it probably isn't the dishwasher. You should check your p-trap.

Now if I could only sticky this.

Hmph...who knew

...that this self-motivation stuff is deceptively easy. The tricky part is...well, getting started. (See what I did there?) I patched my roof today! I can cross that off the undone list. I think I am self-motivated enough to watch Cops and America's Most Wanted now.

WHOOPS! Right after I let Jen's dog out.

Passiveness and the cop

So I've had this great post in mind all day titled 'Werd', but I discovered something about myself tonight. I am agressive in exactly the wrong situations. It's abuse of authority that just sets me off into a willing and combative wit. Case in points, I've only been stopped for moving violations twice in my life. One was tonight and it honestly took every bit of energy to not bless out this cop. Well, let's put it in reverse for a moment.

My first moving violation? I had come in to work on APSU's web servers on a Saturday at 3 pm. I parked about 10 spaces down Browning Drive (or more appropriate for the defense of my case...browning parking lot). When I left at 6:30 pm (still a Saturday), I reversed my vehicle across browning drive parking lot, and turned to go back out the way I came in. At the very end of Browning drive a campus security guard officer blocked me in. When instructed to turn around, I remarked, 'You've got to be kidding me.' You know what that got me? Well, that and telling him that 'I'm not turning around.'...and getting out to take a picture of our vehicles... (btw, I won the appeal. Having conflict of interest level influence with 2/3rds of the appeals board didn't hurt)

Fast forward to tonight. I'm coming down the 41A bypass in the passing lane and a crown vic is in the slow lane. A black crown vic. I look down and am doing 57 in a 50. As I pass, he sirens me and then flashes his headlights. Fine, I know you are in control so I slow to 50. And he gets on my ass with no blues. I speed up to 55 and he's still got like a 1 second of stop time between us. I think to myself, he wants me to stop. Well you know what...I'm not stopping unless he hits the blues. He finally does. Ooo, the things I had to bite my tongue over. I did good though. He gave me a warning. Gimli's Pride, I just kept thinking of what you said cops think when they pull over a brother..."Mr. Wooden, you aren't resisting, are you?". That saved me a clubbing. Thx.

Current Financial Crisis Viewpoint

Too many people look at their investments nowadays and dispair. Here are some viewpoints that may put things in perspective:

1. Your investments are managed by professionals. If you are 20 years away from retirement, you should cheer when the market is down because your fund managers are buying valuable stock at a discounted price. -Jacob H.
2. Value your investments by how many shares you own instead of how many dollars it shows. When the markets are down, any additional money you throw in does what? Buys a larger pool of shares at the lower price! -Reggie W.
3. When investors are fearful, I am greedy. When investors are greedy, I am fearful! -Warren B.
4. If, during the last 30 years during each of the last 6 reccessions, you had thrown in $500, you would have $15,000 today. Josh L./Mitch B. CBS Sunday Morning

Passiveness and Gaming in a single post

Many of you know that I love playing a Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO) named Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO). Well, they are releasing an expansion pack on Nov 18th (Mines of Moria). Expansion releases are like christmas in the MMO world. You pre-order and get goodies such as in-game items, soundtracks, art-books and another box to place on your shelf. So, I go to the closest Gamestop (5 mins away) to pre-order a few weeks ago. I give them my $10 and ask about the pre-order box and item code. They say they don't have it yet. On assurances that they will get it, I leave my money there and walk out empty handed. Each day, I would return to the store to check to see if they have the pre-order boxes/codes in yet. Each day I would leave them with my $10 and have nothing to show for it. Eventually it became a joke to them, but frustrating to me. So I go in Tuesday and ask and am told, "You should check our other stores, they might have them.". Being passive, I didn't say, "Why should I have to check your other stores? Isn't that your job?". Well, I ended up at our local mall's Gamestop and lo'and'behold...there's the "Mines of Moria" pre-order box and codes. I plop down my $10 to reserve it, had a great conversation with the clerk about LOTRO in as much as he is going to reactivate his account and join me ingame and WALKED OUT WITH MY PRE-ORDER BOX! /happydance.

Next, I grab my receipt and head back to store number one... I snidely tell the clerk, "You were right, the other store had them and I reserved it there.". So now he is pissed and says, "I can't believe they /insertracialepitateusedasaverb/ us out of a sale.". Being passive I think to myself, "You do see that I'm black, right? I mean if you would slander another race, there's no telling what you are thinking about me right now. And you know what else? THIS IS YOUR FAULT!". Well, I guess I'll have to passively vote on the experience with my wallet.

The little ones

So working at home has its advantages. One of which is you can see everything that is right with your house...but that isn't how it works. Turns out that everything that is wrong is AMPLIFIED. Luckily the bones of my house are strong. It just needs some love on the roof, under the dishwasher, with the landscaping, the carpet, the paint color, the heating efficiency, cleaning the siding, paving the driveway, sealing the attached deck, building a detached garden/party deck, housekeeping and interior organization. So, time to get to work! Well, after work that is.

Big Projects

Maybe it's the Red Bull typing...but I've felt really productive over the last week or so. Four years I've owned my house and not once have I cleaned the basement from the move in. Guess what I did last weekend? Well no, but I did get the garage side of the basement organized. This weekend, I tackle the other side. You know what that led to? Two things, I had space for and purchased an engine hoist to finally rebuild the engine in my 1993 Honda Del-Sol (Figure 1). Second thought, I'll finally have the space to start building my experimental airplane on the other side (Figure 2). Well, that means it's time to get that pilots license I've been dreaming about since 15!

Those are the big ones. Next, the little ones...

Figure 1

Figure 2

Welcome to the Undone Life!

I have lots of thoughts to share, with myself, with my friends and apparently with the internet! I'll need your help to complete the undone life so please leave your comments.

Friends, do you know me? I am black. I am a nerd. I am agnostic. I am intelligent. I am independent. I am career focused. I am financially sound. I am friendly. I am shy. I am a gamer. I am a liberal democrat.

Do you know who I'd like to be? I am an aspiring pilot. I am an aspiring cyclist. I am an aspiring gardener. I am an aspiring saxophone player. I am an aspiring handyman. I am an aspiring mechanic. I am an aspiring totally-awesome-boyfriend.

Friends, do you know who I don't like being? Disloyal, Unstable, Procrastinator, Unconfident, Passive, Out of shape.

So, here is where I am. Let's get me to where I want to be! Today I manage my undone life.