Something old and something new

Lately I’ve been pining to “get back up on that horse” known as computing again.

My activities and focuses seem to go in…cycles.  Best example I have is my gaming habbits.  First I’ll play nothing but PC games, and have nothing to do with any consoles.  Then I start to feel ‘bored’ with PC, and only ever want to play Xbox360.  Then… all I want to play is World of Warcraft.  And from there?  Who knows!

A while back, about the time that I started playing with the Windows 7 beta, I started to get the itch for computers again.  Building them, playing with software, creating content… all of it.  I researched the current hardware and built a new desktop PC with the help of a Newegg credit account!  (Sweet machine, too… Intel Core i7 920… /drool)

Stress at my job has really got me itching for it again, though.  I don’t have anything to do with any technology at work, aside from running a cash register.  I started looking for computer focused jobs, and so far the only one that I’ve been able to apply for was a Geek Squad counter clerk.  Not very glorious, but I’ll take it.

Most of all, I’ve really been wanting to get back into programming.  I miss the old days of staying up late at night to just work on a website project… In an effort to help me get back to those days, I’ve taken a couple of new project ideas down and set a few goals for myself.  First and foremost: LEARN JAVASCRIPT!!

I’m also trying to spice up my computing experience and shaking up the routine a little.  I’ve installed the Feedly extension for Firefox to try thinning out my reliance on the iGoogle homepage, which is starting to feel stale I think.  I also have installed the Evernote clients on my phone and PCs, making an effort to utilize their service more and more.  I’ve found it to be a good spot to jott down any code ideas that I have while away from home.

I really hope I can get back into technology as much as I used to be.  It’s a new year, and everyone always tries to use that as an excuse to “better” themselves, right?  I really feel that I better myself with all this.  I’ve become too lazy over the years and I really don’t like that.  I want to feel like I’m making something of myself again.

Thats not something that I do.

One thing that really gets me irritated are hypocrites.  There are a lot of different kinds but lately the one theme or situation just keeps coming up.

The prime example has played out a number of times in the past.  A nice family dinner is wrapping up and all of us children in the family are sitting around being smart asses and joking with each other.  My brother says some extremely sarcastic remark that very lightly implies something to the extent of men being superior to women.  Nobody really cares except for two of my three sisters who are present.  They start tearing into him about how thats not funny and men and women are equal and he’s a horrible jerk for saying such a thing.  Finally it all calms down and the kitchen cleaning starts to happen… and the garbage can needs to be emptied.  Every single time those very same sisters will sit there with a straight face and spout off that “garbage is a boy’s job.”  They don’t do garbage.

Bull.  Shit.

How can you sit there with a straight face preaching equality between sexes and then write something off as a “boy’s job”?  That’s the same as if I were to sit there and say cleaning dishes was a “girl’s job” (not that I believe in that), but you would get viciously up in arms about how wrong I am.  Nice double standard there, girls.  Think a little more before you go off spouting your bullshit.  It just irritates me so much.

Tonight at work I asked the woman cleaning the bathrooms why she hadn’t changed the garbages yet so I could take them to the compactor.  “I don’t do the garbages.  That’s just not something I do.”  Excuse me?  That’s part of cleaning the bathrooms every night.  That’s fine if you don’t like to do it, but its part of the job responsibilities and it has to get done.

There are even some employees that don’t ever get asked to clean the bathrooms simply because it’s known that they don’t bother to do it right so it’ll have to be done a second time.  They know how to do it but it seems like they simply refuse to do it the way its supposed to get done.  So rather than train them, or bring it up to management and see if that brings them to doing the job that they were hired to do, other employees have to do it every night instead.

Even more bullshit.

If everyone in the department is supposed to be part of a team then we shouldn’t be forced to carry the dead weight.  Extra effort is required on our parts to fill in for their lack of it.  Its not fair to people who actually do their job and probably get paid about the same wage.  We’re all expected to do our part.  Somebody needs to bring it up to management so hopefully we could get some new blood in to replace them.

Ok… I’m done.  I apologize if it seems to be a bit disorganized and hard to follow.

Can’t sleep; Clowns will eat me.

Sometimes I really wish I could just cut out all of the internet bullshit in my life.  It seems like everything I see is the same as the thing before it.

I cut out a lot of people that I follow on Twitter, and turned off all SMS notifications for the ones I’m close enough to that would actually justify using that function.  Most of it was just family spouting off every single non-event of the day.  My phone is a lot quieter and I’m seemingly less irritated.  Since I live with the culprits you’d think I wouldn’t be missing much, but I still get that “didn’t you see my tweet?” bullshit from time to time.

I feel like cutting people out of Facebook too, but thats already confined to a very small group of people that I’m not sure I can do much to it.  Most of it is just stupid “Application” notifications that I don’t give a shit about and I’m not sure if you can cut that stuff out very effectively.  I’d really like to just cut the whole thing out of my life but it is still rather useful for staying connected with people that I would otherwise lose touch with… but I wonder if its that easy to lose touch then why bother?  Besides, what else would I do in my quiet time other than compulsively check it every five minutes?

I’m up real late right now and can’t sleep.  Cruising around my news feeds trying to find something interesting to read and I see all the same headlines repeated about six times over.  This is ridiculous.

I think I need some new hobbies.

Sharing is Caring

(3:16:12 PM) Sunny: I just realized the other day
(3:16:32 PM) Sunny: basically all the music that I like and listen to regularly these days are people that most others haven’t heard of
(3:16:49 PM) Patrick: heh
(3:16:53 PM) Patrick: which speaks volumes about you

Could be.

The Evacuate Chicago CD is excellent for blowing off steam.  It has become increasingly useful to me lately.

More songs about drugs with curse words is a fantastic album.

I got to see Psychostick and The Pimps in concert and it was amazing.  My friends and I hung out with Alex and Jimmy and Josh and Rob before the show.  I can die now.

Err, scratch that.  I still haven’t seen Local H live yet.  I can die later.

July sucks.

I felt so shitty all day yesterday.  Both physically and mentally.  Couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me until the evening when I realized…

It was my dad’s birthday.

Fuck, I hate July.  What a terrible month.