Maybe this doesn’t ring true for everyone (and indeed it can’t, there are no true universals anymore), but it rings true for me and many other people. I would put forth that music has a huge influence (along with a million other things, I know) on how people are raised, and who they grow up to be. I can’t say anything conclusive from the parental side of it, but it sure makes sense to me that it would be true, but back to my point. It seems to me that if someone grows up with angry music, they may grow up angry. That doesn’t imply violence, or revolutionary-ism (yay, new word), only that they grew up that way, and that may be what they strive to be different from in their “grown up” life. They may have also grown up in a musical environment like mine, that consisted of “We can rule the world/Love, Peace, Dope/realist” music. I’ve been recently going back and re-acquiring all the music I used to listen to, on my moms cd’s and on the radio, and wherever else I would have heard it. Going out and finding all the music I “Grew up on” and thus loved at the time, because I was small and music, among other things, was my life to an extent. For the first time, I’ve finally started listening to the lyrics, and trying to understand, within the context of the singer, the time, and the song, what they mean. It, other than some sort of religious “awakening” (Anyone who knows me is laughing right now), is the most enlightening thing I’ve ever done, and possibly will ever do, but I hate discounting the possibility of the future. It has shown me, other than how my mother raised me, why I am me. It is the single other primary cause of why I am, who I am. And I am thankful for that, as I wouldn’t be me without me. I can trace my unique outlook on everything back to that music. My mother was a scientist, and for that I am very grateful as I didn’t have to grow up in a religious (READ: repressive) family for most of my life, yet thats what the rest of my immediate family is. I had the combination experience of the particular musical taste my mother had, her outlook on life, and the repressive family structure and social structure of the rest of my family (whom I had to visit for visitation with my father at the time), and I am better for it. I do not know if this same sort of situation applies to other kids, and maybe it will take them well into their 30s or 40s to figure something like this out, I don’t know, but I hope so. I would imagine the tunes might be different, and the parenting style, and everything else I’ve described, and yet they too can be the better for it. For this, I hope.
Category Archives: Posts
This will only make sense to one person – you know who you are.
Facebook chain survey. “What would you do if…”
1. I died: I would require that anyone attending your funeral not wear black. We should not mourn the loss of loved ones, we should celebrate the life they had.
2.*you don’t have to answer this* I kissed you: I’m not sure.
3. I lived next door to you: I dunno, what do neighbors normally do?
4. I started smoking: Work as though it was my life mission to get you to stop.
5. I stole something: Laugh. If you didn’t get caught, it’s not wrong.
6. I was hospitalized: Come visit as often as I could, and bring a 100pack of crayons and coloring books so you would have awesome pictures to color.
7. I ran away from home: Harbor you, if I lived close enough.
8. I got into a fight and you weren’t there?: Call and ask if you kicked some ass or not.
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MY:
9. Personality: Well rounded, and real. You have shining parts and vices, which is fine. It makes you human.
10. Eyes: Harry stack Sullivan once said “The eyes are the windows to the soul”. I can’t disagree here.
11. Hair: Iunno, whats to say about hair? It’s pretty and soft and shit? \__d(^_^)b__/
12. Smile: As sweet as candy and twice as nice.
WOULD YOU:
13. Be my friend?: Yes
14. Keep a secret if I told you one?: Always
15. Hold my hand?: Yes.
16. Take a bullet for me?: As I would for all my friends.
17. Keep in touch?: Indeed I do already and will continue to do so.
18. Try and solve my problems?: Heh, yes.
19.*you don’t have to answer this* Love me?: Yeah.
20.*you don’t have to answer this* Date me?: If I wasn’t 300 miles away, yes.
21. Sing with me?: Loudly and atleast 3 octaves off tune!
HAVE YOU EVER:
22. Lied to make me feel better?: No.
23.*you don’t have to answer this* Wanted to kiss me?: Yes.
24. Wanted to kill me?: I don’t beleive so.
25. Broke my heart?: No, as far as I know.
26.*you don’t have to answer this* Kept something important from me?: Again, as far as I know, no.
27. Thought I was unbearably annoying?: Isn’t everyone at some point in life?
MORE:
28. Who are you?: Jacob T.
29. Are we friends?: Yes
30. When and how did we meet?: I don’t honestly know. 11th grade sometime.
31. Describe me in one word: Smile.
32. What was your first impression?: I dunno, it was like 2-3 years ago :/
33. Do you still think that way about me now?: I would assume so.
34. What reminds you of me?: A few songs I have.
35. If you could give me anything what would it be?: A good life.
36. How well do you know me?: Not as well as I’d like to.
37. When’s the last time you saw me?: The last day of school.
38. Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn’t?: No, though I usually downplay things of importance.
39. What song do you think would describe me best?: Dunno, I’m shitty at symbolism. I’m afraid I’d pick a song that has some unknown meaning to me.
40. Are you gonna put this on yours to see what I say about you? No. Though you’re free to do it anyway.
Sex and Education
I’m dissatisfied with our educational system. It serves more to brainwash our children into trying to achieve the American dream (which seldom exists any longer) and teaches them very little that is useful. We have what is hilariously called sex education in schools, which neither teaches about sex, nor does it educate kids properly about the inherent dangers/fun therein. It teaches biology, which, I dare say, should be taught in a biology class. I’ve also always been confused as to why certain Christian sects have weaseled their way into that forum with the ability for parents to shelter their children with a piece of paper that nominally exempts the child from being taught the (at least biological) information. I’m not sure what this serves to do, as kids will have sex either way, best it be the safe way. I think that if we had a real sex ed class, which would progress from biology to basic anatomy to *gasp* maybe even a few rudimentary positions and possible benefits (or cons? are there really any?) to certain positions over others, we would have (even if children maintained their abstinence that a lot of Christianity preaches (unlikely)) much happier couples, with a much healthier sex life. This of course leads to (eventually) a happier, healthier, more sex positive society.
I’ve also noticed how school is taught in a linear fashion. Kindergarten prepares you for elementary, which prepares you for junior high, which in turn prepares you for high school, which in turn prepares you (supposedly) for college. That system works… up until high school. Though I didn’t go to a “normal” high school (mine prepared you for the workplace, more than college), from what I could see in friends that did go there it did not prepare them for college. It didn’t teach study habits, or money management. It didn’t teach them about drugs or alcohol (in any meaningful way), and it surely didn’t teach them about some of the myriad of other pitfalls of college. It would seem to me that in the 2-3 months between high school and college, you were supposed to have learned how to live on your own… and this is usually just not the case. I’m not entirely sure what needs to change there, but it’s not something where you can add in a home economics type course… it’s a systemic change that needs to happen so that at least high school is geared towards some of what’s ahead, instead of masquerading around with very little intention of teaching you anything about college or the rest of life (save how to apply to colleges… and even it’s mostly the colleges that do that for ya).
These two paragraphs are related, I swear. I’d like to use this non-sequiter to mention a person who writes for the SF Chronicle, and is one of the forefront people of the Sex Positive movement, Violet Blue (NSFW, with warning).
Awkwardness is a Social Construct
The title says it all. I’ve recently come to the conclusion that if you don’t make a situation that could be awkward awkward, it won’t be.
Take the nice example of walking in on someone who’s naked. Smile politely, wave if you wish, and keep walking. Make no undue eye contact, and if you really want to decrease the awkward, have a 5 second conversation. Maybe they did well on something recently, whatever. Has to be something neutral and positive. You walk away going “I handled that pretty well” and they go away going “Huh, that was a hell of a lot awkward than I expected it to be.”
So, seriously. Next time you have an “awkward” moment, Don’t be a douche and make it awkward. If you don’t, they won’t feel (as) awkward and thus will not further the awkward. Do it enough, and everything will cease to be awkward.
I follow this ideal, and I’m like the man from the Dos Equis commercial – I have awkward moments just to reminisce about how they feel.
Bad Decisions
So, there are these people I know. It’s gonna be one of those stories. If I get bold I’ll publish this after everything happens, and if that’s the case then you’re seeing this and it already happened. I’m publishing this ahead of time. Those who will lol can lol. Everyone else can stfu. <3 This may or may not be wrong. I admit no wrong doing, only a possible misinformation on my part. =D
So, lemme lay out the people. There are five of them. Ones a kid who always tries (and fails) to stay neutral in any drama near him; a couple who have gone out for a good long while, having survived some strife with friends over the consummation (I think that’s the right word) of their relationship – they know what’s expected of them (IE they know how to act according to socially established norms… that damned social contract my English teacher yelled about for a while during senior year of high school) … they’ve been at it a while. Then you have the other couple, who’s entire relationship is based entirely upon sex and cling; neither person has a huge amount of people skills or (American) societal training as one is (was, until the relationship) a computer genius (which doesn’t leave much time for people interaction, mind you) and the other is of foreign origin and just hasn’t been here long enough to pick everything up (I call no fault on either person). They’re all friends, and I love them all dearly.
But, to the story. There are a couple other people I’m inviting to this party (that the story may yet take place at) but they’re (for this story) irrelevant.
I should like to take this tiny ass paragraph to state that much of this could be wrong, mischaracterized, hilarious, true, or any combination of the aforementioned adjectives. I take no fault for it. If all else fails, it will be a hilarious reminder of what could have been; if it is true, it should be a reminder of what not to do.
So, I need not bore you with details, but what it boils down to is my good friend (of the poorly constructed relationship couple) deciding to throw his future away (of course he doesn’t see it that way…) to go to the country that his newly found girlfriend is from, because they’re so much in love, and the country is… well… fantastic or some shit. Fear not, I’ve already done my bid of yelling at him for it… of course the girlfriend won. It’s frankly kind of disgraceful to have someone whom he has known for years (6-7?) and had a major hand in his being a functioning member of society (He didn’t pull those people skills out of his own ass, you know… He pulled them from mine) lose in a major discussion that will affect the outcome of the rest of his life to someone whom he has known for little more than a year. Apparently it’s (sex > best friend). That’s the beat down version of the story. Now, on to the party.
The party is simple. I’m returning to town for a weekend to visit my mom, hang out with some friends, ya know – chill. Pretty simple, nothing fancy involved. But, as of present, I’m at a loss as to whether or not to invite the couple, because I’m pissed at both of them and I have a feeling if I invite the dude of the two, he’s just gonna sit in the corner and fucking text her all night or something. I have a second feeling that if they’re there together, they’re gonna end up sitting in a corner cuddling all night or something retarded and I’m not going to get to hang out with my friend. Either way, shit sucks.
Given that I don’t DO drama, I’ll probably make some drastic decision at the last minute and I’ll look just like the asshole that everyone has known and loved. At this rate, I’d better come up with something quick, cause I’m fresh out of options that seem good.
Differences between DaVinci and Life
Just a few observations in the differences in social structure. I’m sure other people at DaVinci have noticed this as well, but I figured I’d put it out in writing so people can yell at me for being wrong. This post has no warranty of truth for your particular area or college.
Now, I’ve heard from several people ranting on Facebook that they went to their college’s respective orientation event and were enthusiastically yelled at that if they did nothing else in college, it was to network. Ya know, make friends, open doors of opportunity, all that kitschy stuff people encourage you to do all the time, and one of the chief reasons people go to conferences. That’s what it sounded like college was. Let’s everybody network a bunch, and if you happen to glean a bit of information from your classes along the way, you’re that much the better off for it. Having just finished my second week of college (Of course this could all change in the future) that idealistic role that college could play in your life is about as far away from the truth as I’m willing to place it without involving some swearing to illustrate the distance. I’m in five classes right now, and I can count on one hand the number of people who’re actually interested (or maybe it’s just those that actually see a benefit…) in meeting people and making friends. The number is far less for those who’re actually interested in the course (2, One in public speaking, one in geology). I must be honest though, they’re gen-ed courses so I wouldn’t expect much more.
In contrast to that, I can honestly say at least 75% of the people I knew loved school. Maybe not always being there, but they were happy with (most of) the projects they did. I would also comment on DaVinci-ite’s friend making skills as being one of the better things that was developed in high school. Many people, seeing someone sitting despondent and in a corner, would just walk right up and ask what was wrong. It didn’t matter who they were, or whether they even knew their name. Those details were secondary to helping the person be cheered up or working through whatever the issue was they were having. Maybe some sound advice was in order, or just a good hug would suffice, but either way (and any other) people would jump through hoops to help people. That isn’t the case at college. On a related tangent, it reminds me of a court case that went through the California court system a couple years ago. The case centered around someone who had crashed on the highway, typical movie style thing with the car upside down, gas dripping out and about to catch fire and explode. A fantastic person stopped off to aide the driver who was unconscious or otherwise incapacitated and pulled them out of the burning (but not yet exploded) wreckage of their car, and in doing so broke their spine or something major like that. If the person had not been a good Samaritan, the driver would not be alive today. The driver sued in civil court and won, making a precedent that anyone who stops off on the side of the road to help someone (or any similar situation) and injures the person they’re saving is liable for it. There are laws on the books to prevent criminal prosecution of similar situations if it can be proven the good Samaritan acted in good faith. This same sort of thing is erected in peoples minds at college. Here you have all these people – thousands, at larger colleges tens of thousands, and why should I want to help them? What good have they ever done for me? Well I can answer that. They’ve done you no good. Neither have they done you any harm. If you take that first step to help them, who knows what kind of friend you’ll make. I’m sure it’s not one you’d ordinarily make, and that’s perfectly good. A good friend is a good friend no matter what group or clique or cliché they belong to.
Another thing I’ve noticed although much less important (because I figured this was the case already) is that people are damned near technologically illiterate. They’ve got their little (or big) laptops their parents bought them for college and they can write papers, surf the web, accidentally download a virus that wipes out their term paper, and check their email like a pro. Anything beyond that is like asking too much of them. It’s very unfortunate. Though I wouldn’t wish the amount of knowledge I have on them, basic things like logical security practices and having a password that isn’t their dogs name followed by 123 and if they’re feeling really smart an exclamation point would be nice. I dunno. It just seems to me that things like that should be common sense by now. I don’t expect everyone to know that their password that’s rufus123! can be cracked in ~2.4 seconds, but they should know basic computer security. Antivirus, a good firewall, and good browsing habits can eliminate about 99.5% of the problems you could have software side. The other half of owning a computer, the hardware half, isn’t hard to deal with either. Don’t leave it out where people can take it, don’t drop it, and don’t throw it out of a second story windows (Had that at DaVinci, I’m not naming names…). This is supposed to be the technology generation, the computer generation, yet so many of our generation are so woefully inept at computers it makes me want to cry. I guess it will just take enough people getting all their data and information ripped off to finally make the tide change…
One last note that I’d like to throw out there, sort of a story of sorts… I met a girl in Geology class (If you’re reading this, hello :P ) whom I don’t remember her name, but it’s not terribly important. She had identified me as a computer person through conversation (It seeps out of my beanie when I’m not paying attention) and before class asked me to (basically) decode for her a voice mail an Apple representative (probably one from the Apple store in downtown San Luis Obispo) and I obliged. She had apparently had some issues with her macbook in that it had a kernel panick, which according to Apple was caused by bad ram. Rather than just telling her that and fixing it (It’s only worth maybe 50-75 bucks for a fix like that) they did a huge series of tests to the laptop in the name of determining what was wrong. The call was to tell her that she had two options, one was to just replace the ram chip that was dead (a 1 gig ram chip, 25$, Holy shit is that expensive…) the other was to do a ram upgrade to 4 gigs (I assumed correctly that she had 2 already) for an extra 100$(Again – dear god, 25$/gig). I advised her to opt for the replacement, not upgrade. It still ended up costing her almost 200 dollars in total. I could have done it for, oh, probably 45 including cost of replacement ram. I’m not sure what to say for that, but Apple’s prices and actions speak for themselves.
On the austerity of spoons
So, I figured that as mundane and boring of an update as this is, it’s also intensely cool. So, I have what one might call a spoon fetish of sorts. I love spoons for some reason, and most especially the weird ones but those which are plain and get the job done. So, while doing a bit of careless research on a spoon I had in my possession I stumbled upon the most curious thing.
Basically, it boils down to me having a spoon that nobody on the entire internet can find one of.
It’s a basic looking spoon, but the really cool thing is, it’s huge. And by some mysterious feat of good sense by someone many years ago, it still manages to fit in everyone but a babies mouth. I like it because it’s simple and gets the job done without being flashy, but thats beside the point.
Naturally, I went on a quest to find the long lost brethren of this spoon, and failed. Miserably. So, the details on the spoon are: It was manufactured by the now defunct (signs lead to Wüsthof having bought them years ago) Dreizack company, from Germany. Details are few, but from what I can tell, it was the place/soup spoon of their Pamir pattern. Now, this is a pattern in which buying a new soup ladle will cost you no less than 45 dollars. If’n you happen to have one of these, feel free to give me a call, or comment here. I’ll seriously buy them off of you.
In any case, these spoons are nothing extraordinary by modern standards, but this company was started in 1814 and they only made 3 patterns in the company’s existence, leading me to believe it was short-lived. So this spoon may be nearly 200 years old. I’m sure it’s worth something, but it’s worth more to me for it to be accompanied by some of its fellow brother and sister spoons. A full set of them would be slick. Not gonna lie.
A picture of the spoon I have
A writing excercise I found on my floor
Tagged as cloud, cloud computing, college essay writing practice, computing, quickwrite, server client, server client architecture, technology
About Cloud Computing – It was a quickwrite for a college essay writing seminar I went to, about a year ago and before I knew much about cloud computing. Exact retype.
I really love the idea of cloud computing. It’s versatile, fast, moderately stable, and scary. The moderate scariness comes from the idea of having your data spread out. It isn’t accessible from any one address, because it isn’t at any one address, little bits are all over the data center. This does, however, require a bit of intelligence on the part of the level3 cloud provider’s network.They have to be able to quickly and efficiently distribute computational commands and data, and return those coherently to the user in a timely fashion. But more Importantly, If anyone were to expect anything less than perfection, the entire system would fail, and we would return to the good-old single server-client architecture and and much efficiency would be lost. The main difference between cloud infrastructure and regular is grace. With a standard architecture, you throw more servers or bandwidth at your problem. With cloud computing, you merely make the system architecture more efficient.
End quickwrite.
So, I Updated My blog
And by Updated, I of course mean I re-installed wordpress on a newer, faster, more awesome server, then reconstructed my previous install. I couldn’t get a straight across import to work, so I went with the next best thing.
Old server: Pentium 3 @ 800mhz, 512 megs ram
New server: Amd Athlon X2 @ 2.2ghz, 2 gigs ram.
It’s pretty slick, and so this site should have considerably shorter generation times.
An Observed Increase in Spam
Let’s start with some numbers:
I usually get anywhere from 900 to 1900ish emails in my gmail spam box, which according to them anything older than 30 days is eaten. Cool. Those numbers were average last week, but I take 3 days to go on my school’s senior trip to disneyland, get back early this morning, and notice I have not a nice 1900 emails, but nearly 4200 spam emails registered. That combined with the fact that I got 15 emails in my inbox that were spam (it’s usually about one every couple of days, and for this period of time, 15 is 10% of total email received) leads me to beleive someone somewhere just opened up a new spam network. Not sure what to say about it, but It’s an observation I thought I’d make. Just seemed pretty stark, going from 2k emails to 4.2k emails in 3 days. I’m guessing I’ll hear about it sometime in the next week, about some new ninja-spam-network thats avoiding all the censors or something: whatever.
Anyone else experiencing this? email me or talk to me on whatever site you see this on. ^_^
