Words you say never seem
To live up to the ones inside your head
The lives we make never seem
To ever get us anywhere but dead

Soundgarden - The Day I Tried To Live

Do you ever get the feeling that your thoughts are grand and composed in your head, but when you try to express them it all falls to pieces?

I get this a lot.

Perhaps there is nothing but a pile of broken pieces to start. I'm not sure.

It's been a while since I've played Portal, but I still think about how much I enjoyed it.

I found a pretty awesome background to remind me of this.

Edit: Grabbed new version from creator's Deviant Art page. Looks like the problem with the hollow corner (which i had never noticed) was fixed.

Munns convinced me to check out MeetUp.com for something I might be interested in.

I love reading, and need to meet more people / become comfortable talking to strangers.

Joining a book club seemed like a great way to accomplish these things.

Brendan and I joined this club that meets in and around Durham. We had our first meeting tonight reading God's Middle Finger which was really entertaining. Talking about it was just as fun.

Next month we're reading Maus, a graphic novel about the holocaust (sounds crazy but won a pulitzer back in the 90s). I'm really excited to expand my literary horizons. Normally I read the same stuff over and over.

On top of meeting new people I hope to meet new types of books. So far it's going well.

Updates monthly on this.

I've added a new category for quotes. I always come across good ones, and I'd like to share.

Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.

-Douglas Adams

I've decided to give twitter a try.

My only problem is that I don't know of anyone besides Brendan who uses the thing.

Help out my testing by signing up here.

View my twitter page here.

Last week I had Chinese food with a small group of friends.

Besides the food, my favorite part is the fortune cookies. I like the taste and you never know what fortune you'll get.

I had an awesome one that day:

"Your greatest wish will come true."

I was perplexed though. I had lots of wishes... how would I know which one it would be? If I couldn't figure out which was the greatest, would it ever come true?

I decided the best way to figure this out would be with another fortune cookie. This way I might be able to get another free wish and be much better off. Maybe it would just offer some helpful insight.

The second one said:

"The pleasure of what we enjoy is lost by wanting more."

Clearly I'm screwed at this point. The cookie is saying that the second cookie was a bad idea.

I decided to try my luck on one of those wishes later that night.. ... no dice. So apparently it's not that particular wish.

Maybe I'll get my CCIE?

Maybe I'll start enjoying my job?

Maybe I'll meet a girl who is interested in me in a non "fucked up crazy i have no idea what's going on" sort of way?

Maybe I'll get a new motorcycle?

Maybe my allergies will stop?


Alright.. done bitching now.

Time for another informative and helpful background image.

Please take note.

Ever since the first one of my friends said "I'm buying a house" I've had a strange sinking feeling. A vague unease that I haven't been able to describe. I haven't been able to express my displeasure with the concept, or why it just wasn't quite right.

Something just screamed out to me: Wrong, we're doing it.

As i suspected, his purchase sparked a buying frenzy.

Now nearly everyone owns a house.

We sit alone in our houses and spend less time hanging out with each other, and more time doing house stuff.

So I asked myself, what is the purpose of buying a house, or not even buying a house, but moving into one.

Primarily it provides shelter, but I can find shelter almost anywhere, for more affordable prices without a tremendous initial outlay of cash.

So if not shelter, then what else should houses be important for?

I think back to my childhood. Houses were happy places where people lived together. My house was always full of family activity. When we went to visit my great grandmothers house it was the same. The house served as a constant social gathering place.

And it was constant, there were always people coming, going, living their lives. Our family got together in huge groups for the holidays, but more importantly we were together almost all the time in varying group sizes.

Now I think about what I would do if I bought a house.

I would sit alone.

I would wake up alone, not make breakfast because I don't like cooking for just myself, sit quietly in front of my computer, shower, go to work.

Come home, sit alone, play some video games.

If this is buying a house, I'll pass.

Life as an individual is a pretty bland experience. Sure it's great to "know yourself" and be self sufficient, but without your friends and family, who are you?

We define ourselves in relation to the people we surround ourselves with.

If we surround ourselves with no one, what does that say?


The point is that just buying a house for the purpose of having a house doesn't seem to make sense. It might make good financial sense maybe, but that's not enough motivation for me to do anything.

Ever since people have broken their bonds of family / friends in favor of financial good thinking, I've just felt strangely uncomfortable.


So if you want to come start a complex or small community of friends living in close proximity let me know. I'll buy a big house and you can all move in or build a guest house in the back.

Until I have the people to make the house a home, I don't think I want any part of it though.

I've been playing a little bit of Team Fortress 2 since I bought my new machine. Not a lot, just a little.

That brings me to my first update in a while..

New background:

I had my Top Left Wisdom Tooth pulled today. Tooth #16.

The dentist did a good job. It was a pretty big effort judging by how sore my skull is right now, but I was in and out of the office in 45 minutes. Pretty good time.

I learned a valuable lesson. I must NEVER skip trips to the dentist for years at a time. My teeth are in poor shape after a few years away from the doc. I need to have regular checkups and cleanings as my teeth just aren't the sort that hold up well.

I need to have 6 cavities filled in the remaining 31 teeth. All in the molars. I'm not looking forward to it too much, but the Doc was efficient and the process of getting one removed was painless. Here's to hoping the fillings go the same.

OH, the awesome part about the fillings is the resin based filling they use. It matches the color of your teeth, so I won't have a mouth full of metal back there.

Wish me luck on the rest of my oral restoration.