For most things that I do online, anonymity is not a priority. I don't use hacking skills that I don't have in order to steal money nor do I encourage violence or anything else that carries the potential for major problems if my identity was discovered. It would be nice if my identity was important because if it was I believe it would be for positive reasons, but it's not. It is unique - as far as I know nobody shares my name even without including my middle name or initial. And for some sites that require passwords, such as banking ones, I see no reason whatsoever to hide who I am.
Lack of a good reason isn't always enough to prevent a mistake, and a mistake has been made. I gave myself a user name for my online bank account that I keep forgetting. They have a password reset option which requires the user name and after a few guesses I got an password email sent to me, but when I tried to log in with the new password (email doesn't include user name) I was told that the user name and password didn't match. Did I forget my user name already? Are the capitalization rules different for getting my password reset and the actual log in? I don't know, but I do know that if I get it wrong one or two more times then the account will get locked and I don't want that to happen even though that is really no worse than never trying to log in because of fear of a forgotten user name. I also know that I wouldn't have this problem if I just used my actual name.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Out of Practice
My vacation from work last week wasn't supposed to be a vacation from writing. I didn't leave the NYC metropolitan area and had plenty of time to write blog entries and other things that might be read by other people someday, but I spent most of my time doing no such thing. I think I completed one blog entry during the entire week, and that was in a blog that was originally supposed to be updated daily. That lasted for three days, and now once a week seems like a much more reasonable goal.
The weather was great for most of last week, but I didn't play any competitive basketball because my shoelaces are a wreck. It's like they are living beings with the life span of a hamster but this time the hamster has some bizarre genetic ailment causing one side of its body to become inexplicably twisted and then it was treated by a stumped vet that managed to make the problem worse and now my left shoe features a knot leading to a lace-goatee leading to a relatively normal looking lace that sticks out much too far and half the lace on the other side is still twisted and if I play any sort of sport someone will probably step on my laces causing me to trip and fall and hurt my knee even worse than I did last night playing video games.
When one thinks of video-game related injuries, which is itself probably a sign of playing too many video games, the knee is not likely to be in the first five injury-prone areas considered. The wrist (obvious) eyes (staring at the screen too long), back (terrible posture sitting in the chair), elbow (Wii sports), and fingers (same reason as wrist) are all more likely and the same can probably be said for other body parts. But I managed to hurt my knee. I am currently re-playing Twilight Princess and this time I would like to finish it by myself and in less than the 88 or so hours that it took the first time. One of the things that I couldn't do myself last year when I first played the game was fishing. Fishing in that game requires a lot of patiently waiting for a fish to go on the hook and then swinging one of the controllers around your arm to simulate reeling in a fish. After ten minutes of not doing anything productive yesterday basically sitting and slightly moving the Wii Remote, the game told me that I caught a fish so I reeled it in without causing myself much pain. Unfortunately for my knee, the game requires the player to catch two fish consecutively, so I repeated the process and...actually I think that was harmless too and I lost control and hit myself with the "nunchuk" later. But I'm ok now.
If you rank things by how much time I spent on them over the past week and a half, which is probably more problematic than pondering video-game related injuries, then playing Zelda would not be ranked very highly at all. I spent more time sleeping, eating, at improv shows, at open mics, on the subway to get to those places, writing emails, checking baseball stats, talking about baseball stats, watching baseball games, reading, playing poker in Harlem...and the list goes on but probably not for all that much longer. If you want to know what I think I wasted the most time on over the break, my answer would be Facebook's poker tournament. They give you a thousand chips of fake money and then the goal is to try to get a lot more chips without running out. I managed to end up with about 60,000 at the end of the week after spending ridiculous amounts of time (about 20 hours total I think) playing that game in my room. If I took ten real dollars and turned it into sixty times that it would sadly be an amazingly great week of work, but internet gaming laws and my current financial situation make it virtually impossible for me to try that so I just won 75,000 facebook poker points which have the approximate monetary value of my left shoelace (my right shoelace is worth considerably more). Maybe the upcoming tax rebate will allow me to try to make some extra money (right now poker is probably a better investment than the stock market) but I doubt it. Finishing in the top 500 out of 400,000 should be worth something besides facebook points but unfortunately it is not.
Hopefully the time that I spent writing about my relatively wasted vacation will get me more in a writing mood so that I would go over a week without writing in this blog again and I'll write more for my other blogs too. I feel like it's been ages since I wrote a sonnet.
The weather was great for most of last week, but I didn't play any competitive basketball because my shoelaces are a wreck. It's like they are living beings with the life span of a hamster but this time the hamster has some bizarre genetic ailment causing one side of its body to become inexplicably twisted and then it was treated by a stumped vet that managed to make the problem worse and now my left shoe features a knot leading to a lace-goatee leading to a relatively normal looking lace that sticks out much too far and half the lace on the other side is still twisted and if I play any sort of sport someone will probably step on my laces causing me to trip and fall and hurt my knee even worse than I did last night playing video games.
When one thinks of video-game related injuries, which is itself probably a sign of playing too many video games, the knee is not likely to be in the first five injury-prone areas considered. The wrist (obvious) eyes (staring at the screen too long), back (terrible posture sitting in the chair), elbow (Wii sports), and fingers (same reason as wrist) are all more likely and the same can probably be said for other body parts. But I managed to hurt my knee. I am currently re-playing Twilight Princess and this time I would like to finish it by myself and in less than the 88 or so hours that it took the first time. One of the things that I couldn't do myself last year when I first played the game was fishing. Fishing in that game requires a lot of patiently waiting for a fish to go on the hook and then swinging one of the controllers around your arm to simulate reeling in a fish. After ten minutes of not doing anything productive yesterday basically sitting and slightly moving the Wii Remote, the game told me that I caught a fish so I reeled it in without causing myself much pain. Unfortunately for my knee, the game requires the player to catch two fish consecutively, so I repeated the process and...actually I think that was harmless too and I lost control and hit myself with the "nunchuk" later. But I'm ok now.
If you rank things by how much time I spent on them over the past week and a half, which is probably more problematic than pondering video-game related injuries, then playing Zelda would not be ranked very highly at all. I spent more time sleeping, eating, at improv shows, at open mics, on the subway to get to those places, writing emails, checking baseball stats, talking about baseball stats, watching baseball games, reading, playing poker in Harlem...and the list goes on but probably not for all that much longer. If you want to know what I think I wasted the most time on over the break, my answer would be Facebook's poker tournament. They give you a thousand chips of fake money and then the goal is to try to get a lot more chips without running out. I managed to end up with about 60,000 at the end of the week after spending ridiculous amounts of time (about 20 hours total I think) playing that game in my room. If I took ten real dollars and turned it into sixty times that it would sadly be an amazingly great week of work, but internet gaming laws and my current financial situation make it virtually impossible for me to try that so I just won 75,000 facebook poker points which have the approximate monetary value of my left shoelace (my right shoelace is worth considerably more). Maybe the upcoming tax rebate will allow me to try to make some extra money (right now poker is probably a better investment than the stock market) but I doubt it. Finishing in the top 500 out of 400,000 should be worth something besides facebook points but unfortunately it is not.
Hopefully the time that I spent writing about my relatively wasted vacation will get me more in a writing mood so that I would go over a week without writing in this blog again and I'll write more for my other blogs too. I feel like it's been ages since I wrote a sonnet.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Gridlocked on the Information Superhighway
I mentioned in an earlier post that I had gotten back to work on a novel that I had been writing on and off with much more time off than on over the last couple of years. Shortly after that, I realized that I am not comfortable enough writing in the third person to make a full book that was and decided to start over yet again using the first person point of view. Then I made the choice that in order to prevent myself from scrapping my work anymore before it got seen by anybody I would write it as a blog with posting dates going backwards from years in the future so the beginning would be on top. Seemed like a good plan at the time.
My writing was delayed somewhat by a mysterious cut on the finger that I do most of my typing with, but by yesterday afternoon I set out to work on it anyway using a modified typing strategy that was probably very bad for my wrist and definitely very slow. The writing that I had done so far disappeared somehow but I remembered enough to approximate what I had written before and possibly improve upon it slightly. I wrote a paragraph and took a break.
During that break, I looked up some things on the internet. First I looked up what I had named the primary location of my story to see if it had been used before and it had in an online political role playing game. It suddenly felt extremely unoriginal and not worth using. The same was true for what I had originally named the same place, and even the name of what I thought was an original type of halfling may have been thought of by someone else before me. Frustrated by this information that I probably should have known long ago, I deleted the new blog and haven't worked on the story since (even if it has only been a day).
The internet can be very useful for writers. With blogs and forums and other interactive sites it is possible to express oneself creatively to audiences that would never have been reached before the advent of the information superhighway. As a whole this is a good thing, but the increased opportunity allowing more ideas to be expressed means that it is increasingly likely for a good idea to have been thought of and e-published by someone else beforehand thus making ideas seem plagiarized even when they were not. I think most of my ideas are still original and the combination of them certainly hasn't been done before, but until I can fix the names then I am definitely stuck and even if that hurdle is cleared I'm still worried that other problems will arise.
My writing was delayed somewhat by a mysterious cut on the finger that I do most of my typing with, but by yesterday afternoon I set out to work on it anyway using a modified typing strategy that was probably very bad for my wrist and definitely very slow. The writing that I had done so far disappeared somehow but I remembered enough to approximate what I had written before and possibly improve upon it slightly. I wrote a paragraph and took a break.
During that break, I looked up some things on the internet. First I looked up what I had named the primary location of my story to see if it had been used before and it had in an online political role playing game. It suddenly felt extremely unoriginal and not worth using. The same was true for what I had originally named the same place, and even the name of what I thought was an original type of halfling may have been thought of by someone else before me. Frustrated by this information that I probably should have known long ago, I deleted the new blog and haven't worked on the story since (even if it has only been a day).
The internet can be very useful for writers. With blogs and forums and other interactive sites it is possible to express oneself creatively to audiences that would never have been reached before the advent of the information superhighway. As a whole this is a good thing, but the increased opportunity allowing more ideas to be expressed means that it is increasingly likely for a good idea to have been thought of and e-published by someone else beforehand thus making ideas seem plagiarized even when they were not. I think most of my ideas are still original and the combination of them certainly hasn't been done before, but until I can fix the names then I am definitely stuck and even if that hurdle is cleared I'm still worried that other problems will arise.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Thinking by itself doesn't pay very well
It would be nice if it did, or at least it seems that way at first thought but in fact food for thought interpreted literally is not the best of ideas. Just about everyone can express thoughts, so if that alone was compensated monetarily then the value of money would be depreciated and the transfer of funds would be a waste of time and effort. And money. Payment for good thoughts is somewhat more reasonable, and happens to some extent, but that requires a third party making decisions about what thoughts deserve payment and the third party would probably demand more money than the sum paid to the thinker.
At least, that is how things worked in the past. Nowadays, thoughts are often judged to worthy of payment not so much by one person but by ranking algorithms that determine how likely it is for thoughts made public over the internet to actually reach large enough members of the public through search engines that they will lead a potential customer to a product or service advertised nearby or within a set of thoughts by a writer. As of now, my thoughts are not considered to pull much weight by the powers that be and therefore I may not be able to get much money through the thoughts on this blog anytime soon.
As many potential readers probably already know, it is possible to make some money online by linking to other websites that want publicity through a combination of potential customers clicking on the link to their site and search engines giving them favorable treatment because sites that get linked to seem important. Payperpost is a service that I used on a regular basis during the summer of 2006 but unfortunately for my bank account that ended quickly because my blog back then was part of a community site that became associated with sloppy writing practices. Payperpost apparently did not take long to discover that if they wanted to have a good relationship between bloggers and advertisers they would have to employ good word of mouth ethics, which in my opinion includes not expecting advertisers to pay for bloggers to talk about them when said bloggers are basically talking to themselves or might harm the advertiser by association if the blog is poorly written. Since my blog is relatively new it might seem like I am talking to myself so Payperpost cannot ethically facilitate a business relationship between myself and advertisers that have not specifically expressed a lack of concern about whether a blog has a Google Page Rank or not. That equals very few opportunities for quick money so far, but quick money often turns into dead money anyway so I will have to work on filling my blog with interesting thoughts so in the future Payperpost will be able to do more to help me support this blogging habit that I seem to have.
It is also ethical to make it clear that an advertisement is in fact an advertisement as well as to make sure that a blog whose owner gets paid through Payperpost isn't full of paid ads. The latter will certainly not happen anytime soon due to reasons stated above, and I am about to insert code clarifying that this is in fact a paid advertisement and not mere rambling about how I used to make money blogging and haven't really done so recently. Behold the code in its intended form:
At least, that is how things worked in the past. Nowadays, thoughts are often judged to worthy of payment not so much by one person but by ranking algorithms that determine how likely it is for thoughts made public over the internet to actually reach large enough members of the public through search engines that they will lead a potential customer to a product or service advertised nearby or within a set of thoughts by a writer. As of now, my thoughts are not considered to pull much weight by the powers that be and therefore I may not be able to get much money through the thoughts on this blog anytime soon.
As many potential readers probably already know, it is possible to make some money online by linking to other websites that want publicity through a combination of potential customers clicking on the link to their site and search engines giving them favorable treatment because sites that get linked to seem important. Payperpost is a service that I used on a regular basis during the summer of 2006 but unfortunately for my bank account that ended quickly because my blog back then was part of a community site that became associated with sloppy writing practices. Payperpost apparently did not take long to discover that if they wanted to have a good relationship between bloggers and advertisers they would have to employ good word of mouth ethics, which in my opinion includes not expecting advertisers to pay for bloggers to talk about them when said bloggers are basically talking to themselves or might harm the advertiser by association if the blog is poorly written. Since my blog is relatively new it might seem like I am talking to myself so Payperpost cannot ethically facilitate a business relationship between myself and advertisers that have not specifically expressed a lack of concern about whether a blog has a Google Page Rank or not. That equals very few opportunities for quick money so far, but quick money often turns into dead money anyway so I will have to work on filling my blog with interesting thoughts so in the future Payperpost will be able to do more to help me support this blogging habit that I seem to have.
It is also ethical to make it clear that an advertisement is in fact an advertisement as well as to make sure that a blog whose owner gets paid through Payperpost isn't full of paid ads. The latter will certainly not happen anytime soon due to reasons stated above, and I am about to insert code clarifying that this is in fact a paid advertisement and not mere rambling about how I used to make money blogging and haven't really done so recently. Behold the code in its intended form:
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Band Name Trivia Game (April 2008 #1)
In the ancient era of 2006, I used to belong to a community website that, for a time, had a very strong sense of community. Part of the community spirit was expressed through games that I used to run in which certain I would write trivia questions that fit with a certain theme and the first letter of the answers to all of those questions could be unscrambled in order to spell the pseudonym (or real name) of a member of of the blogging community. Whoever guessed the hidden clue got to make a new set of clues using the same format on their blog within the site, thus drawing traffic to their blog. It was good while it lasted.
It ended for a time, but there is no reason to keep the game down just because the original host site is kaput. I am going to start again over here, but this time I will use general (but related to music somehow) trivia questions off the top of my head and instead of a blogger the first letters of all of the answers can be scrambled to spell the name of a band. Whoever guesses the name correctly gets to post a new set of clues on their blog, but I would appreciate it if the explanation for the blog links back to this post. I think it would also be the right thing to do to check out the non-game content of the blog you are playing on whenever you play this sort of trivia game.
And now it begins:
1) The "hairless" variety of what bird is a national symbol of the United States of America?
2) What classic rock song could also be the result of a tree falling in an empty forest according to some philosophers?
3) In a classic country song, the singer claims not to be afraid of Clifton Clowers. What geographical feature is in the song's title?
4) What do you get when you take away an apostrophe, the second letter of the alphabet, and a space from the collective name of the powerful hitters that the Houston Astros used to have?
5) Which city's Richmond County is notorious for its landfills?
6) Part of the argument for invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein wouldn't change his (fill in the blank) ways.
7) If what people did was dictated by similar pronunciation of words, what musical instrument would be favored by vagrants?
It would've been much easier without the music theme.
It ended for a time, but there is no reason to keep the game down just because the original host site is kaput. I am going to start again over here, but this time I will use general (but related to music somehow) trivia questions off the top of my head and instead of a blogger the first letters of all of the answers can be scrambled to spell the name of a band. Whoever guesses the name correctly gets to post a new set of clues on their blog, but I would appreciate it if the explanation for the blog links back to this post. I think it would also be the right thing to do to check out the non-game content of the blog you are playing on whenever you play this sort of trivia game.
And now it begins:
1) The "hairless" variety of what bird is a national symbol of the United States of America?
2) What classic rock song could also be the result of a tree falling in an empty forest according to some philosophers?
3) In a classic country song, the singer claims not to be afraid of Clifton Clowers. What geographical feature is in the song's title?
4) What do you get when you take away an apostrophe, the second letter of the alphabet, and a space from the collective name of the powerful hitters that the Houston Astros used to have?
5) Which city's Richmond County is notorious for its landfills?
6) Part of the argument for invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein wouldn't change his (fill in the blank) ways.
7) If what people did was dictated by similar pronunciation of words, what musical instrument would be favored by vagrants?
It would've been much easier without the music theme.
Top Secret...Shh
I wasn't at work on Monday. As for where I actually was, I can't tell whoever may be reading this blog. It's top secret. Confidential. Classified. In case you are thinking of launching an investigation, which would be more of a waste of time than reading this blog. I can tell you that what I was doing was, as far as I know, completely legal. Do you know what's not legal? Besides arson and a bunch of other things that have nothing to do with this paragraph? Since this is a blog entry and not a conversation, I will tell you. I won't tell you about Monday because that's the answer - telling you any real information according
to my understanding of a legal document I read any may not be able to give many details about is illegal. Breach of contract. Punishable by a significant sum of money. I won't say how much, but it's far more than I have made or expect take ever make through writing this blog.
What I did on Monday provided a boost to my confidence. Confidence regarding what? you might ask if you are in fact a real person and not some google bot trolling my site and hopefully deciding to give it some sort of page rank. I might tell you, but then I might be breaking a very expensive promise so I will not. Will that feeling of confidence remain? I hope so. I can tell you that I am not referring to confidence regarding my ability to avoid litigation in the event of a breached contract, and I hope I do not gain any confidence in that area because that would be stupid.
I have not gained much confidence in my primary fantasy baseball team lately. Three consecutive bad days. That constitutes a streak, and not the kind I would like to have although there are certainly worse kinds of streaks to have. At least I can take solace in the fact that the bad luck affecting the performance of baseball players whose statistics are important to me is not my fault. As opposed to last night when I would have won some very unique pieces of artwork but my raffle ticket fell into my otherwise empty wallet and I couldn't find it until the next number was called. What kind of artwork was it? The confidential kind that I'm not going to say anything else about here. I wouldn't get sued for being more informative about it, but I don't want to talk about it and that's my prerogative. It's my blog I can omit what I want to. And end it whenever
to my understanding of a legal document I read any may not be able to give many details about is illegal. Breach of contract. Punishable by a significant sum of money. I won't say how much, but it's far more than I have made or expect take ever make through writing this blog.
What I did on Monday provided a boost to my confidence. Confidence regarding what? you might ask if you are in fact a real person and not some google bot trolling my site and hopefully deciding to give it some sort of page rank. I might tell you, but then I might be breaking a very expensive promise so I will not. Will that feeling of confidence remain? I hope so. I can tell you that I am not referring to confidence regarding my ability to avoid litigation in the event of a breached contract, and I hope I do not gain any confidence in that area because that would be stupid.
I have not gained much confidence in my primary fantasy baseball team lately. Three consecutive bad days. That constitutes a streak, and not the kind I would like to have although there are certainly worse kinds of streaks to have. At least I can take solace in the fact that the bad luck affecting the performance of baseball players whose statistics are important to me is not my fault. As opposed to last night when I would have won some very unique pieces of artwork but my raffle ticket fell into my otherwise empty wallet and I couldn't find it until the next number was called. What kind of artwork was it? The confidential kind that I'm not going to say anything else about here. I wouldn't get sued for being more informative about it, but I don't want to talk about it and that's my prerogative. It's my blog I can omit what I want to. And end it whenever
Friday, April 4, 2008
I wish that it was easier to turn back the clock
I could reminisce about regrets and what I could have done if I went back to where I made mistakes armed with the knowledge gained from making those mistakes, but that's not what I mean by turning back the clock. I mean an actual clock - the alarm clock by my bed in particular. When I have to wake up a little earlier than usual, instead of pressing the hour button one time while holding the alarm button as well, I have to press it 23 times. Since it's a tedious task, I try to get through it as quickly as possible which means that sometimes I pass the intended time and have to go through a day's worth of chronological units once again. All this has to be done while holding down the alarm button, and sometimes my finger slips off thus causing me to change the regular mode of the alarm clock instead of alarm mode, and then the minute button has to be pressed a few dozen times to go back a couple of minutes. I have enough of a carpal tunnel risk typing blogs (mostly) with one finger like I do and I don't need extra risk when my health plan doesn't cover anything I could actually use.
I think that I'm not the only one who would pay a bit extra if that's what it would take to an extra button or two on an alarm clock so that perceived time could move backwards. However, if I could afford to buy a new alarm clock then I wouldn't have to accept extra work that requires me to wake up earlier than I would like to.
I think that I'm not the only one who would pay a bit extra if that's what it would take to an extra button or two on an alarm clock so that perceived time could move backwards. However, if I could afford to buy a new alarm clock then I wouldn't have to accept extra work that requires me to wake up earlier than I would like to.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Bypassing The Glass Joe Ceiling
Imagine yourself in a room with the length and width of a royal banquet hall and the height of "King" LeBron James. There are hotel-style bedrooms on the outside of the main room and nothing else on the floor where you are staying. The food could be worse but it could be a lot better and the same could be said of the people, but the environment as a whole is certainly better than the wintry weather and barren peoplescape outside. You feel content at times, but then you look up through the ceiling located mere inches above the top of your head.
The ceiling is made of glass and thus transparent, and the floor above you appears to be full of people who are generally much better looking and in much better moods than the people in your floor. It appears to be that way because it is, and you wish that you could get up there. However, there is one staircase going up and that staircase is guarded by a former A-list nightclub bouncer who won't let you go up them. You see people go up but you don't know what they did to receive permission to ascend, and they never stick around long enough when they come back down for you to ask them for advice. Any attempts to get to the next floor through the actual ceiling will result in at the very least public humiliation and there is potential for serious bodily harm. You've seen severely bloodied hands that recently followed a cerebral order to try to smash the Glass Joe ceiling, and unbeknownst to you all that had to be done is show your room key to the person at the reception desk in order to get the password to tell the bouncer. Going up is not that hard at all once you know what to do, which is why I call the most prominent barrier in this scenario the Glass Joe ceiling.
Glass Joe, in case there are people reading this who don't know, is the first opponent in the classic boxing game Mike Tyson's punch out and like all first opponents in fighting games and not the most skilled of fighters. The game included text of quotes from the characters between rounds, and Glass Joe expresses a desire both to retire as soon as possible and to take a nap. I never really played the game before about a year ago and I never played it much, but I've lost to Glass Joe. Repeatedly. This was apparently quite laughable, but I couldn't seem to be him on any sort of consistent basis. Mostly because I didn't realize how to stop punching high when high punches were being blocked. Quite simple, but I missed it and had to ask for help and the help allowed me to finally deliver a TKO to Glass Joe last night. Therefore, a Glass Joe ceiling is when not knowing or not knowing how to apply a simple piece of information completely stops progress.
There is no Glass Joe ceiling preventing me from finishing a novel. Writing a book is a long process that I believe I know how to complete as well as I ever will - it's just a question of putting in the time and effort to do it. Which I unfortunately haven't done much of since my last blog entry. But I do have other goals with a potential Glass Joe ceiling in the way. Like the Dream On entry from a few days ago - I honestly believe that if it is properly pitched then it could earn millions of dollars for a network and I wouldn't have to ask my parents for a few hundred dollars again anytime soon - maybe there's a simple way to make it happen that I don't know about. I want to start marketing my parody-writing ability on a freelance basis but I may have a GJC in my way for that too as well as not having ten spare dollars so that I wouldn't have to try to run the operation out of a blogspot domain. I want to run a weekly show in the city and have wanted to for a while but I haven't been able to - possible GJC there too. Finally, at least for now, upon reconnecting with fellow former community bloggers I've been reminded how fun and popular the games I used to run were and I'd like to start a site entirely dedicated to that sort of thing but don't know how to go about doing so - Glass Joe Ceiling again?
The tricky thing about glass joe ceilings is that they are much easier to spot in hypothetical scenarios than real life.
The ceiling is made of glass and thus transparent, and the floor above you appears to be full of people who are generally much better looking and in much better moods than the people in your floor. It appears to be that way because it is, and you wish that you could get up there. However, there is one staircase going up and that staircase is guarded by a former A-list nightclub bouncer who won't let you go up them. You see people go up but you don't know what they did to receive permission to ascend, and they never stick around long enough when they come back down for you to ask them for advice. Any attempts to get to the next floor through the actual ceiling will result in at the very least public humiliation and there is potential for serious bodily harm. You've seen severely bloodied hands that recently followed a cerebral order to try to smash the Glass Joe ceiling, and unbeknownst to you all that had to be done is show your room key to the person at the reception desk in order to get the password to tell the bouncer. Going up is not that hard at all once you know what to do, which is why I call the most prominent barrier in this scenario the Glass Joe ceiling.
Glass Joe, in case there are people reading this who don't know, is the first opponent in the classic boxing game Mike Tyson's punch out and like all first opponents in fighting games and not the most skilled of fighters. The game included text of quotes from the characters between rounds, and Glass Joe expresses a desire both to retire as soon as possible and to take a nap. I never really played the game before about a year ago and I never played it much, but I've lost to Glass Joe. Repeatedly. This was apparently quite laughable, but I couldn't seem to be him on any sort of consistent basis. Mostly because I didn't realize how to stop punching high when high punches were being blocked. Quite simple, but I missed it and had to ask for help and the help allowed me to finally deliver a TKO to Glass Joe last night. Therefore, a Glass Joe ceiling is when not knowing or not knowing how to apply a simple piece of information completely stops progress.
There is no Glass Joe ceiling preventing me from finishing a novel. Writing a book is a long process that I believe I know how to complete as well as I ever will - it's just a question of putting in the time and effort to do it. Which I unfortunately haven't done much of since my last blog entry. But I do have other goals with a potential Glass Joe ceiling in the way. Like the Dream On entry from a few days ago - I honestly believe that if it is properly pitched then it could earn millions of dollars for a network and I wouldn't have to ask my parents for a few hundred dollars again anytime soon - maybe there's a simple way to make it happen that I don't know about. I want to start marketing my parody-writing ability on a freelance basis but I may have a GJC in my way for that too as well as not having ten spare dollars so that I wouldn't have to try to run the operation out of a blogspot domain. I want to run a weekly show in the city and have wanted to for a while but I haven't been able to - possible GJC there too. Finally, at least for now, upon reconnecting with fellow former community bloggers I've been reminded how fun and popular the games I used to run were and I'd like to start a site entirely dedicated to that sort of thing but don't know how to go about doing so - Glass Joe Ceiling again?
The tricky thing about glass joe ceilings is that they are much easier to spot in hypothetical scenarios than real life.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Back to the Book
Sometimes I am trying to write a novel, and sometimes I am not. Recently I hadn't been, in part because I had been discouraged by the similarity of part of my plan for this yet to be named novel and a significant part of a book that I read recently. That book, the 13 and a half lives of captain bluebear, had at least about a hundred pages about the title character working as essentially a stand-up comedian and I planned for a good portion of my book to be about a supernatural semi-mythical character pursuing stand-up comedy, and now I still plan to do so. Apart from the already stated similarities, the two story threads should be very different and making them so seems like a very attainable task.
Now that I'm writing again, the key is to actually write. I read a book called The War of Art a month or so ago which emphasized the importance of attatching utmost importance to whatever goal that one chooses to pursue if one wants to be truly successful. That's easier to do with plenty of money to pay the rent with while working on something guaranteed to bring in zero financial reward for the forseeable future, but the book never said it would be easy - it's a sort of personal war and war is never easy. I'm certainly not supposed to be using my energy on several different writing pursuits, but I can't see myself refusing to write what I feel like writing just because I'm just supposed to write one thing at once. If I'm blocked in one area then at least I should work on something else and then I might get distracted from the second thing by thoughts of the first thing. And vice versa. Until eventually, after a long time, I get both things done. Hopefully without using the word "things" quite so often.
Yesterday I wrote two paragraphs of the book. That's two more than I had written in quite a while. I don't know how much of those two paragraphs will stick in the finished product if there ever is a finished product, but the answer is almost certainly more than if I had written nothing at all.
Now that I'm writing again, the key is to actually write. I read a book called The War of Art a month or so ago which emphasized the importance of attatching utmost importance to whatever goal that one chooses to pursue if one wants to be truly successful. That's easier to do with plenty of money to pay the rent with while working on something guaranteed to bring in zero financial reward for the forseeable future, but the book never said it would be easy - it's a sort of personal war and war is never easy. I'm certainly not supposed to be using my energy on several different writing pursuits, but I can't see myself refusing to write what I feel like writing just because I'm just supposed to write one thing at once. If I'm blocked in one area then at least I should work on something else and then I might get distracted from the second thing by thoughts of the first thing. And vice versa. Until eventually, after a long time, I get both things done. Hopefully without using the word "things" quite so often.
Yesterday I wrote two paragraphs of the book. That's two more than I had written in quite a while. I don't know how much of those two paragraphs will stick in the finished product if there ever is a finished product, but the answer is almost certainly more than if I had written nothing at all.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Fortune's Pendulum
Usually I feel very streaky with everything I do, including things that are at least in part not under my control. Lately, however, my luck has been much more back and forth that usual, with a good thing directly followed by a bad thing or vice versa. Mostly the latter.
I'll start with one of the more trivial aspects of my life - fantasy baseball. This morning I had an autopick draft (the site chose my team as I slept) in which I got a lot of the players that I wanted (good) yet my autopicker picked two backup shortstops and several backup outfielders before giving me any infielders that aren't shortstops (not so good). Hopefully someone will trade with me. I also considered myself lucky to have Curtis Granderson on my keeper league team and I autopicked him this morning, but I found out this afternoon that he just broke a bone in his hand. As far as broken bones go its considered to be fairly innocuous at least. Up and down, up and down.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my keys to my apartment fell off my keychain and I never got it back on. Last night, I kept my keys in the pocket of pants that are not conducive to keeping things in and they all fell out. I was at the Magnet Theater at the time and everyone there was very nice about helping me to look for them and we found the key that had fallen off of my chain. That was the key that opens my apartment door, which I would have had no way of getting to my bed without. We did not find the keys that were still on the chain, which was somewhat worrisome considering my upcoming after 2AM morning before Easter sunday arrival. I got to my apartment house and all the lights that I could see were dark. It could've been a long, cold, night. And within a minute I see someone in the hallway probably going outside to smoke a cigarette. I got in and now it's a little harder for me to dislike the tobacco industry quite as much as I do. Because it's Easter I can't get new keys now so I'll have to stay in tonight, but maybe I'll get something done that I otherwise wouldn't have.
I'll start with one of the more trivial aspects of my life - fantasy baseball. This morning I had an autopick draft (the site chose my team as I slept) in which I got a lot of the players that I wanted (good) yet my autopicker picked two backup shortstops and several backup outfielders before giving me any infielders that aren't shortstops (not so good). Hopefully someone will trade with me. I also considered myself lucky to have Curtis Granderson on my keeper league team and I autopicked him this morning, but I found out this afternoon that he just broke a bone in his hand. As far as broken bones go its considered to be fairly innocuous at least. Up and down, up and down.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my keys to my apartment fell off my keychain and I never got it back on. Last night, I kept my keys in the pocket of pants that are not conducive to keeping things in and they all fell out. I was at the Magnet Theater at the time and everyone there was very nice about helping me to look for them and we found the key that had fallen off of my chain. That was the key that opens my apartment door, which I would have had no way of getting to my bed without. We did not find the keys that were still on the chain, which was somewhat worrisome considering my upcoming after 2AM morning before Easter sunday arrival. I got to my apartment house and all the lights that I could see were dark. It could've been a long, cold, night. And within a minute I see someone in the hallway probably going outside to smoke a cigarette. I got in and now it's a little harder for me to dislike the tobacco industry quite as much as I do. Because it's Easter I can't get new keys now so I'll have to stay in tonight, but maybe I'll get something done that I otherwise wouldn't have.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Apparently I'm a Warrior
The person preaching in the subway station said so. Not to me in particular, but to everyone who woke up in the morning and brushed their teeth and washed themselves and went to work. This happened at one in the afternoon, so the amount of warriors passing the preacher may not have been as numerous as it would have been between eight and nine, but I for one was awake before noon and relatively clean and heading to work to fight the good fight of paying for part of my rent once the paychecks are finally processed some time in the future. Hopefully next week before rent is due. If it doesn't, and I was a different sort of person , I would have to resort to warlike activities to pay the landlord.
Robbery is a warlike activity. The main difference that in one case the decision is made by people with legal authority within the political structure that they inhabit and one is not. And one is done on a much greater scale than the other. The purpose of war is usually to take something from one group of people so that someone else, usually the taker, can have it. The character of Robin Hood may have had good intentions, but he was still a robber. If Sherwood Forest was a country, then Little John would have been a war hero. War is government-sanctioned robbery in which the intended victim fights back, and if I intended to make someone a victim that person would fights back and win because I'm not that kind of warrior. A career blue common criminal is a warrior because they ignore risks on a regular basis to do what they think they should be doing. Is being a warrior necessarily a good thing?
Last night I played a game of poker on facebook. I came in fourth and lost 5000 points which has a monetary worth of nothing, but that's not why I'm mentioning it. There were several people of Arab descent living in Western countries playing in the game, and two of them were siblings. Brother and sister. One of the other players made a relatively innocuous comment about the sister's facebook picture, and the brother got mad about it. Really mad. And the original commenter certainly could have used more tact, but the dialogue got disturbingly violent. There were threats (probably, hopefully empty) of finding the person who made the comment about the sister and blowing up his family all over some comments that were deemed offensive. Because that's what warriors do. Not make threats, but act on them.
I think the world could use a lot less warrying and a little more worrying, but it shouldn't be dominated by either.
Robbery is a warlike activity. The main difference that in one case the decision is made by people with legal authority within the political structure that they inhabit and one is not. And one is done on a much greater scale than the other. The purpose of war is usually to take something from one group of people so that someone else, usually the taker, can have it. The character of Robin Hood may have had good intentions, but he was still a robber. If Sherwood Forest was a country, then Little John would have been a war hero. War is government-sanctioned robbery in which the intended victim fights back, and if I intended to make someone a victim that person would fights back and win because I'm not that kind of warrior. A career blue common criminal is a warrior because they ignore risks on a regular basis to do what they think they should be doing. Is being a warrior necessarily a good thing?
Last night I played a game of poker on facebook. I came in fourth and lost 5000 points which has a monetary worth of nothing, but that's not why I'm mentioning it. There were several people of Arab descent living in Western countries playing in the game, and two of them were siblings. Brother and sister. One of the other players made a relatively innocuous comment about the sister's facebook picture, and the brother got mad about it. Really mad. And the original commenter certainly could have used more tact, but the dialogue got disturbingly violent. There were threats (probably, hopefully empty) of finding the person who made the comment about the sister and blowing up his family all over some comments that were deemed offensive. Because that's what warriors do. Not make threats, but act on them.
I think the world could use a lot less warrying and a little more worrying, but it shouldn't be dominated by either.
Friday, March 14, 2008
My Fantasy baseball Season starts tomorrow
Opening day may be a couple of weeks away, but for me the real start of baseball season isn't that or the start of spring training but my first fantasy baseball draft. Maybe that means I care more about stats than results and am vicariously selfish, but there are worse things to be like a simultaneous Yankees/Red Sox fan which isn't a mere myth. Identities shall remain secret for safety purposes.
I side-tracked myself almost immediately, but anyone reading this might be able to deduce from this posts' title that my first fantasy baseball draft takes place tomorrow. This will be my second year in this specific league and I'd like to improve upon last season's 10th place finish. To do so, the first step is a smart draft. This one will be an auction draft conducted through instant messenger so I need to not overspend on mediocre players as well as not shying away from the occasional high-priced superstar but not paying for too many marquee players. It's tough and I wasn't very good at it last year but I should be somewhat better this year. There is no guarantee that I will be, but I should be.
One advantage that I have over last year is that I get to keep some players that I had last year for last year's price although they'd probably cost more this year. I'm keeping Curtis Granderson and Yovani Gallardo, which I am still very happy about keeping, but I'm not sure if Ryan Zimmermann was the best third choice. But he may have been and I'm stuck with him now unless I make a trade. The good thing about the keepers I chose are that they are all very cheap so I should have plenty of money going into the draft to use on available superstars.
Last year was a bit of a wake up call considering I had dominated all of my fantasy baseball leagues before then. This is a very strong league and dominance won't be happening this year, but I'm hoping for a solid performance. How I did won't be completely clear until October, but I'll have some idea by tomorrow evening when the long drafting session ends.
I side-tracked myself almost immediately, but anyone reading this might be able to deduce from this posts' title that my first fantasy baseball draft takes place tomorrow. This will be my second year in this specific league and I'd like to improve upon last season's 10th place finish. To do so, the first step is a smart draft. This one will be an auction draft conducted through instant messenger so I need to not overspend on mediocre players as well as not shying away from the occasional high-priced superstar but not paying for too many marquee players. It's tough and I wasn't very good at it last year but I should be somewhat better this year. There is no guarantee that I will be, but I should be.
One advantage that I have over last year is that I get to keep some players that I had last year for last year's price although they'd probably cost more this year. I'm keeping Curtis Granderson and Yovani Gallardo, which I am still very happy about keeping, but I'm not sure if Ryan Zimmermann was the best third choice. But he may have been and I'm stuck with him now unless I make a trade. The good thing about the keepers I chose are that they are all very cheap so I should have plenty of money going into the draft to use on available superstars.
Last year was a bit of a wake up call considering I had dominated all of my fantasy baseball leagues before then. This is a very strong league and dominance won't be happening this year, but I'm hoping for a solid performance. How I did won't be completely clear until October, but I'll have some idea by tomorrow evening when the long drafting session ends.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Got my own domain
This is my first post in this blog without the blogspot in the address, which cost me a small sum of money but I think that it will be worth it. I wanted to write something meaningful but that actually happening is unlikely because unforseen (although not totally surprising) events that transpired last night resulted in me not being completely awake right now at three in the afternoon.
Last night I spent eight minutes on stage, which was videotaped as were all of the "sets" over there. I expect to be asked soon if I want to make the video public, and I plan on doing so. I don't plan on watching it. I never like watching myself - the flaws are always so much more apparent than anything positive that happened. I forgot some words although with the subject of the song that I performed it's believable that that was intentional. I also apparently subconsciously swayed on stage according to a later performer who spent more time talking about me than about planned material, and I'd like not to do that anymore. Although consciously trying not to sway could make me look really awkward and uncomfortable.
I'm planning on seeing some improv shows tonight at the Magnet Theater where I'm taking classes. They have an improv open mic after the shows which I'm not sure if I'll do or not because of how tired I am. Such are the struggles of someone who refuses to use caffeine.
Last night I spent eight minutes on stage, which was videotaped as were all of the "sets" over there. I expect to be asked soon if I want to make the video public, and I plan on doing so. I don't plan on watching it. I never like watching myself - the flaws are always so much more apparent than anything positive that happened. I forgot some words although with the subject of the song that I performed it's believable that that was intentional. I also apparently subconsciously swayed on stage according to a later performer who spent more time talking about me than about planned material, and I'd like not to do that anymore. Although consciously trying not to sway could make me look really awkward and uncomfortable.
I'm planning on seeing some improv shows tonight at the Magnet Theater where I'm taking classes. They have an improv open mic after the shows which I'm not sure if I'll do or not because of how tired I am. Such are the struggles of someone who refuses to use caffeine.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Bam Bam Slamming Tonight
Tonight, I plan on finally doing something to get a video of myself performing that will be put online without having to pay significant money to do so. This will be possible through the Bam Bam Slam open mic at Nightingale Lounge, which seems to be the only open mic that makes internet clips of everyone who performs there presumably as long as the performer gives permission. But they don't charge, which is great and why I'm doing it. Sure the video will have Bam Bam Slam in the background, but I don't think that's any less legitimate than performing in front of a brick wall to people that the performers brought to stare at said wall and possibly be enertained if quality entertainment is provided.
The reason why the provide free video taping is to promote and increase participation in the competition that is the Bam Bam Slam. More details can be found at their website, www.bambamslam.com, but basically anyone who wants to enter the competition pays a little bit of money to compete in a round against five other videos. If somebody wins the six video match I think that they can enter another match without paying, and if your video wins six times without failing to win more than three times then you win a lot of money. Nobody has done that yet. No video has won more than two rounds. But it is still a new site and maybe eventually that will change. Maybe not. But it's still good to get a video clip online.
There is one thing that I don't understand about the Bam Bam Slam that I might ask about tonight. The winner of the round is determined by the votes of fellow competitors ranking videos from best to worst, so voting could easily be dishonest. Voting down stronger videos and voting up weaker videos would give someone a better chance of winning assuming most people are voting honestly. Is anything being done to discourage this? I hope so.
The reason why the provide free video taping is to promote and increase participation in the competition that is the Bam Bam Slam. More details can be found at their website, www.bambamslam.com, but basically anyone who wants to enter the competition pays a little bit of money to compete in a round against five other videos. If somebody wins the six video match I think that they can enter another match without paying, and if your video wins six times without failing to win more than three times then you win a lot of money. Nobody has done that yet. No video has won more than two rounds. But it is still a new site and maybe eventually that will change. Maybe not. But it's still good to get a video clip online.
There is one thing that I don't understand about the Bam Bam Slam that I might ask about tonight. The winner of the round is determined by the votes of fellow competitors ranking videos from best to worst, so voting could easily be dishonest. Voting down stronger videos and voting up weaker videos would give someone a better chance of winning assuming most people are voting honestly. Is anything being done to discourage this? I hope so.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Ashrita Furman: Greatest Athlete Ever?
If a reputable organization created a list of the top hundred currently active athletes, it would probably be dominated by stars of the NBA and NFL. Some baseball players would get on, probably even less hockey players, and at least one or two soccer players depending on whether the poll was conducted in the USA or not. There would also be some prominent Olympic athletes, a boxer or two, possibly even a pro wrestler, and the elite of sedentary sports such as Tiger Woods and Kobayashi and maybe even a poker player. But arguably the greatest athlete in recorded history probably wouldn't get any consideration.
Those considered to be the best athletes are generally the most solid performers competing against other great athletes with a sizable audience watching. Ashrita Furman doesn't display his athletic prowess in front of large audiences, which is probably because although what he does is extremely impressive it would probably make very boring television as well and watching him live probably isn't worth the travel by plane and foot necessary to do so. As for competing against other great athletes, the previous holders of records broken by Ashrita Furman were probably in amazing physical condition, but it is much harder to appreciate a competition in which the two competitors aren't anywhere near each other and most likely never have been. Also, he seems to have been too busy lately breaking records to spend time publicizing his accomplishments so most people don't know about them. But they should.
I knew about Ashrita Furman, at least in the back of my head, ever since I read about him in the Guinness Book of World Records and was surprised would consciously try to set records to that extent which at the time was slightly less than a dozen. Then I was checking something in Wikipedia which led to checking something else and before I knew it I was at his home page in awe of the record setting tear that Mr. Furman has been on lately. About 50 in the past two years. Some are fairly ridiculous things that he can do better than anyone else who officially tried, but others are feats of endurance that make Lance Armstrong seem almost human.
What he's done seems worthy of a Chuck Norris-esque cult of personality, but his achievements would be hard to exaggerate when the truth is so mind-bogglingly impressive. Most people can't run a mile in less than eight minutes. Most people can't juggle. He did both at the same time. He also ran fifty miles while juggling (joggling) in less than nine hours. He ran a mile with an empty milk bottle on his head in under eight minutes, and I don't know if I could run a mile in that time with an empty milk bottle in my hand if I drank the contents of the bottle first. Maybe I'll try it someday. As for the records that he holds, I don't see any of them as being in reach no matter how much I train. He pushed a two ton van for a mile in about 20 minutes - I can't push a two ton van. The list goes on and on and on, and you can find it at www.ashrita.com . You may never look at pencils the same way again.
Those considered to be the best athletes are generally the most solid performers competing against other great athletes with a sizable audience watching. Ashrita Furman doesn't display his athletic prowess in front of large audiences, which is probably because although what he does is extremely impressive it would probably make very boring television as well and watching him live probably isn't worth the travel by plane and foot necessary to do so. As for competing against other great athletes, the previous holders of records broken by Ashrita Furman were probably in amazing physical condition, but it is much harder to appreciate a competition in which the two competitors aren't anywhere near each other and most likely never have been. Also, he seems to have been too busy lately breaking records to spend time publicizing his accomplishments so most people don't know about them. But they should.
I knew about Ashrita Furman, at least in the back of my head, ever since I read about him in the Guinness Book of World Records and was surprised would consciously try to set records to that extent which at the time was slightly less than a dozen. Then I was checking something in Wikipedia which led to checking something else and before I knew it I was at his home page in awe of the record setting tear that Mr. Furman has been on lately. About 50 in the past two years. Some are fairly ridiculous things that he can do better than anyone else who officially tried, but others are feats of endurance that make Lance Armstrong seem almost human.
What he's done seems worthy of a Chuck Norris-esque cult of personality, but his achievements would be hard to exaggerate when the truth is so mind-bogglingly impressive. Most people can't run a mile in less than eight minutes. Most people can't juggle. He did both at the same time. He also ran fifty miles while juggling (joggling) in less than nine hours. He ran a mile with an empty milk bottle on his head in under eight minutes, and I don't know if I could run a mile in that time with an empty milk bottle in my hand if I drank the contents of the bottle first. Maybe I'll try it someday. As for the records that he holds, I don't see any of them as being in reach no matter how much I train. He pushed a two ton van for a mile in about 20 minutes - I can't push a two ton van. The list goes on and on and on, and you can find it at www.ashrita.com . You may never look at pencils the same way again.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
I played basketball with an ex-convict last week
Not the tax evading sort of ex-con, but someone who went to jail for a violent crime. According to what I overheard, it was robbery and assault. Probably beat someone up and took their money. At ten, if anything you're not allowed in school for a few days. At twenty, you're not allowed in a place that isn't jail for probably more than a few days I'm not sure how long I have better things to do than try to memorize the penal system. And then they are, to the horror of people who tend to vote Republican, allowed back on the streets. But I wasn't scared. I'm afraid of driving on mountains and to a lesser extent the dark, but not of convicted criminals who don't look or act (according to a reasonable person) like they're about to kill somebody. We were both at the courts for the same reason, and that reason was to play basketball.
The first game I played was not with a convicted criminal. Or maybe he was and he just didn't tell anyone within earshot. But if playing terrible basketball is a crime, then I caught him in the act. I won the game by ten points - it was to eleven - and I didn't shoot very well or use a lot of effort. Sitting, watching, and mocking my opponent for being terrible was the subject of my first paragraph. He had next.
If a casual observer looked at the two of us and assumed that my new 1 on 1 opponent was at least a decent athlete, which he was, then the observer would have probably concluded that this game would be as lopsided as the last one but I wouldn't win. I'm about six inches shorter and at least 100 pounds lighter. He is a very good ball handler for his size and whenever he decided to post me up near the basket there was nothing that I could do. But he didn't decide to do that every time, and he didn't play much defense. I made a bunch of three point shots and managed to be the first to eleven points. It wasn't over.
When nothing else is going on, I won't refuse an offer to continue a game. So we kept going. And my shots didn't keep going in quite as much and he took less free throws and dunked more. And 21 points came for him but not for me, and I was willing to concede defeat but after a little bit he offered to keep going. To 31. I accepted the offer and started shooting really well. Well enough to overcome defense from someone who could reach almost as high as I could jump and score 31 points before he did. Which resulted in an immediate request to keep going. Which we did. And my shooting touch cooled off and he finally started making some outside shots and I was way behind by the time he scored his 41st point. At that point I was exhausted and shook hands on a game well played. I lost in the end, but didn't feel defeated at all.
The first game I played was not with a convicted criminal. Or maybe he was and he just didn't tell anyone within earshot. But if playing terrible basketball is a crime, then I caught him in the act. I won the game by ten points - it was to eleven - and I didn't shoot very well or use a lot of effort. Sitting, watching, and mocking my opponent for being terrible was the subject of my first paragraph. He had next.
If a casual observer looked at the two of us and assumed that my new 1 on 1 opponent was at least a decent athlete, which he was, then the observer would have probably concluded that this game would be as lopsided as the last one but I wouldn't win. I'm about six inches shorter and at least 100 pounds lighter. He is a very good ball handler for his size and whenever he decided to post me up near the basket there was nothing that I could do. But he didn't decide to do that every time, and he didn't play much defense. I made a bunch of three point shots and managed to be the first to eleven points. It wasn't over.
When nothing else is going on, I won't refuse an offer to continue a game. So we kept going. And my shots didn't keep going in quite as much and he took less free throws and dunked more. And 21 points came for him but not for me, and I was willing to concede defeat but after a little bit he offered to keep going. To 31. I accepted the offer and started shooting really well. Well enough to overcome defense from someone who could reach almost as high as I could jump and score 31 points before he did. Which resulted in an immediate request to keep going. Which we did. And my shooting touch cooled off and he finally started making some outside shots and I was way behind by the time he scored his 41st point. At that point I was exhausted and shook hands on a game well played. I lost in the end, but didn't feel defeated at all.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Why is it so hard to find a laundry bag?
This is not a sponsored post. At the time I am writing this I don't have any advertising whatsoever on this blog so until I change that I won't even get Google Ads about laundry bags showing up on this blog. I just need a laundry bag and have been unable to find one in any of the pharmacies that I searched while walking/running around Queens a couple of weeks ago. Walgreens has laundry bags according to their website but the particular one near my house was small enough that if I feared small places I might have had to buy claustrophobia drugs if such drugs exist but if they do that store probably didn't have those either.
What I have been carrying my laundry around in these days doesn't really qualify as a bag. It's not really qualified to carry anything in it either, and when it was functional it was more of a portable hamper than a bag. Now the flexible metal that held it together has broken and a part of it fell off and got in the way of the top of my foot somehow this morning which luckily didn't cause much bleeding and hopefully won't cause an infection. I'll probably post more on my health insurance situation in a different post, but right now I'm talking about laundry receptacles and wondering where I might find one.
I think I might find one at the department store near my apartment with a Spanglish name. I can speak spanglish if I have to and buying something there probably won't require speaking anyway. There is a 99 cent and up store that I haven't looked in either which may be a good idea. I'm not sure why I didn't try these places a couple of weeks ago as I spent over an hour in the cold or why I hadn't looked in them at some other time. Maybe I just needed a cut on the top of my foot as a wake up call.
What I have been carrying my laundry around in these days doesn't really qualify as a bag. It's not really qualified to carry anything in it either, and when it was functional it was more of a portable hamper than a bag. Now the flexible metal that held it together has broken and a part of it fell off and got in the way of the top of my foot somehow this morning which luckily didn't cause much bleeding and hopefully won't cause an infection. I'll probably post more on my health insurance situation in a different post, but right now I'm talking about laundry receptacles and wondering where I might find one.
I think I might find one at the department store near my apartment with a Spanglish name. I can speak spanglish if I have to and buying something there probably won't require speaking anyway. There is a 99 cent and up store that I haven't looked in either which may be a good idea. I'm not sure why I didn't try these places a couple of weeks ago as I spent over an hour in the cold or why I hadn't looked in them at some other time. Maybe I just needed a cut on the top of my foot as a wake up call.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)