Aperti Gnosco

I went to Utah this weekend for my friend Dan Miya’s wedding. To get there, eight of us decided to road trip from Seattle to Salt Lake City. In case the map doesn’t indicate it, that’s pretty damn far, especially for a weekend trip. It took about 16 hours to get there and 15 hours to get back (including pit stops and eating). I think if we had done it my normal way of driving long distances (only stop when you need gas and get food at the same time, but eat in the car), we could have cut it down to about 12 hours, but either way it was pretty fun, if a bit exhausting. I got home last night around 11:30pm, promptly passed out and never woke up until 9:30am this morning. Felt damn good.

I felt like I experienced a lot of new stuff this weekend. Some of it was funny, some sad, some weird, but all worth mentioning. I shall do that now.

• I saw a Corvette ZR1 on the freeway going under the speed limit and being passed by everyone. What’s the point of a super fast car like that if you go slow?
• Fast food is disgusting. I rarely, rarely ever eat it these days, but it’s pretty much all you can eat on the road. We stopped occasionally at sit down places, but Denny’s is not much better. My stomach and body hates me after this weekend. So god damned gross.
• Big trucks take up a lot of room. Trucks that swerve constantly take up even more room. Seeing a drunk driver on the road in a massive truck is something quite scary to behold. Tried calling it in to the Washington state patrol but got a voicemail message. Hopefully he gets enough complaints that someone takes his license away.
• Small towns have people that look the same regardless of how far apart said towns are. It’s kind of creepy.
• We pulled off on a random stop to go to the bathroom, saw the creepiest motel I’ve ever seen as the only thing on the stop, and kept driving. Both cars did this without having to say anything to each other.
• Creating a whirlpool in a full sized pull with 17 people is pretty damn fun. Going against the current is near impossible.
• Hangovers and a tweaked neck do not go together. It makes you pretty much worthless to pack your stuff up the next day.
• Hypoglycemia is not something you fuck with. It will leave you on the bathroom floor crawled up into a ball if you aren’t careful.
• Mormons have some crazy rules. No Sesame Street, Pokemon, Harry Potter, or anything like that. That list also includes caffeinated beverages. That doesn’t stop them from deviating from those rules and being fun though.
• My roommate has a neck piercing. I’ve still never seen it, but apparently it happened a month ago? The things you learn from Facebook.
• Salt Lake City has no style. All of the buildings look different and it’s a bit strange.
• There is no place called Glow Putt in Salt Lake City. Despite what Google might tell you or give you directions to.
• Sometimes people roll over and cuddle with you even though you’re not their significant other.
• Sweet tea vodka is delicious. I knew this before, but got to experience it again.
• My alone time is absolutely necessary even on a 3 day trip with people I love spending time with.

Overall it was a ton of fun. I hopefully won’t make another trip that long anytime soon though. I drove all yesterday since I can’t sleep in cars very well and am still slightly tired today.

Today is a margarita day. It started off beautiful and since my balcony allows me quite the good view I decided to make margaritas. I realized that I’ve never actually posted the recipe even though it’s pretty much world famous by now. Well, at least in my group of friends. So for those who don’t know what the recipe is, or who’d like to make the best margaritas ever, here it is in all its glory:

36oz Mr. and Mrs. T’s sweet and sour mix (DO NOT GET THE MARGARITA MIX)
9oz tequila (I use some random gold handle I found at the liquor store, doesn’t need to be expensive)
6oz Citronge
6 limes worth of juice (must be freshly squeezed)

Mix all together, then pour into a glass over ice. Deliciousness ensues. I must credit my dad with this recipe as he tried many, many different recipes before perfecting this one. It’s easily my all time favorite recipe for drinks.

Totally different sound from Underworld, but I’m loving it.

In less than 24 hours, I’ll be back home in California for a little over a week on vacation. It’s my longest vacation in over a year and I’m looking forward to it. All the kids are coming back to town and we’re going with my mom and step-dad to a beach house type place. We used to do it every summer back when we were kids but haven’t in about eight years or so. Typically we never use computers, watch tv, or talk on the phone. It’s a place of isolation which I always liked. I think we’re changing it up slightly this year by going out once or twice and watching the world cup live, but aside from that I don’t plan on using any technology other than my mp3 player.

I’ll also be bringing two books: Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel and Coders at Work, both of which I’m excited to read. I finally finished The People’s History of the United States of America, which was fucking amazing. I highly, highly recommend it to everyone that wishes to learn about the United States and how it treated the everyday people throughout the years (hint: not very well).

For my year of something I picked to meditate and stretch every day (at least when it’s possible). It’s been pretty nice so far and I really like taking the time out to do it. I should make a longer post about it, but this will do for now.

I’ve started programming at home again on a side project with a couple of friends. It’s pretty damn fun and has gotten me into some aspects of programming I don’t get to do at my job. Learning about mercurial, boost, SDL, configuration libraries, openGL/AL, EASTL, Lua vs Javascript vs Python, and tons of other stuff is quite fun. It’s expanded my knowledge a lot already and I expect it to continue to do so.

It’s fucking hot in Seattle these days (in the mid 90s), which is very welcome compared to how it’s been in the past month or so. Summer is finally here! I went rope climbing out at Exit 38 yesterday and had a blast. I haven’t done that in a couple of years and it scared the shit out of me even though I was climbing a 5.9/10a. Easy, easy routes and yet I was shaking because I was so nervous. Kind of a funny feeling, but I’m sure I’ll get over it once I do it more and/or fall a couple of times. Also, apparently chalk helps, but I also forgot to bring that. Next time for sure.

I bought a new computer a month or so ago. I’m loving it more than the 6 year old one I had previously that didn’t work and even more than the several month old hand me down I got from Shea that smelled of cat piss every time I turned it on which didn’t work either. I’ve been playing a bit of Heroes of Newerth lately, which is a DOTA clone. I’m not addicted to it (like I was before), but it’s kind of nice to be playing something like this again. I missed it!

I finished playing Heavy Rain a couple of weeks ago and was supremely impressed with it. Talking with Dan Miya and Dalin about it last week cemented the fact that I think it’s an incredibly well made game. I’ll probably never go back to play it to see all the alternate endings and stories I could see, but I appreciate the fact that they’re there.

The world cup has been pretty awesome to watch and although I haven’t watched every single game, I’ve probably watched about 75% of them. I’ve really enjoyed all of the recent games as well. Some of them were some serious nail biters that were incredibly awesome to watch. I can’t wait to see Spain play the Netherlands for the final as neither country has ever won a world cup before. Should be good!

That’s it for now. As always seems to happen when I need to pack, I’m procrastinating. I’ll probably do it last minute, as always, and just go to sleep now after meditating/stretching. Good old hatred of packing.

I’ve been laughing at this all day long.

It’s nearly that time of year again. The time of year in which I finish up my year of nothing from the past year and think of something else to do for this coming one. This past year I Did not use my computer at home for entertainment purposes. This was easily my hardest year that I’ve done so far; it’s very difficult to completely change your lifestyle at home when the computer is the main focus of your life. I found myself playing a lot more video games, rock climbing (managed to get a V7 indoors in the past year), playing soccer, and a couple of other activities. I also found myself going out more if someone asked me to go do something, which is something I wanted to accomplish as well. Now, however, I need to choose what to do for next year.

So far I’ve:

• Given up alcohol for a year
• Become a vegetarian for a year
• Given up my car and taken public transportation/walked for a year
• Not used my computer at home for entertainment purposes for a year

I’ve really enjoyed (for the most part) doing these year of nothings because I feel like they’ve directly caused me to grow and expand my horizons. I’ve been trying to think of what I’m going to be doing next and I haven’t fully decided yet. June 11th is coming up soon, and so far, I have this list to pick from:

• Meditate for 15-30 minutes every day
• Force myself to stop procrastinating/skipping things I know I need to do (floss, shave every day, doing dishes, cleaning room, etc)
• Stretch for 15 minutes every day (with the intention of being able to do the splits after a year)
• Volunteer at least once a month
• Program something meaningful in a year

From this list, it looks like I’ll be giving up on the idea of the year of nothing (essentially giving something up), because I can’t think of anything that I’d really want to give up anymore. I’m kind of hitting the bottom of the barrel with it and if I were to choose something, I don’t think it’d be as beneficial as something else. Unfortunately, I’m not sure which I like best. Some seem easy (the volunteering one), some are vague (program something meaningful), some seem solely dedicated to a singular goal (meditate/stretch), and the last is a bit silly. I do believe these would all help me, but how difficult would they be and what is the overall benefit of doing it? I guess what I’m looking for is the max benefit/difficulty ratio, although I don’t think I’d shy away from something difficult if it also had a huge benefit.

Does anyone have any ideas that I’d be able to use? Remember, I work better with hard-ish goals/rules rather than soft ones. Perhaps it’s time to try to change that, but I’d also really rather not fail because I’m trying to do something against my personality type.

So god damned good. I highly suggest you watch it in HD.

Really well done video about people climbing indoors. That little girl is fucking insane. She climbs harder than most of the group I climb with and will only get better.

I took the water taxi to west Seattle yesterday and rollerskated along the water. It was gorgeous but windy. I hadn’t ever seen Seattle from this vantage point before except in pictures so figured I’d capture one of my own.

To mark my return to climbing (I get to go for the first time in six and a half weeks today), here’s a video that shows some of the fringe of what people do while climbing. This is one aspect that I just don’t understand at all. What these people are doing is climbing routes (sometimes harder than anything I’ve ever been able to climb before) with zero protection. No rope, no crash pads (at that height it wouldn’t even matter), and no parachute. If they fell, they’d most likely be dead.

All the same, this fascinates me. I’m really curious now how many people have died doing free solos. I might have to look it up.

My new happy music. Saw these guys in concert a couple of weeks ago and they were absolutely fantastic. They’re coming back on the 15th with the Shout Out Louds and I’ll probably see them again there because they were so awesome.

Listened to them a lot on my trip home this past weekend and it was a perfect fit.

A picture I took at work.

I finally got around to uploading some pictures to Flickr from Christmas. I’ve been a bit behind on the whole pictures deal, so this weekend I remedied that. My favorite one out of the group has to be the gingerbread house that Steve and Brittany made. Pretty hilarious in a morbid kind of way.

I’ve been rock climbing a ridiculous amount as of late. Well, to clarify, I should say as of 3 weeks ago. You see, three weeks ago today I was climbing a fairly hard route. A route that I had fallen on many times before, but thought I’d be able to complete within the day. I was doing the hardest move and fell off in a weird way that forced me to twist downwards and back at the same time. I put out my arms to try to stop myself (dumb, not the way you’re actually supposed to fall) and managed to dislocate my right elbow on impact with the ground. Yep, that’s right, my elbow, not my shoulder. This picture is from a couple of days after, but the bruise got much, much worse and completely enveloped my elbow. You can’t compare it to anything else, but my arm is also about twice the size it normally is (seriously, it looked freaky).

It was quite painful, but it was more just surprising than that. I’ve fallen a lot in climbing and never really hurt myself more than landing on my ankle strange. Shit, I’ve hurt myself worse in soccer and baseball up until now. I lay there on the ground (having screamed twice, once when it happened and once when I realized what had happened), but I was generally ok. I had thought at first that I had a compound fracture as I felt and saw it pop out, but didn’t know if it had broken the skin or not. Luckily, when I felt it, it hadn’t.

The paramedics were called and showed up in under five minutes since they were so close to the gym. Everyone watched on as I got bandaged up and then I walked myself to the stretcher. It was kind of amusing almost; I was bullshitting with all the people I climb with about how I had been so close and I just shouldn’t have fallen and then I would have finished the route. After I had elevated my head with my rope bag I wasn’t even really in that much pain (no pain killers either). The paramedics took me to the ER where I met a bunch of cool and friendly people that helped me get all settled. I think they were surprised I was in such good shape and a happy mood. I wasn’t even really bummed as I knew it could have been much worse. At one point I was asked by a doctor for the third or fourth time if I was allergic to anything and I replied with “only doctors” to which I got a good grin. They gave me an IV, some slight pain meds (I wasn’t in that much pain) and then gave me something else to knock me out completely as they reset my elbow. I took a bunch of x-rays and luckily I didn’t break any bones at all. I also had feeling and movement in my fingers still (something they were also surprised with).

I got discharged shortly after that and went to get some beer and vicoden. I had asked the doctor if I could have a beer and he looked at me and said “You can either have beer or vicoden, but not both.” That night I had a nice beer at 12:30am after Luis (my climbing friend) dropped me off back home.

I was out of commission for quite a while only working 4 days the next week and barely being able to type with one hand. You wouldn’t believe what doing everyday things with your non-dominant hand is like when you’re forced to do it. Wiping your ass with your left hand is really, really weird.

Anyway, shoot three weeks forward and I’ve been to see an orthopedic surgeon once, been to physical therapy four times, and I’m almost back to normal. I can bend my right elbow within 10 degrees of straight and tighten it up 135 degrees (I’m not sure what normal is for that one). I can also pick up most things with it, the only thing I really can’t do is quick motions with my right arm or hitting things with my elbow. I’m expected to make a full recovery I believe, and be climbing again in 2-3 more weeks (I’ll know more this Thursday when I go back to see the orthopedic surgeon).

What’s interesting to me, in all of this, is how much this is going to cost me. From looking at the website for United Health Care (that I get through Warner Brothers), I’m going to have to pay for $241 of the $2970 the whole thing cost. I’m sure there will be more costs as I’m not completely done yet, but 10% isn’t too bad I guess. I’d rather have it be 100% covered (since I’ve probably paid them more money since I’ve been working than this cost), but at least I didn’t have to pay for the whole thing.

If I were to dislocate my elbow every 5 years (roughly how long I’ve been climbing), I’d still do it in an instant. I love doing it so much that even this much pain and annoyance is worth it. Here’s to five more years before I really fuck myself up again :).

I got a new nexus one phone the other day. I have to say it’s pretty nice so far even though it takes a bit getting used to. I’m making this post from my phone, so hopefully if this isn’t too hard I’ll do it every once in awhile. Here’s the first picture off of the phone. My nice, clean room.

I’ve been fascinated by prisons for quite a while now. Their whole culture is incredibly strange and frightening to me. What’s doubly fascinating is death row and how people live their lives there knowing that eventually they’re going to be killed for a crime they (most likely) committed. The whole ritual of a last meal and last words is interesting, especially when you’re able to look at what they asked for and what they said. Here is that list for the state of Texas. Some of the last words are sad, some of them are strange, but some of them are incredibly moving.

Please read Napoleon Beazley‘s last words. They touched me deeply.

The act I committed to put me here was not just heinous, it was senseless. But the person that committed that act is no longer here – I am.

I’m not going to struggle physically against any restraints. I’m not going to shout, use profanity or make idle threats. Understand though that I’m not only upset, but I’m saddened by what is happening here tonight. I’m not only saddened, but disappointed that a system that is supposed to protect and uphold what is just and right can be so much like me when I made the same shameful mistake.

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YES. Love their videos. So fantastic.

Been listening to this for the past couple of days. Love it. I’ve heard that Universal Religion Chapter 4 is really good, so I’ll probably pick that up. Been getting back into trance recently. Good stuff.

Awesome, truly awesome.