Brian's World

Corn Fields

I recently charged up the stairs with a fork feeling adventuresome.  As I predicted, there was no adventure atop the stairs for me and my fork to experience.  I lay it in the sink, to be recycled for another escapade.

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.

Smalltalk

This post will be brief.  I am presently 20 minutes late to bed, so I will be 20 minutes + writing time late to bed when I finish this post.  The beginning of June hasn’t been terribly eventful on most, if not all fronts.  I’ve been busy working on my project for RPI’s Center for Open Source Software, Bonsai Video.  You can track my progress updates at my blog for that project, http://vms.brispace.net.

One thing I have been thinking about is the future, and what it has in store.  Partially for me, for others, and for the world.  I remember sitting down at a Scoutmaster’s Conference with Mr. Roberts and he asked me what my aspiration was with scouting.  I always replied something along the lines of: After passing this and my Board of Review, I’ll probably be looking to the next rank… be it First Class, Star, Life, etc.  He would always prompt me in response with a question like “well, are you thinking about trying for Eagle [scout rank]” and I would always respond that my goal is going to be the next rank that I can get, and we’ll see where that gets me.  I won’t say that I’m poor at planning and thinking about the future, I’m usually just have too much stuff going on in the present to think far ahead.  I also dislike planning too far ahead, because then one early change in plans can mess your entire route up.

For example, I should be graduating RPI next May (2010) if all goes according to plan.  (The Web Tech Group has a notoriously low on-time graduation rate.. but I hope to beat that.)  I know I need to start figuring out what I’ll be doing after I graduate, but its not easy for me.  As I see it, I have 2 paths that I could look down, start a career sort or deal or further my education with something like a masters.  I’ve never been a super-huge fan of the whole education deal, because at some point I’d like to start actually using things that I’ve been taught learned… and I would prefer to do so before I’m too old; but I understand that seeking a masters degree may actually put me in a field and course of study with things that I do care about, and topics that are exciting to me.  Then again, if I can get a good job which can turn into a career.. or even not a career kinda thing, but something a little bulkier than an internship,  my educational experiences are less important.  It would be really neat (yet completely unlikely) if I had like a job offer and a grad school offer thing to choose from some point over the next year.  I don’t know if this “down” economy will or will not effect what I’m doing.  I like to think not, as more people are using computers than ever.

Sometimes I text message myself.

Highlights

Facebook’s “Highlights” sections torments me on a daily basis.  I don’t mind the newsfeed, as things come in to the top of the queue and slowly drift down over the course of or two… but that highlight section, it has a life of its own.

Not only does it believe in ‘highlighting’ things that are no longer recent and fresh, but it believes on highlighting them over and over again!  Its like that bad memory or repeating bad dream you just keep having over and over and over again.  Its not like there has been any activity on the photos that shows up in the highlight section, but Facebook has determined that its worth my perusal.  Trusting in their algorithm I click and see no new comments on the photo.  Doubting the link… maybe Facebook was talking about the entire album?  I then click next through all 60 photos to see if I have indeed missed one of my friends commenting on something that is worth my time.  Alas, there is nothing for me there.  Maybe someone at least 2 degrees separated from me has commented on a photo that has no one I know tagged in it.  Certainly not ‘highlight’ worthy.  I don’t mind seeing a newsfeed entry when a friend is tagged in a photo, or when a friend comments on a photo, but when a stranger comments on a photo containing stranger that happened to be taken by a friend?  I don’t think so.

Someday, a website similar to Facebook will successfully point me to things I care about, and only when I care about them.  Until that day, I’ll continue to flounder around on whatever social networking websites I deem valuable.   I do give MySpace credit, the banner-style ads they place along the sides are far less likely to draw my attention like Facebook’s “highlights” section.

In other news, I finished my Junior year of college and passed all my classes.  Unfortunately, it appears my Senior year is going to involve lots of unpleasant requirements, like some silly “HASS Core” to ensure I’m a well “rounded” person or something like that.  I do not want to be a round person, and if I did… I doubt a course in economics or arts would help mold me into one.

This summer has been off to a mild start.  I have just finished catching up on all but one show’s finale.  Stupid CBS and Fox cancelled The Unit and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles (respectively) which were the two shows I picked up mid-season this past year and placed top on my list.  I think its because both of those shows were a little bit slow and involved some back story.  Additionally, neither of the shows involved doctors or crime scene investigation.  Maybe if Sergeant Major Jonas Blane sent evidence back to the lab instead instead of instantly knowing what to do the show would have been able to continue.

Records indicate today is my 21st birthday.  I regularly want to cancel said event, because my birthday isn’t anything special.  Maybe if I was the leader of a country, famous person with a fan club, etc it would then be of value to others in which case I would do something.  Until that day (in the low likelihood it comes) I see no need to acknowledge that I have survived another year on this planet.  If people died regularly at my current age (for example, if I was 90) having a birthday would be something worth doing.. because Hey!  I’m not dead yet!  But the probability of my life terminating now is quite low, and celebrating seems unnecessary.