Archive for the 'Life' Category

*Poof* Part 1

Published
by
C.G.
on May 11, 2007
in Life and Philosophy
. 0 Comments

Just like that, it seems, it happened. I got old. And for the first time ever, I wish I was a kid again.

See, this morning, I was thinking during my lunch break at work and it hit me. I don’t like where I am. I don’t like what I’ve become. I don’t want to be who I am. And I don’t want to continue like this but I don’t know what else to do. It’s not like I can go back in time, reverse my age, or ditch my job or my responsibilities. But I do wish I could live care free and be able to satisfy my childish desires to play, build, write, create, and have fun like I used to.

When I was a younger, I had one hell of an imagination. With Go-Bots, Transformers, Voltron, and Star Wars as my inspiration, I created my own transforming robots out of Legos; my brother and I build entire worlds out of those plastic pieces. We had our own set of heroes battling out with evil Lego robots who we created in similar fashion. Part of the fun was simulating explosions by smashing our creations into the floor, wall, or our hands only to put them back together again - often with enhancements born out of an epiphany. But building then destroying robots built of spare parts wasn’t the real enjoyment; it was the story lines we acted out as those toy characters we created that was the fun part.

Somehow, I acted out - mostly impromptu - a story for our toys to follow. We had a police force, scientists, communications experts, and auto repair and tow “robots” that all had alter egos when called into action to defeat their evil enemies when some diabolical scheme to take over the universe was being carried out. With the help of my younger brother, we’d act out a few episodes a week - it was our own action drama and we were the writers, directors, set & costume designers, location scouts, and (or course) actors. We’d spend hours at a time playing this way and I don’t remember ever worrying about a thing except for where a particular Lego piece I needed was.

I wrote what came to my imagination, too. When I was in the second grade, I wrote my first sci-fi novel. At 16 pages, it wasn’t the tome that The Hobbit is but it was pretty darn good, if I say so myself. I remember my teacher, Sister Mary Laureen, seemed to like me (even after I went on the 3rd and 4th grades, she would wink at me as we passed each other in the hall). When I showed her the book - which was written in pencil on multi-colored paper that I stapled together - she said she liked it (teachers are supposed to do that, though) and thought it was “romantic.” Of course, I didn’t intend for it romantic but when your main character is a space swashbuckler named Moonlit Mouse, I can see where she was misled ;). In reality, I meant it to be a gritty but heroic tale of a mouse who (again) battles evil cats (a la Tom & Jerry) for control of the universe freeing the other mice from feline tyranny.

Somewhere, as I grew up, I lost the ability to create, fantasize, act, illustrate, and write whatever my heart and mind desired. Perhaps, when I was a teen, it was the shame of being different. When group think is the easiest way to fit in and best way to avoid bully, its easy to loose whatever sense of identity or creativity - both of which I had when I was younger. But even when I grew older, still, I couldn’t create like I had in the past. Things were still different.

Yes, I wrote a lot. But it was almost only out of necessity - a term paper, essay, or quiz. I can’t even think of one time I wrote creatively for myself. And forget playing with toys! I didn’t even remember where they were!! I couldn’t design new robots out of Legos or let alone build whole worlds; I couldn’t even think of what they would say in one scene let a alone one episode.

But realizing what I did and what I lost doesn’t explain how I lost it, really. Theories abound. While I can’t say with any certainty why I “lost it,” I have some ideas which I’ll write about in the next installment of *Poof*.

We’re Not Doing It For The Money… We’re Doing It For A Shit Load Of Money!!!

Published
by
C.G.
on April 17, 2007
in Computers, Life and Money
. 1 Comment

Sorry about the long title but it’s needed.

See, I was strolling through some older posts at Lifehack.org on my newly Mac-ified Google Reader when I came across an article on how to start a blog and make $100 in the first month.  Suddenly it dawned on me… Most blogs are in it for the money.

No kidding!

I know, I know… the realization shouldn’t be so surprising but for me it is.   I guess in this day of social media/collaboration and open source software, I figured blogging - or creating a blog would be an extension of that.  I also feel that its different for companies because they invest heavily in IP, infrastructure, and the production of media/content and they need some justification.  Besides, that’s what businesses do… do something to make money.

But people… are they that hell bent on making money that they do what lifehack.org is suggesting they do to make an extra $100 a month?  I know I’m not.  Of course, I’m lucky enough to be comfortable in life - I’m not living in a Park Avenue penthouse or anything but I’m not in the slums either.  The prospect of even $500 a month doesn’t appeal to me.  I guess that’s my prerogative but what about everyone else?  How much money would you have to make on your blog before you thought it would be worth it?

Its a hard question to answer and its not as simple as some dollar amount.  It can’t be (in my mind) the same amount of money one would make in their “day job.” You could find that you might take less money if it was less work.  But if the point of having a blog was to make more more money, you can’t quit your job.  And if you do it part time, you can’t create much content to generate views, hits, and clicks.

But being creative and keeping people reading and clicking on ads can’t be easy; talk about pressure to perform all the time.  If you don’t write something meaningful a few times a day or so, you loose your audience and the ad revenue they bring.  Even if you regurgitate someone else’s content as many do, is still hard to do it day after day.  If there is anything people like about their music, movies, TV, and books its new content.  They don’t like the same style of beats, etc. to keep them entertained.  And because we tend to be fickle in what is hot and then not, it makes keeping audiences “tuned” to your blog even harder.

I suppose you can be sneaky about things and write a bunch of words in there that will gather lots of attention.  Words like, porn, fuck, adult entertainment, beer, and cars plastered all over every post might garner you some hits but is it really all you want to do get people to like your site?  Faking hits is fraud.  Hiding meta data is also a no-no.  None of those things, I think, will really get you the money that would make investing in a blog worth it.

Not that its really expensive.  Figure $7 for a domain - some are free with hosting plans.  Hosting plans average around $7 a month with many much less than that.  Ads could be costly but you’ve got to spend money to make money, right?  But what about the time?  Is your time valuable?  If so, you might not want to spend it earning $5 an hour.  If you already earn $5/hr, then it might be worth making that extra $100 but now you are talking about a heavy investment ($7 a month is 1.5 hours of your month and 7% of your expenses before ads you buy).

So why not do it for the experience?  Share your thoughts with the world and not care if it nets you a Ben Franklin.  I mean, that’s why I do it… to tell you what I am thinking as if you care and like what I have to say.   I mean, normally its a gift to hear what I have to say, anyway so…  The way I see it, you are all winners here.

:)

You know you’re old when…

Published
by
C.G.
on April 16, 2007
in Life and Philosophy
. 0 Comments

…when you find yourself less tolerant than you had been in the past.

I consider myself an easy going guy.  I’m not one to get angry and when I do, I (generally) feel I am justified.  And even when I do get angry, I’m calm about it and almost never loose my cool.  While I have lost my temper before - and still do from time to time - its rare (I think).  But mostly I just roll with the punches and take things in stride.

But lately, I’m finding myself less likely to “forgive and forget” and I’m holding things in.  If someone ever trespassed against me, I would forgive them.  I’d even give them the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe they didn’t mean to trespass against me?  I’d let the small stuff stay small and focus on what was really important.  But now, the small things bother me and, more and more, I fine myself silently cursing “some jerk” who obviously wronged me.

When did I become this way and why?
Is it age?

Is it learning “life’s lessons?”

Am I getting wiser?

Am I losing my youthful ideals?

And what about the altruism?  Is that gone, too??

I don’t know what has changed but I’m sure its me.  The world was always a bad place and I just seemed to forgive it.  I knew there were thieves, jerks, cons, scammers, bullies, assholes, bitches, and every other name for the type of person who would rather spit at you than flash a smile.

Yet, in my youth, I’d say, “they don’t know any better.”  Or I’d think that they are in some kind of personal hate or have low self esteem that causes them to be defensive with a good offense (you know, the football saying) to hide their perceived shame, guilt, and lack of confidence. I’d be able to accept the things I couldn’t change in someone by understanding them - almost justifying them - by thinking as them or, in most cases, not thinking as me… there is a difference.

But I don’t like what I’ve become and I want to change back to who I was before.  And let me say this, I’m not really that old in years.  I’m 31.  Yet, I feel a crotchety 83 - an Abe Simpson.  I feel I’ve lost my youth somehow and, with it, my understanding, my compassion, my forgiveness, my easygoingness even (yes, easygoingness is a word dang nab it!).

So, how to get there?

Do I meditate?  Do I isolate myself to reflect on myself, the world, and ponder why it is that people are self destructive, selfish, rude, and… well, human. Do I restrict my interaction with the world to regain some naivety?

Or how about the opposite?  Should I throw myself into a crowed room and socialize, mingle, or strike up seemingly random conversations?  Will I be able to build a bond with those around me and have that transcend to those I haven’t spoken to?

I just don’t know what to do.  And as every day passes, I find myself getting more and more frustrated with the world.  At some point, I fear, I will not be able to forgive at all let alone forget.  And all the good things I did will be a waste because I’d have become the exact type of person who I could forgive before but now, no longer.

Why blog?

Published
by
C.G.
on April 3, 2007
in Computers, Life and Philosophy
. 1 Comment

Why is it so important to blog?  What’s the point?  Do authors really think they have something interesting to say?  Are people that interested anyway?

Why are there so many blogs?  Are there that many potential writers out there that have day jobs and freelance at night?

And do we need to consume it all?  Isn’t this another case of information overload? Isn’t the 24 hour news channels and websites enough?  Toss in the movies, TV, and video games and you’ve just filled 22 hours.  Forget reading books or newspapers; now you are pushing it to 23 hours.  If you have a conversation, you’ve just filled your 24 hours in a day.  Can anyone consume that much information in a day?

When will the world saturate? We have 6 billion people on this planet and only a small amount are connected to the cyberworld of blogs, instant messages, and the rest of the Web 2.0 social networking; some 24% of the U.S.’s 275 million people.  When will there be so many blogs out there that people can’t read them all?  When the world is saturated, how many blogs will there be, 12 billion?

Are blogs like magazines?  Are they destined to become a lost consumable that, when some other technology comes out, be relegated to the back shelf?  Newspapers are struggling, CD sales are dropping, movies receipts are tanking, and TV ratings are bombing.  When the “next big thing” happens, who will go the way of the horse & buggy?

Why am I even writing this?  Is anyone reading it anyway?

Snow Day

Published
by
C.G.
on January 16, 2007
in Life
. 1 Comment

Even though it was barely cold enough to wear a sweater today, I had a snow day. I’m not sure what the graduates of New York City schools have done when it snowed a lot but in the suburbs of my home town, they closed the schools. It was too risky to have kids shuttled in school buses going over snow covered - possibly icy - narrow, and winding roads. I went to a parochial school as a kid and they could make up any snow day at the end of the year so they were liberal in the use of unscheduled days off.

Of course, my younger brothers and I couldn’t have been happier! If they made the announcement early enough, my mom would let us sleep in; if we were already up, we’d relax and not worry about having to get ready for school. My mom would have breakfast ready for us soon after we came downstairs and it was always something good and warm. Normally, we’d only have time for cold cereal (Lucky Charms and Count Chocula were our favorites amongst many other sugar laced delights). But on snow days, my mother would make us a nice hot bowl of oatmeal, grits (yes, grits), with eggs, bacon, and sausage patties. Yum!

After our breakfast, we’d race around the house just overjoyed at not going to school. It wasn’t because we hated school - I think all of us enjoyed our private school experience. It was because we had all the time in the world to watch our cartoons (including the ones that were on after school started), play with our toys, and enjoy each other; back then, there wasn’t much of a sibling rivalry and we all got along with each other… most of the time. Of course, we got to go out in the snow!! It was half the fun of a snow day!

I lived on a road with no outlet - kinda like a cul-de-sac but with an island in the center instead of open space. There were no houses at the end of the road where, as we called it, The Circle was. And The Circle , although level, was elevated a bit from the surrounding landscape and the edges of it were hills. These hills (as you can imagine) were perfect for sledding. They were steep enough for us to get some speed but safe enough to keep us from hurting ourselves. The only drawback was the hills ended at the edge of the forest (or what we called The Woods) where prickly thorn bushes stuck to us if we caught enough speed; most of the time we were covered head to toe in snow gear so it didn’t get us but I remember a few times I got stuck.

Our next door neighbors to the right of us went to the same school we went to so we all had a snowday together. Most of the time, our neighbors on our left had off too but since they attended the public school, I can’t say they enjoyed as many snow days as we did. When they did have off, they would sometimes join us (and our neighbors to the right) and we’d all play in the snow together. All in, there were between 4 and 7 of us out there in the snow sledding, making snow angels, and, of course, having snowball fights.

When I say we had snow ball fights, I mean, we had snowball wars. They weren’t mean spirited. They were just scaled up beyond your regular grab some snow and toss it at someone snowball fight. When we played, we constructed snow forts complete with munitions bunkers, different outposts for launching our missiles, seats to sit on, and trenches (inside and out); the outside trenches made it harder to launch a direct attack on us from above and the internal ones let us move within our camp without fear of getting hit by enemy fire. We used natural cover from trees to help fortify our ground and we used the built up snowbanks created by the plows that went by earlier in the day. We’d buildup our stockpiles of ammo and at a predetermined time, launch our attacks together. We didn’t know how to declare a winner - nobody ever won or lost, really. Looking back at it makes me think we all learned something from our simulation.

After all of our games and sledding, we’d begin to get cold or tired (often both) and head in for a break. Of course, we’d all give my mom some grief because here we were cold, wet, and snow covered running into the house and dumping our snow suits, boots, hats, and mittens right on the entrance floor with nearly the same amount of energy we had when we ran out of the house. We didn’t mean anything by it. We were just glad to be back inside where it was warm - where we had hot chocolate waiting for us!.

I always thought my mother made the best cup of hot chocolate in the whole wide word. If I could still have it, I’d bet it would still be the best. I don’t even know she made it but it was the best thing anyone could have asked for regardless of how cold it was outside. She always had marshmallows on hand for us to stick into our mugs. Sometimes, they were the large ones which we got to dunk in the rich and creamy chocolaty drink. Most of the time, however, we had small marshmallows to add to our mugs. We easily fit 5 to 6 of them in at a time and it drove my mother crazy when we’d add more (or try to stuff 10 or so in the mug after the hot chocolate was poured).

Depending on how we felt, we’d often go out for round two of playing in the snow. The second time around was usually much shorter than the first because putting on cold clothes and running around in already bone-chilling weather wasn’t as novel an idea as it seamed when we first thought of it. If we didn’t go out again after our hot chocolate, we’d sit in front of the TV or play with our toys to help pass the time but it was usually a mellow and quiet period where we just rested from all the running around we did earlier.

We’d start to get bored around 1 or 2 because our afternoon cartoons weren’t on yet. I remember feeling restless around the early afternoon with what seemed like little or nothing to do. Truth be told, we had plenty of things we could have done but nothing ever seemed worthwhile. Eventually, our afternoon shows would come on and we’d be occupied again until dinner and bedtime. When we got tucked into bed, we sometimes hoped it would snow some more or the original snowfall was so bad that school would be canceled again the next day. Sadly, I only remember that happening once and I’m not sure how trustworthy my young mind is on that fact.

But with today being Martin Luther King Jr. day and the weather being kinda miserable, my wife and I recreated that snowday-like feeling by hanging out at home. All of our chores were done the day before so there wasn’t a thing we needed to clean up, fix, or do so we slept in a little. I woke up at 8:30 or 9 and took it easy all morning. I made myself a pot of coffee, read my blogs, transcribed some of my father-in-law’s poems onto his new website, and caught up on some much needed morning relaxing. In the afternoon, I watched a little TV and read some more short stories from my new book. And in the evening, my wife made a great popcorn crusted catfish from the FreshDirect delivery that showed up at 5:30. In between all my reading, TV watching, and playing with my computer toys, I had warm cups of tea and some cookies to bring me back to my childhood. And my friends were there too! My best friend was always close by and we got to do things together as if we were off from school.

I have to say, it was one of the best days off I’d had in a long time.