I don’t have a couch in my apartment.  I have a total of 5.5 distinct seats: 1 computer chair, 2 kitchen chairs, 1 tilted-bowl shaped chair, and 1 club-style chair with footrest (the footrest counts as .5).  This seemed very logical for me, most of the time there is only 1 person in my apartment, and having 5 chairs per person seemed like more than enough seating variety for me.

What never occurred to me is that those 5 seats are all independent, unique locations.  It’s fairly uncomfortable to share any of them with another person, which isn’t an issue because I’ve ever had >5 people in my apartment (I don’t think more than 2 chairs have ever been used at once actually).  The real problem is that disjoint seats don’t promote much social interaction, maybe it’s more reminiscent of being in a classroom or work environment.  While people sitting on a mass seating structure, like a couch, don’t always have to physically interact with each other the seating location tends to, according to my research, facilitate a shared social interaction.  Everyone sitting on a couch tends to talk to each other, watch the same program, etc.  People sitting in individual seats have individual experiences.  People sitting in shared seats have shared experiences.

For example, without a couch I can’t comfortable say to someone “Hello <name>, would you like come to my apartment and watch <tv show / movie>?” because I don’t have a couch, the common viewing place, for people to sit on.  Sure, someone could sit in the variety of seats I have available but then it’s like we are both watching the same material and just happen to be occupying the same space, which isn’t usually what I’m going for when this theoretical request is made.  (Disclaimer: I’ve never asked anyone to do this, it’s merely a thought experiment.)

This concern is slightly more fitting now that I actually have a TV in my apartment.  Before I had that appliance there was almost no reason anyone would want to potentially come to my place, listening to iTunes / the radio together was cool back in the 60′s… and my computer desk isn’t well positioned to facilitate  >1 watchers.

When I was getting this apartment, a couch was on the list of things that other people wanted me to get but I wasn’t really comfortable with the idea.  I think, similar to the Queen’s Throne, a couch would be one of those depressingly unused things.  At least my discrete chairs see some 100% utilization time, and they are much easier for me to move.

I’ve given some though to non-mass seating solutions, but I think you then get into the “class” of chairs.  In social interactions, it’s important for people to have the opportunity to be on the same level with each other, something a couch does really well.  A club chair seems inferior to a computer chair, and I always feel a bit strange sitting in the computer chair while interacting with someone in the club chair,  I suspect the tilted bowl chair would fall below the club chair.  The two kitchen chairs are logically of the same class, but they aren’t particularly comfortable (and it would be strange to sit side by side in wooden chairs like that).

Perhaps I will look into getting a couch wherever I find myself next, though I guess the logical requirement is also people that would use it (perhaps I share a similar underlying concern this year).  Until then I’ll maintain the status quo, just like my steak knives.   I have more steak knives than I have friends or steaks I have consumed this year.  I could probably use like 4 knives per steak, if I ever cooked something like that.  Despite my presentation, do not consider this blog an open invitation to show up in an attempt to prove my theory wrong.  Should I desire company, I will consider following the protocol as outlined in the though experiment.

Good night moon.

Time for an example, to keep everyone fairly rooted around the problem.  If you’ve seen me over the past decade or so you have probably seen me in a dressy collared shirt and a decent pair of cargo pants.  The closest I get to casual is Friday when I’ll put on a polo; certainly no sweats and t-shirts (implying nothing over the t-shirt) are only allowed in extreme cases during the summer like walking to a beach.  The plan was fairly simple and straightforward when I developed it, keep in mind this was a decade or so ago.  Most people dress like they’re just casually hanging out, sometimes those outfits convey a lack of caring about a subject or the person presenting it.  In an extreme, wearing PJ bottoms to class screams, in many instances, “I am too lazy to put real pants on, so I probably don’t want to be here.”  The second, and more important scenario would play out as follows:  I coincidentally run into someone cool / famous / future boss-like figure and they think “Hey, I will say hi to this nice young fellow because he looks like he has a clue what he’s doing / he doesn’t look like an idiot.”

I think I’ve gotten some use out of use case #1.  In middle / high school I think it served me well to dress professionally.  I doubt that was the sole reason that I rate my K-12 education so highly, but I do think I got my mileage out of that one.   Use case #2 on the other hand hasn’t really panned out for me.  I don’t think, aside from a handful of interactions, that I’ve ever bumped into someone who has decided to not write me off because of my dress…. not because people don’t think that way but because I just haven’t found myself bumping into anyone at all.  I think I had some dream playing out in my head where some super cool executive sees me “working” or something like that and decides to hire me, or at least pursue that option, because I look like someone who cares a little more than the person next to me.  No luck on that front.

I can take away a few things from all that:

1. The manner in which I present myself doesn’t necessarily convey I care in general, it implies I care about a very restricted subset of topics.  Someone who cares about interacting socially with others may care just as much, or more, about their dress however they just display that differently.
2. Kind of a corollary to #1, but my clothing selection tends to imply I don’t care about a lot of topics, sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing.  My clothes probably don’t show a care for sports and I’m comfortable with that, but they’ve also been interpreted to imply I’m not interested in “having fun” which, despite popular belief, may not always be true.
3. There is no inherent value in matching a stereotype, only perceived value.

I decided I didn’t  like denim, like jeans, back when I was in like 6th grade.  I had a few bad experiences and decided they were the worst pants in the world… well, not as bad as those loud swishy pants, but the worst pants that I would be faced with on a daily basis anyways.  It wasn’t until my senior year in high school when my girlfriend and a close friend of mine decided I needed to buy a pair of jeans and try a new outfit to make Friday a bit more casual.  I am not sure if I went along just because it meant spending time with my girlfriend of if I was running low on cargo pants, but I did.  I ended up getting a pair of jeans, a blue/pink collared shirt, and a white/orange sweater thing and I wore them to school.  Being interested in the social sciences, I took notes as people remarked and generally found that people liked the jeans and were confused by the tops.  Fair enough I guess.

Recently, I acquired two new pairs of jeans.  One is not really of note, but the other one is a black pair that is sufficiently different from the previous pairs to make it notable.  It also stands out because my belt is brown, but that’s an issue to resolve another day.  I don’t really have a collared shirt that I think works great with my black jeans, and I started to hypothesize if/how things would be different if I wasn’t to strict and considered pairing just a t-shirt with said pants.  Ridiculous, I know.  I’ll start by saying that I can’t implement even a trial of this strategy because I lack an appropriate t-shirt to do so at the moment nor am I easily pleased by t-shirts with messages I don’t agree with on them.  I also have a feeling that most people stopped tucking t-shirts into their jeans back in like 5th grade and I’m not sure how I could handle the increased range of motion if a t-shirt wasn’t tucked in.  That’s not to say I couldn’t survive, I’m just not sure how physically comfortable I’d find that.

I’m lucky to be playing with clothes here, I can try them on in the comfort of my own apartment and no one has to know what they look like.  I can also very easily provide previous to other people if I really want their feedback, and talking about clothes is not out of the question.  At the end of the day, it’s just a pair of pants.

I think that is enough for now.

Good night moon.

Yes, you would be right to think why did she get two of them?  She certainly hasn’t been married off yet, but she does have a friendly prince that hangs around every now and then.  I think she got it because her family doesn’t usually commission new thrones to be built very often so they wanted to plan for the future.  It’s a fairly optimistic thought and probably makes sense from a the-carpenter-might-die-soon perspective.

Unfortunately for her, whenever she sits in her new throne she immediately recognizes the seat next to her is empty and feels a bit sad, like a part that belongs is missing.  She tried like filling it up with books once and using it for storage but that really didn’t change her mood.  The fact is that the seat is built for a person and can only be properly filled as such.

Sometimes when she sits down she thinks back to the weird bench she had.  While not as nice as her current seat, it never made her feel inadequate or like she was missing anything.  She finds it strange to miss something that she was never really attached to, but it’s strange how you miss something until it’s gone.  It is especially apparent when there is such a clear void.

Unfortunately the bench has probably been chopped up for firewood to help heat the castle or shipped of to a museum somewhere.  I guess she can only wait for the throne to be filled someday, even if it is just by the court jester to make her smile or laugh for a few minutes.

There are also times I find myself waiting for things that I would like to occur but have a very low probability of occurring.  An example to “clarify.”  Let us say that the past 2 or 3 nights out of the past N years of glancing out you window you have spotted a pink unicorn walking down the street (crazy, I know).  It might make sense to you to keep your attention extra focused for that pink unicorn the next night, only because it had strolled down by your lane previously.  I’m not sure that is the most logical thing to do for a few reasons.  1) What is the actual value of seeing a pink unicorn?  It might actually get you into more trouble if you try telling people what you’ve seen (no one will believe you) or if they do they might setup camp right outside your place to try and see it too. 2)  The pink unicorn is under no obligation to walk down your street, for all you know it could have just been lost those two or three nights.  Now that the unicorn has found it’s way maybe it wil never come back at all.  The unicorn is not like a constellation in the sky, it’s not going to follow a predicable pattern (at least not one that you understand just yet).  3) You seemed just fine all those pre-unicorn-sighting days and you should probably revert back to that pre-sighting attitude.  It was probably a bad idea to let your vision of this unicorn have any significant impact on your scheduling, especially given it’s track record for appearing.

What’s tough isn’t giving up, but giving up while still remaining optimistic.  As an optimist,  I have no problem waiting a really long time for things to happen, but I like to have a solid grasp on the scope for my timeline.  Are we talking hours, days, weeks, months, etc?  The unicorn observer doesn’t want to give up hope that the unicorn will never appear again, but picking a daily scope was probably a poor choice.  It would have been nice if the unicorn had at least left a note letting you know if it was gone for good or if it would return at some point.

Thinking about it, this scenario can probably also apply to people who claim to have seen something like the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot.  Someone might return year after year in an attempt to recreate the exact situation when their first sighting occurred.  Unfortunately  it’s not very easy to rewind time and fully capture the causes of that initial sighting, without those you may never be able to reproduce it.

Good night moon.

Over the past few days I’ve had a few new experiences, most of them negative, and a few repeated experiences, most of them also negative.  I have also lost a pair of pants, also negative.  Let me dive into some of the less than pleasant tales.

Over the weekend, I performed inadequate in my relationships with others.  I was distant at times and occasionally found the status quo to be acceptable.  A fair number of people would have also agreed, or at least argued, that the status quo was acceptable but logically I should have realized this was not the case.  It was not logical of me to permit the situation to stay as is, despite any perceived convenience for me.  Thinking back, I believe I made the mistake of thinking too many steps ahead, instead of where I needed to put my foot next.  I will have to improve in this area.

Additionally, I provided insufficient gifts.  As a gift giver, I know that what I give is never going to be the best idea ever since I will always apply my own “spin” on the token or item.  What I failed to take into account this season was the comparison factor.  In any other season, my tokens would have likely been much more sufficient.  This season is different from others, and I should have remembered that I needed to respond accordingly.  I will provide an example for clarity: If you present 12 golden coins, it seems like a pretty nice deal. That is the case until another person presents 25 gold coins.  If the 25 gold coins were never presented the 12 you had would have been super, but after 25 have been passed on the table, the comparison to others makes your offering much smaller than you intended it to be.  Better luck next time I guess.

Saturday night I attended an indoor barbecue-style event.  I do not believe I have attended similar events during my tenure at RPI or during the course of the current campaign.  This event confirmed my belief that I am socially distant from others and overall an undesirable social asset.  I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but my intuition is telling me that I would be much better off if I was located within 1.5 IQR here and not so far off course in outlier territory.  As a result of this, my engagement (though I didn’t engage much) ended early.

After departing the BBQ event, I went to get ice cream.  Somehow, the battery in my car decided that it was going to die/not do it’s job.  This creates quite the predicament for me.  A dead battery is not something I can easily solve on my own, like a flat tire or dislocated shoulder.  Asking for assistance from others is tough for me, because I dislike being indebted to another person for an undefined period of time.  Luckily, Ms. Boudreau was able to telephone Mr. Emala on her mobile and he and Mr. Kouttron were able to provide the required electricity to get my car started again.  I backed my car into my spot in front of BARH and it hasn’t been able to start since.  I hope to resolve this “tomorrow”.

Backing up a few hours, I’d like to resume discussion on the social.  For a while I’ve know that I am usually classified as socially awkward, which hasn’t bothered me much.  I guess I’ve always found awkward and acceptable not to be mutually exclusive, but maybe the analysis yielding that result is wrong.  I have always recognized that my guest is socially more desirable than myself, so I kind of write it off when a group joking doesn’t permit her to leave while I attempt to exit.  All in good spirit.

I am also poor at “shooting the breeze” because this just sounds like a dumb idea.  Shooting at wind is almost always a waste of bullets, and I find conversations of the sort to go the same way.   Its not that I don’t like to talk to people, its that I have trouble generating appropriate topics for discussion.  Like most, when I have trouble generating appropriate topics for discussion I talk about the things around me.  Unlike most, I could spend a measurable quantity of time talking about someone’s choice of stance, sitting pose, dress, etc.. none of which really go over well in a “hey, how about this weather” kind of way.

I am unsure how to proceed, but will continue to explore a few options. One of those options is not proceeding at all.

I was disappointed to loose another pair of pants.  Somehow I had worn down the right knee area to a critical level.  By the time I had noticed the damage and sown up the hole, the structurally integrity of the fabric had been lost and I was unable to stop the hole’s growth.  My pant rotation will be off until I can find a suitable replacement.

Good night moon.

So I’m here, worried about where I’m going to be in 8 months after I graduate from RPI.  My typical approach might be to model my efforts after successful people I know who’ve graduate at RPI.  Let me think, I know of 3 people who’ve graduated and departed from RPI with similar degrees… of which 1 is fully employed, probably the person I have the least contact with as well.  I know plenty of people who’ve ‘extended’ their stays at the institute, be it to seek additional degrees or higher degrees, but I don’t know if that’s for me.  I think I’d rather be working, as I have yet to see an MS/PhD program interesting to me.

As such, I find myself updating something that looks like a resume and refreshing the list of cool and exciting projects I work on.  This ‘fair’ doesn’t look too promising.  I reviewed the list of companies in attendance and none of them particularly leaped out at me as a great place to work.  I’ve been consistently disappointed by RPI’s inability to get companies that interest me to come to campus.  Microsoft was here 2 years ago I think but they haven’t been back.  I’ve seen nothing from any other company that I recognize as a driving force on the web (sad face).  I don’t know who’s problem it is here at RPI.  Maybe this school isn’t just good enough, maybe the CS department is misguided in their curriculum, or maybe the people who run these fairs don’t knock on the right doors… like I said, I don’t know.

Things were always much easier when I always new the mission at hand and, almost as important, that another mission was always in the pipeline.  I might have taken for granted the fact that finishing earlier always meant I could jump quicker onto something new without having to wait around.  While the hours may have been grueling and the pay left something to be desired it was steady work, something that seems harder to find today.

But I can’t forget about the goings on of present.  Someone’s got to remember that indeed things need to get done for us to continue making progress.  Sometimes I wish progress left a more positive aftertaste in my mouth.  It seems 2009 has been a year where progress hasn’t flavored nearly as well as the past.  My taste buds have been burnt by indiscretions of others, my tongue distained with failure, and putrefied with poor communication.  What else is one to do?  I guess I should have employed some  strategic mouth wash early (and often) but it went against my belief in facilitating others happiness.  Now I’m left with what?  I guess I have left than I started, but that usually implies a large loss when I didn’t start out with very much at all.  I guess I’m left to build it up and see what happens.

Good night moon.

We have a rotary in South Hadley and its a pretty fun one to drive on.  Unlike most other rotaries, the traffic on our rotary doesn’t always have the right of way.  In one location, the traffic entering the rotary (coming off the bridge) is given preference and rotary traffic is asked to yield.  The sign that prompts people to yield isn’t placed perfectly, and sometimes people blow right by it thinking the sign used to be pointed at the bridge and got twisted… or they just don’t bother reading signs or listening to them.  What’s funny is when I’m yielding (aka stopped) and waiting for a gap in the bridge traffic, sometimes people coming off the bridge stop for me.  Usually I flash my high beams to confuse them in an attempt to encourage them to move along.

I also went to a beach or two whilst on “Cape Cod.”  South Hadley does not have any beaches that I am aware of for me to compare them to, but we do have a canal.

More often then not I find myself faced with, what appear to be, loose-loose situations where I can’t see very positive outcome being made regardless of what I choose.  As part of my life long attempts to avoid bad things, I frequently wonder if maybe I can just abstain from making a decision or weighing in on the subject.  Sometimes this technique works well, if there are 3 people choosing where to eat the other 2 may come to a conclusion before I need to chime in (though I would have trouble seeing meal consumption as a loose-loose type of thing).  Sometimes this technique provides less than desirable results, specifically when you’re the only person who can or needs to make a decision.  When I’m pretty sure that I’m going to loose. I’d prefer to loose by as little as possible; a calculation that sometimes hard to make on the fly.

After watching shows like ‘Defying Gravity’ I think to myself hrm, maybe I should become an astronaut…. where astronaut is a euphemism for person who works with physical things.  As a mostly software guy, I’m sometimes disappointed by how much of what I do only exists on a screen.  (Being in TV production doesn’t help much either).  If all of a sudden the worlds displays (CRT, LCD, LED, etc) magically died I would be out of luck.  I’ve always enjoyed how software is a very low-entry field… I don’t need to have my own huge space ship to do things…. but sometimes I wish my results were further reaching or involved something I could pass around and show people.  As a civil engineer, its pretty easy to see something my dad does… it probably involves lots of noise and digging.  As a programmer the extend of my resources might include a updated computer or access to someone else terminal… not nearly as inspiring as a bulldozer.

I have decided that my family’s Comcast bill is too expensive.  They offered us a promotion last summer to bundle our services and it worked out to a cost little above $100 a month.  This was a pretty good savings over the individual services, including this crazy long distance/local calling plan my mom had setup years ago.  After a few of the promotions have expired and the cost has nearly doubled… the main problem being that TV alone is running us close to $90 + fees.  Personally, I don’t feel like I’m getting my $90 worth of TV each month.  The internet (which I use far more than the TV) is much cheaper.  If the prices reversed, it might make more sense… because I’m not opposed to paying based on usage.  I understand that I can reduce the cost by reducing the channels, but adding removing available channels is a not a trivial thing.

Unfortunately like many others, we don’t have a viable competitor we can consider switching our service to.  Technically we could get a dish, but their “local channels” are really only “local channels large enough for us to care about” which excludes Channel 15 & 12, as well as the new Fox 6 [though Fox 6 has yet to prove its worth to me].  If DirectTV or the Dish Network carried Channel 15 and we could hide a dish behind the house I would look into switching… unfortunately that’s not an option.

Verizon Fios looks like someday they will bundle everything for us, and deliver it over delicious fiber cables, however they aren’t in my neighborhood and I haven’t heard anything about them in the area.  Someone needs to do what Vonage did for telephone service for the TV.  Ignoring some technical issues, I wouldn’t mind a box behind each TV that took in the internet and output channels for me to watch.  Yes, there are websites like Hulu that can enable me to rig up something like that… but it doesn’t beat live TV and the concept of channel surfing to find whats on.  Surfing a TV guide or listing of available shows just doesn’t present the same experience.

Also on the frustration list is Amazon, and their lackluster shipping services. While I don’t expect them to be a Newegg or anything like that, I expect that they’ll ship my stuff in a reasonable time… and when I pay them more for shipping I’d appreciate if they considered using that money to increase the shipping service.  Usually when I buy off Amazon I just use the “Free Super Savers Shipping” service because I’m in no rush to get my order and if they get it out the door within the week I’ll be fine with its arrival within 2 weeks of ordering it.  Last week (July 21) I placed an order on Amazon.  I got to the checkout process and decided to upgrade from the “Free Super Savers Shipping” to the “Standard Shipping” in addition to “Ship my order in as many boxes as you need to get it here fast”… at least that’s what the option meant.  My goal was to get these items to arrive within a week so logically, I paid for the slightly better shipping… the only paid service that wasn’t crazy like 2-day shipping.  Unfortunately I think that money I paid for shipping went into someone else’s pockets.. not the person who actually moves my package to me.

As it stands now, both items were shipped mailed via the USPS.  Now I don’t dislike the USPS… but I use them for things like letters, selling textbooks, etc… not items that I’m expecting any super outstanding delivery with.  One item “Left Seller Facility” on Wednesday July 22 at which point the it was driven around  the middle of nowhere until Monday when the USPS stated”Electronic Data recieved” which is where it stands right now.  I don’t even know if the USPS has the actual package… but at least they know about it!  The other one left a “seller facility” on Saturday, and the USPS acknowledged yesterday that it had electronic data on it.  Neither of them show their locations in the nation’s postal network, and neither of them show any sign of arriving today.  I would have really liked it if when I paid Amazon extra they would have given the package to someone in a reasonable period of time… and maybe given it to someone like UPS or Fedex who track a package effectively… never mind provide a timely delivery.

Upon arrival of these two items, I plan to write a letter to my dear friends at Amazon and inform them of my troubles.

I’ve found that I’m frustrating people who I dislike to upset with some of my planned and repetitive behavior.  Unfortunately I do the same thing just about every day.  You can set your calendar by what I wear for clothes, the list of places I dine at and things I eat could be counted on one hand, and my options of “fun things to do” has remained fairly stagnant over the past few years.  It’s not that I don’t like changing things up, but its very rare that changes are going to make things better for me.  Far more likely, I find myself opting for changes that benefit others because I know they feel pulled down as a result of me… or the changes I’d like to see are simply unacceptable for the standards others.

Most people who have been involved with me when planning some sort of complicated travel plan would believe I’m against traveling.  That is not true; I am no hermit, and I feel quite skilled at navigating complex maps, airports, and directions.  However the whole pre-departure bit can be a challenge for me.  I think I’m using the word challenge a lot, because its more opaque than words like disaster, uncomfortable, terrified, etc.  In my current state, I live with my family, who are all great family members.  As someone who is 21, I have remained with the same privilege level as I did when I was 17 or 18.  This would be acceptable if the state previously established exceeded the limit or would appropriate satisfy the requirements others have of me now that I am 21.  Alas that is not the case.  I am prompted on a daily basis to head to bed before midnight and encouraged to escort my friends out between 11 and 11:30pm.  Sometimes, even waking up early (like 5:45 AM) will invoke a negative response.  Personally, I wouldn’t mind going to bed at, say 11:30pm, if all my work was done and most of the time, I feel I exercise moderately good judgement when deciding when friends should leave.  However, my current environment doesn’t allow me to appropriately practice such decision making skills without feeling dejected and unaccepted.

I progress.  In the past, I have taken a very very very small number of trips that involved a >2 hour drive to a location where we stayed for longer than 6 hours.  I can’t think of any one of those trips that made me feel like I wasn’t a terrible person when I asked-permission/informed parties of my intent to attend or previous act of attendance.  I get very put off to things that produce repeated negative results.  I can certainly understand that a first or maybe second event would produce some spite, but the continual production of it only hampers my will to try again.

Frequently I get upset, looking around at the environment of others and find myself thinking “how did they get there?” but realistically knowing that being able to follow a similar approach would likely not yield the intended results.

Pulling at me is this concept that I am may be a lesser person, or maybe that’s what my conditioning has made me.  Someone who shouldn’t experience, who shouldn’t think, who shouldn’t disappoint… at least for now.  I don’t see others struggle between two, struggling to find the solution that fits both holes no matter how complicated it may be.  On a positive day I would tell myself to keep going, recognizing that progress can only be made by spinning the wheel, even if it doesn’t move where you want it to.  Today is not a positive day. I find myself disappointed in myself on multiple fronts, and presently unable or unwilling to move.  Unfortunately that lack of momentum will hurt me just as much as moving, but I’ve never been able to provide enough.

I’ve come to accept that its my fault, and I’m ok being written off as a failure if you’d like.  If I were someone else, I’d have trouble writing it off as anything else.

Tonight I had the pleasure of viewing The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which really doesn’t describe the show very well at all.  In the show, everyone is having intercourse and everyone knows it.  In addition, just about everyone in the show who has intercourse gets pregnant.  I am not sure what is  the “secret” in this show, since all of the characters know whats going on, but maybe this “secret” will be developed later… unlike 24, where there are over 9000 secrets within the first hour.

The Secret Life (as I believe its commonly reduced to) seemingly portrays a growing trend among teenagers that certain behaviors are common in a high school setting, which I’m not sure is accurate.  One might cite the chiken-and-the-egg argument here, but I could see shows like The Secret Life serving to only increase the behavior amongst teens.  While the show doesn’t represent everything as the super coolest thing ever, I found that negative consequences were commonly downplayed in the show, likely because sad, depressing, and frustrating plots are not popular amonst the target audience.  I’m lead to believe this show, in addition to others on air (I can cite half of MTV’s lineup), serves not as an inspiration, exposure, or a motivator like people tend to associate violent video games with kids shooting people, but more as a catalyst; increasing the rate at which something that was statistically likely to happen anyways does occur.  I dislike this.  While I’ve graduated high school three years ago, I think some of my work still holds true.  The behavior of “impressionables” (aka some teenagers) is heavily effected by those older than them, and those more popular for them.  Fundamentally, I’ve used this to explain why things like curse words are becoming popular at younger and younger ages, and I suspect we’ll unfortunately see the chest fabric density continue to decrease over time.  As a television show, “The Secret Life” suffiently qualifies as popular, despite the lack of Hannah Montanna or Jamie Spears or the Jonas Brothern.  Strangely enough, I found little references to the age or grade of chacters in tonights episode.  New viewers, or people like myself who just have no clue, are left to pick a number for their age,  complimented with the shows plot that builds a high level of presented maturity for most characters, one could easily have replaced reference to school with college and visa-versa.

I think someone out there is thinking they are doing everyone a favor by showing people the potential pitfalls of actions using this show,  but I remember as a teenager I was only motivated more to do better when I had seen that others failed to turn lemons into lemonade.  Luckily, most of my shows which return in the fall have a minimal number of children under 7 and rarely is someone pregnant.  If someone is pregnant on House, NCIS, or Jack Baurer’s distant but young relatives come into play I am going to be tres unhappy.

I hoped to speak about issues more relavent to myself in this post, so let me see if I can get back on track.

Sometimes I find myself conflicted.  Conflicted between what I want to do, what I should do, what I should do for others, and what I should try and get others to want to do.  Together I think those 4 options cover all of my bases very accurately.  Regularly things are requested of me or others effecting me which I’m not very comfortable with, yet I bother not to speak try and do differently.  For example, my mom believes that doing the laundry in the evening/night is a foolish concept… and so it doing laundry on a Sunday, despite the good alignment that presents with my clothes rotation and the decreased load on the electrical grid and the potential cost savings (I doubt SHEL has time of day meters).  I have simply avoided trying to change anyones ways on this, not because I don’t care about it (today Monday I wore Tuesday’s backup shirt…. and that is tres frustrating) but because I’m not very interested in the process by which change can occur.

When I’m on my own, I pretty much control my own process by which change occurs.  Most of the time I like to change things slowly, but when I want to I can change quickly… the important part is that things are up to me.  In some instances where I feel like I should be able to effect some sort of process as a leader/experienced person/alike, I’m finding myself more and more stifled.  Those changes I do see occuring aren’t bad, but they aren’t always what I had in mind, and it would be nice for that to be taken into account once.

I’ll leave you with two thoughts:

1. The average of negative infinity and a high number less than infinity is still negative infinity.
2. I dislike being placed on peoples “creeps” list, and I will pretend to not notice and not take it personally even though it clearly is

Good night moon.