Current Fav: "Dragonforce - Soldiers of the Wasteland"

Then in the past month I've been checking these pretty much every day :U.

That describes my politco-fix. The reason for this? Well....I daydream quite a bit, and sooner-or-later I'll daydream about utopian crap :-|. In an attempt to actualize this thought, watching stuff like that is what I turn to. I'm not about to start a revolution or do any of that shit, I'm too much of a pussy.

Second Thing I've Been Stuck On:

Text games and Old Forums:

The past month I've revisited some old text games (zork/8bit/dwarf fortress/old coded games/nethack) and visited some old forums/others more frequently (mspaintadventures forums/xkcd forums/mises forums/el foru/civ forums/tropico forums/holy shit I didn't realize how many sites I check :-|). I mean, it's not just this, but some old games like 8bit I was greeted with a bunch of people doing stuff like:

Public Phil_Laco says, "YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUKI"
Public Yuuki, "PHIL."
Public Phil_Laco, "Where have you been?!"
Public Yuuki, "Well, right now I'm at the casino."
Public Phil_Laco, "NO, I MEAN LIKE THE PAST 8 MONTHS."

There are all these old relationships I've found I've abandoned and now since coming back to them I kind of treasure them. So many forums and so many alternate identities and so many old memories. I really missed a lot of these people.....

I feel like I've said both the least and the most in this section.

Another Time-Waster: Creation Games.

As an attempt to actualize some fantasies of creation I've played (soem repeats here): 8bit, dwarf-fortress, simcity, c-evo, infiniminer, and simutrans.

Especially 8bit, I made a new game and a museum and had plans to KEEP BUILDING MOAR. Infiniminer I made an Al Gore super-highway bridge. Dwarf Fortress I ended up marvelling all these archives of beautiful pictures of architecture that other have crafted (I tried my own hand at it a while as well). Simutrans is a acutalization of my capitalistic tendencies explained before, I really like the idea of private roads, sorry. So, I end up building these beautifully efficiently working transportation networks and, ugh, I really got hooked on that game.

And Another Thing I Got Hooked On:

There are a bunch of stories I try to stay read up on. Some involving a 1920's P.I. mafia feel. Others I won't mention, but I got caught up trying to read all of these as well.....

And Another Thing:

Screwing up my computer :D.

So, for the past month, I notice I've been using the following line of argument:

"If I don't do these things know, when Summer School/job/actual school starts up I WON'T be able to do this! Therefore, I have to use this time to go at these interests!"

And if I say no it's like I'm denying a kid candy or something :-(.

Either way, more theories that this has brought up and various things I've tried summarized below.

As stated before, physically distancing myself from certain desires used to be a common approach of mine. But that's increasingly difficult seeing as how I've become attached virtually to pretty much one console.

-I've tried 'negative egg-timing', where I have an egg-timer that pops up every hour saying, "What have you done the past hour?" Which attempts to guilt-trip me. This pretty much just makes me feel down. :(

-I downloaded a todo list, I'm not very good at cutting up tasks though.

-I used the todo list to jot what desires I have at a given moment. These feels like a more productive way of using my time.

-I'll distinguish and discuss another technique called 'positive egg-timing', in other words, I start it up and say I'll only do a task for 5 minutes to get started on it, or say I won't go into a certain desire until after 5 minutes, which by then I usually have ample willpower against it (more on this later).

-Worklogging, just logging what I've done.

-I guess this would be an attempt at 'positive thinking'. Obviously, to the things I really do want to achieve there is a clear long-term goal I'm trying to achieve, so I visualize that as a form of motivation to my current actions.

-With regards to the 'positive egg-timing' I'm trying to identify 'transient' desires. Obviously my rational self has long-term goals its trying to achieve and is the explanation for much of what I'm trying to do. The irrational self is the opposite, thus by usually 5-minutes time the irrational 'transient' desires fade and allow me to do the things I actually want to do. That's the theory at least, and I've gotten the most success from this.

HOWEVER, that argument I've posted earlier, the "I've only got X amount of time left!"-idea, seems to always win out. If I could counter that argument, maybe......

Either way, I figure that's a good summary of my last two months.

~Fepps.

April 18 22:26

I don't think there's anything bad about them, they're just particularly enlighte-O.K., TIME TO COPY-PASTE THEM. I'll just call him Joe:

Me:

"I was reading the back of a 3 Musketeers bar.
>> >
>> > It said, "If you have any comments/concerns/feedback, please call the
>> > following number: 1-800-XXX-XXXX"
>> >
>> > I immediately thought whether it was someone's SOLE JOB to man this
>> > hotline,
>> > and what does s/he really do? Give 3 Musketeers recipe tips? Answer
>> > prank
>> > phonecalls all day? Get lawsuit threats?
>> >
>> > Or maybe, that person sits alone, at the 3 Musketeers hotline, ready and
>> > waiting for any situation to occur; but it never comes up. Every day of
>> > this person's life is another lonely sorrow-filled day, alone in a
>> > cubicle
>> > that must be kept staffed, the world solely drifting away.....
>> >"

HIM:

Hey, funny story for you.
>>
>> The seniors are working on electricity and magnetism. We were talking
>> about AC and DC currents and one student asked if you could make both
>> types of current go through the same object. Then, another piped up
>> asking what would happen of that object was a magnet. So, we pulled
>> out a neodyniam magnet and tried it out. We used voltmeters to see
>> that both types of current were indeed being passed through the
>> magnet. Obviously, the magnet was getting pretty hot, so we unplugged
>> it.
>>
>> I asked the students how we could cool the magnet while it is still
>> hooked up. One student suggested we spin it in the air. It's a heated
>> body, so it should cool with wind. We happened to have a motor from a
>> centrifuge, so we tried it out. The DC current came from a car battery
>> and the AC current came from the outlet. We talked about brushes in
>> prior classes, so we rigged up a brush system pretty fast. Soon that
>> magnet was whipping around dangerously fast- We all ducked under the
>> lab tables.
>>
>> Well, as you might guess, the air wasn't cooling it at all. The thing
>> turned red hot from all the current passing through it. This could
>> have seriously injured or killed someone. I finally took action after
>> lots of panic and head-counting. I ran to the door and locked it, then
>> I ran and ducked under the spinning magnet to unplug it. The thing was
>> whipping above my head. I am not sure what physical process was
>> involved with what happened next (ideas?). The classroom started to
>> beat with this really low frequency that reverberated through my body,
>> and the room went dark. All I saw was the red streak above my head as
>> I kneeled there. The reverberations were pounding against my ribs. The
>> outlet wire was in my hand ready to unplug the magnet.
>>
>> I was asked to stand up on my feet, and so I did. Now the magnet was
>> circling around me and the centrifuge motor was in my chest. The
>> reverberation moved upward too, onto my skull. I was asked what
>> questions I had. After pausing a moment, I asked, "How accurate are
>> the portrayels of reality that DIM and I convey in our discussions?" I
>> felt blood dripping from the back of my ears as the reverberations
>> became more violent. I was told that we were fish explaining to each
>> other how to ride a horse. I asked, "How long until we learn enough to
>> actually ride that horse?" I was told it was possible in our lifetime.
>> I knew I didn't have long, my shirt collar was wet with blood. "What
>> do I do to get there?" It thought for a moment. It reminded me of the
>> obsurdity of the question I was asking. It then said millions of minds
>> would need to work on this unique challenge, and that we will never
>> even know if we have made it, but we will have methods available for
>> making predictions strong enough to satisfy us.
>>
>> I realized my eyes were closed, so I opened them. I realized the
>> magnet was still spinning, so I removed the centrifuge from my chest,
>> brought it to a halt, and grabbed the magnet. I breathed ice onto it
>> to cool it off. I returned the blood on my shirt and neck to my body
>> and healed the tears in my skin. The students were traumatized, so I
>> removed this memory from their minds. The fluorescenct lightbulbs in
>> the class were busted, so I fixed them (I even improved upon their
>> design). Finally, I saw that time was still paused, so I allowed it to
>> move forward. Having done these things, I gave back these abilities
>> shortly after showing my appreciation for what I had learned.
"

ME:

"Joe, have you read Sophie's World?"

Additionally, there was an exam this week I didn't fare well on. I don't want to admit it, but I'm probably a little depressed due to it.

~Feppy

March 28 23:07

In an attempt to ween myself off of the desires I end up feeling guilty about later, I've been keeping myself from basically finding what are essentially 'new fixes'.

In the end, by shoving everything on Saturday, most of the things I used to waste my time on I find really not wanting to do. Like reading mises/campaignforliberty/youtube subscriptions/lililicious/solelo/honobi michi/etc.. I still wasted some time on them today, but I found I've stopped much earlier than usual. I'd usually be watching and trying to carpe diem my one day of the week up until 3 a.m..

Today, I find myself lying on my bed, looking at the ceiling, listening to smooth jazz, and daydreaming like crazy. And I really, really like it. It's very peaceful, and I feel so much less guilty than grepping new anime/manga suggestions from 4chan.

So...I'm considering just...to stop reading all the webcomics I read, and since I've stopped watching new anime clips on Youtube, that pretty much just leaves me with math, philosophy, and daydreams. Which sounds like a very nice life to me.

Oh, so I've noticed Sid getting serious with the relationships thing, and of course this caused me to re-evaluate myself, and I came to the same conclusion. I really don't care for dating, nor kids, nor any of that. And whenever I think about it, I usually end up thinking along the lines of how much freedom I would lose in my life.

That's all for today.

~E.F.D.

March 17 21:16

I waste quite a bit of time on activities that usually try to bring about my daydreams. I mean, some of these daydreams are actively ridiculous, which makes them all the better and funnier to share.

DAYDREAMS RANT:

Daydream Number 1:

MP, THIS ONE IS YOUR DOING! I keep occassionally thinking about buzzer systems. I have three designs for the logic components scattered around. Oh, oh, ideas for this: (man I use colons a lot :( )
-Radio-controlled or daisy chain or individual buzzers? (wire is the largest cost, and there are easy work-arounds to making usre the frequencies can be haxxed, etc.)
-Battery-pack or plug-in? (the plug-in is the next largest cost)
-More efficient electrical/logic designs? (I don't know enough electrical engineering to set about this yet)
I did try actually making some of this shit, I have basic memory circuits working with spare transistors I had from a previous project, but as for Mouser-ordered stuff I haven't got much going. NONETHELESS, I still endlessly daydream about this! I mean, it's really ridiculous daydreaming as well! Like, 3-story yachts, a skyscraper in downtown Manhattan, and a world-wide financial empire-all of this is going down in my daydreams. From something that, honestly, I can hardly make on my own, and wou