I’m rambling, and I’m well aware of it. Can you believe it’s been months, again, since I blogged about anything? Life is rolling right on along. I’ve been visiting all sorts of family and spending quite a bit of my spare time outside. Not to say that I have too much spare time…

Minnesota was gorgeous nearly the entire time that I was there. I bought one of those fancy state-park passes for a meager $25. The view from a 100-foot observation tower in one of the state parks was worth the price all on its own. My sister and I attempted to go canoeing at one of the state parks, but upon the realization that life-jackets were required inside any water vessel… we packed up the inflatable canoe and continued on about our day. (I wonder, if we were just swimming alongside of the canoe for a few miles down the river, would our chances of drowning go up? Because then we are not required to have life vests. Go figure.)

A piece of my past decided to make an appearance the other day, which was rather startling. It’s funny how we connect things in our minds. One little memory can cause an entire avalanche of flashbacks, reconsiderations, and reflections. Luckily, things went fairly smoothly this particular encounter. It is fun how you can never anticipate when something like that might happen.

On to other news… I’ve been reading Les Misérables for a good month now and am still only about half-way through. It is an absolutely fantastic read, and I highly recommend it to you. It positively grips the soul and then proceeds to force it to submit to an entire spectrum of emotions. The book is much less directly philosophical than most of the books I enjoy, but it still leaves plenty open for critical evaluation. If you do read it, just know that it’s slow to start and littered with painfully long asides. Have patience and read leisurely – it’s well worth it.

Last, but not least, on my list of basically meaningless banter topics – I’d like to tell you that I got a new highly-portable laptop. It’s the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4830T – and it is a truly fun little machine. I’m going to post a review of it soon over at my Computer Correct website, so keep an eye peeled.

Hopefully, this new domain will allow me to capture more traffic for “Andrew Anderson” – since, I’m sure, most of those searches are in fact for me . Anyway, we’ll see how it goes.

On a side note, I want to write a little bit about the companies involved in the transfer. Especially since I couldn’t find much information on one of them when I was trying to make sure that I wasn’t being duped. OfferBase.com was where I first expressed my interest in the domain name. It allowed me to do the bidding on the name, and communicate with the previous owner. For the actual money side of things I used Escrow.com – and that all went very smoothly. So, as far as I am concerned, both companies are reputable.

That’s about all that I have to write about at the moment, but I’ll try to come up with something more soon.

I got out of college, stuffed my philosophy degree in a box, moved out of my little apartment in Chicago, and hit the road with my uncle. Together we drove (actually, he drove and I rode along) all over the Midwest and some of the Southwest and Northwest. I got to see more country (and more freeway) in a short six months than most people see in a decade. I got to visit more casinos than most people visit in their a lifetime. It wasn’t always fun, and I can’t say that I anticipate missing casinos anytime soon, but it was nifty time nonetheless. There is something about living in a small camper for an extended period of time that makes you profoundly aware of everyday comforts such as well-equipped kitchens, full-sized water heaters, and plush couches. Most things in life begin to fall into place as luxuries rather than the necessities most people regard them as.

Over the course of those six months, I managed to obtain enough money to pay off my student loan debt… and am now completely debt free. It’s an awfully cozy feeling. Now, with breathing room about me, I am resolved to making a living on the internet. I have the domains, a reliable, basic server paid two years in advance, and a general direction in which I want to take things. All that I’ve got to do is make it happen.

Two weeks of the good life passed and my other uncle called. Two days later my two uncles and I were in Chicago. Me, back in Chicago. I haven’t been gone long enough to feel nostalgic about my return… or to mentally prepare myself for another bout with the nearly-intolerable weather here.

There’s really no telling how long I’ll stick around the midwest, but I’ll try to keep updating. At least mobile internet works well here.

Last Tuesday, moving my things went well – the thunder storms abated a bit and that was certainly a welcomed change.  The entire farm was unkempt and somehow a poor bird (actually two birds, but one was deceased) had wandered into the house. When I noticed it, I didn’t even take it to be real. It was eerily still and staring out the window. I grabbed it, brought it outside, and gave it some water. It was so weak it hardly tried to get away from me. That was basically the only noteworthy part of my move. Well, ok, the oats were really nice too, but I think they flooded the day after I left the farm.

Two days later, Thursday, the flight I was taking out of Chicago was originally scheduled to depart at 1930, but ended up being delayed over three hours. I was fretting that the unfortunate delay might be a sign of things to come. Really, things since then have been pretty good. I didn’t get the promised tour around Seattle, but it is still scheduled for the weeks to come. Instead, I was treated to a midnight Jack-In-The-Box hamburger and a half-day long drive from Washington to Idaho the next noon. The drive was peaceful – there are so many trees and mountains in Washington that one cannot help but feel calm.

Somewhere between Seattle, WA and Coeur D’Alene, ID – after the Washington mountains – the beautiful scenery abruptly becomes a desert. It’s strange just how sharp of a transition it is; luckily it just as quickly reverts to greenery.

So, for the next week (or possibly more), I’ll be around northern Idaho. If I see anything noteworthy I’ll make a point to blog. Maybe I’ll even take a few pictures worth sharing.

http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0910/arts_sciences/philosopher.shtml

it’s worth the time, in my opinion.

Specifically, I think that the Subject hits a few ideas right on the head. Most importantly, to me:

“Too often,” he declares, “the defenders of free markets forget that what we really want is free men.”

and, following close behind:

Rejecting the false dichotomy between thinking and doing …

I’ve got another six months of institutionalized education, and then it’s off to the “real world”. That fact has me thinking about what I want to do, where I want to go, what kind of a person I should struggle to be. (I’m convinced that in a capitalistic system “being” is a struggle.) A mode of thinking that’s always been useful for me before is to look at what isn’t or shouldn’t be – and those thoughts leave me rejecting the corporate rat race. Sure, the money is nice – but the time stolen is irreplaceable. The exploitation is insulting and the alienation nauseating. I’m with Marx on at least one idea, alienation is not good: I want to have a connection with what I make. And I do want to make things. Those things don’t necessarily have to be tangible, but they ought to be perceptible.

There’s something about being a cog that just upsets my very being. The quote on “free men” speaks to me loudly and clearly. It’s hard for me to believe that the idea could ever be received with dismissal. Which leaves me wondering if it ever is, or if the more pressing demands of life (hunger, shelter, etc.) simply push the more philosophical and principal-based ‘necessities’ clear out of the picture.

To what extent must rigorous thought, freedom, and “success” be opposed? Clearly, there are some of us out there who simply reject the existence of the opposition as an insurmountable obstacle, but why is that so rare? (Why does the story usually go like: pick two.)

Food for thought… (foreshadowing my future, albeit in an externally-inaccessible way.)

For whatever reason, you’re on a mission to be frugal. You can’t NOT buy food, so you head on over to your local discount grocer. You proceed to buy grits, powdered milk, cheap hotdogs and then you reach for the cheap bread…

Ah, but should you? Well, you inspect the little tag with the price and then you probably notice two things 1) the squishy white enriched bread is cheaper and 2) the price per ounce is closer than you might have thought – possibly even in favor of the more expensive loaf.

So, what do you do? What metric do you use? loaves or ounces? The cheaper loaf, or the loaf that costs less per ounce? It plagued me for a good ten minutes a few years ago, and then I decided to go with the cheaper loaf. My initial reasoning was actually based on the slice metric, ie. cost per slice. Those long, squishy, cheap loaves of bread have more slices than their more expensive counterparts. This trumped, in my mind, even the price per ounce benefit of a few competing loaves.

So I mozied on home – particularly pleased with myself for making the frugally-intelligent choice of price per slice. Then I made a sandwich while reviewing the receipt. I was a genius! …

And I was still hungry – so I made another sandwich. By then end of sandwich number two I felt terrible. No, I didn’t over-eat. I realized I had mad a mistake, my metric choice was flawed.

You see, the better bread generally has more fiber and is heavier per slice. You eat one sandwich made with the more expensive bread and you’re satisfied. It takes two with the cheap stuff. That means you’re actually eating double the slices per meal, not to mention the cost of the extra sandwich fillings. That cheap white bread costs your more money than you realize.

Lesson learned – the proper metric is price per sandwich-meal. I’ve been eating more expensive (per loaf) bread ever since – and that’s why.

(This doesn’t necessarily hold if you’re a chronic snacker, or making sandwiches for someone that normally wastes half of them regardless, ie small children.)

On to other news – the final year of school starts… today. I’ll be writing more. I’ve got plenty of plans for the next two years.

I’ll blog soon – and I have photos to post shortly, too.

Now, answering that question – as a college student, with an assigned GPA – I may be slightly biased. The best I can do is try not to be. I claim that the GPA is a practically useless number in almost every regard, and here is why:

Someone looking at only your GPA has no information about grade distribution. Perhaps you were a poor mathematician, but in attempt to be a well-rounded English major you took mathematics class anyway. Doing poorly in that subset of discretionary classes is not immediately obvious by looking at your GPA alone. And how important is it? It is ambiguous (at least to me) if you should be penalized for refusing to study as narrowly as a 4.0 English major. Even the “Major GPA” can be manipulated through lenient instructor selection or lower level courses.

Realizing that a transcript is often supplementary to any GPA, one can still make the case that too much relevant information is unavailable. What type of work the course involved, how assignments were weighted, grading trends of the professor. None of these are available to someone looking at a GPA, with or without a transcript. The roles that so many variables play in a student’s eventual GPA are condensed into a mostly information-less number. What is worse, it that this number is used to benchmark students. (It would likely a better benchmark of instructor or institutional trends.)

This has been a cause for concern for me since well before college. I knew many highly ranked (high GPA) students that were capable only of “regurgitation” – no original thought. They were poor problem solvers, but good test-takers. I am beginning to see that the issue does not vanish at the end of high school. As I look at the data across institutions, years, and majors – it seems painfully obvious to me that the GPA is not useful for comparing students. Yet it lingers, it stresses, it represents information it does not contain.

There needs to be an alternative for comparing student “progress”. I give the GPA a C-.

I don’t have too many interesting thoughts to share in this post, I’m basically writing to stave off the “wellness checks” and pass along a few tidbits about what I’ve been doing so that I’ll have some sort of record.

29-Jan-2009: I got two female dumbo rats for pets. Now, technically, this apartment building has a “no pet” policy, but I figured caged animals ought to be excluded. So I spent a ridiculous amount of money on a cage and supplies – and have been trying to get used to Ruby and Kali ever since. I may post pictures sometime in the future.

?-Feb-2009: I finally made the decision to switch my major to Philosophy. Economics and I simply do not agree. It is a shame really, because I only had a few more classes to take for the major… but I’m only doing this undergrad thing once – so I may as well not waste time pursuing something I detest.

Also in February, I took advantage of a 25% off promotion and bought a camera from Japan – the Canon SX1. I’m going to get rid of my old Nikon DSLR to help pay for the new camera… with warm weather and a new camera on the way I may soon start posting some pictures of Chicago.

So, those are the highlights. If you’re still awake and reading this… you may be as bored as I am. Exams approach, which means my last bought with ECON looms. I’ll be reading, until next time.

Where to next?
How was Morocco?
Can I help you find yourself?
How should I organize these sites?
Would three weeks canoing on a Canadian river make me sore?
How many woman shall I avoid?
Will I continue painting and drawing?
Won’t I spend more time with 3D animation techniques?
To plant okra, or not?
Cut back on travel, finally?
Finish some of those books I started writing?
Get a rat?
How much money is the “perfect” woman worth, anyway?
What else will I find interesting? dull?
How much money can I fit in my envelopes?
How many hours will I sleep?

Not a very extensive list, but nice to have as a very general overview for some time down the road. Laugh with me – at the unknown.

I wavered back and forth, indeed enrolling in a few computer science courses over the past few years – and always being sorry I did. As I suspected, the regiment destroyed my internal desire to explore. No more computer science “classes” for me.

I set out to study something that I had no desire to ever pursue. I took advantage of the university’s reputation and picked economics as my major. Something I already disliked – and should I ever be in the very undesirable situation of having to employ my degree, I supposed a degree in economics might provide semi-lucrative.

That thought process – however skewed – had a very nice side-effect. Not only did it leave my love for technology mostly untarnished – it has just recently revealed to me something I likely would have never known otherwise, I am a very poor and obviously uninterested economist.

Consistently, those courses have yielded for me: poor grades, poor attendance, and occasionally even poor spirits. If I were ever to have to employ an economics degree in the future, I can most confidently say – I would starve first.

And so, perhaps the often overlooked, yet undeniably important skill, of folding must come into play. I must fold my plan of pursuing a degree in economics, before I spend another lackluster day working towards a piece of paper with the ability to seal me into a life I would surely not enjoy. I must act while I still have options on my side.

So, I have finally said it. I should have done that yesterday.

Now, to pick some other area of investigation. (because they do the mandate some “cohesive” program of study.)

Math, undeniably powerful and revealing – goes against my natural intuition at every chance it gets. Surely not making it impossible or even uninteresting for me to explore, my exploration is just painfully slow. Having already taken a wide offering of mathematics courses providing me a fairly solid mathematical foundation, I think it better to leave further investigations for independent study. Also, I am in want of a break from numbers for a while.

So, what have I left but humanities and some social sciences at this small university? And what good is a degree in philosophy (a subject I think I would very much enjoy), if I ever need to employ a degree? Would I be content spending a fifth year at this institution under any circumstances? Those are the questions I face tomorrow…

Which also means that over the next few days I’ll be doing nothing but… economics. Horrible.

So, perhaps I’ll be posting plenty, to distract myself from my uninteresting alternative.

I have posted some of my artwork, with more on the way soon. You can look at it here.

I’ve also redone my homepage, so check that out too.

I’ll try and write later. Adios.

That twenty-four hour creative stretch came at a cost. I now have some terribly uninteresting computer science homework due this last Tuesday at 5PM. So, yes, its late already. Which makes completeing it even more difficult.

Other news: there is none. Midterms next week. Blogging might slip a little.

[By the way, I have updated the poetry commenting system. It is operational again.]

So, maybe you saw it coming. I made a trip to a local casino with my uncle. I didn’t gamble, but I did walk out a winner. And it still made me sorta sick.

For one, it smells terrible. Smoke fills the air – it is almost unbearable, but you don’t have much time to think about it. The cacophony created by the machines is terribly distracting, and the curves on the floor are something between hypnotic and dizzying.

What I did have time to dwell on were the people: I didn’t see one person that looked like they were having a good time. I saw plenty of people starring impatiently at their partners. I saw people hitting machines and cursing. I saw others slamming beverages and chain-smoking. I rarely saw a smile, and when I did – it was fleeting.

I’m not quite sure where the appeal comes from; I personally saw nothing exciting about risking money with a constantly negative expected return.  Which is precisely what most people have when they sit down in front of some machine in a casino.

So, how did I walk out a winner? Well, either people were terribly careless in the midst of so much action, or they were consistently getting tired of losing and left the machines in a hurry. Everywhere, there were machines with credits on them. Waiting to be cashed out. So, I took advantage of the opportunity.

I cashed out more than a handful of credits on all denominations of machines. I took one free spin – and decided it was more fun going with the guaranteed win.

So, what’s with the title? Well, I read a very interesting article that I’d like to share:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/162792/page/1

It’s about the pervasiveness of sex in culture today, which you are probably well aware of (if you’re not, the article kind of falls apart). I enjoyed it, because it used some very nice examples to reinforce its point…

While I primarily agree that the stereotypical portrayal of sexual relations are foul things, I got to wondering what Freud might think. Psychologist, the author of the article, even me – think that the pervasive sexual images and ideas must not be GOOD for the youth. But then, how did they get to be so prevalent in the first place, why are consumers drawn to them — where does the appeal come from, if they’re so bad?

As someone who finds the vast majority of sex a blatant waste of time – I’m not that well equiped to postulate on our cuture’s behalf. So, I’m asking for YOUR thoughts – don’t be basheful, have you seen the world we’re living in?

It’s true! I’ve changed the look of things here. I’ve gone and taken the easy way out until I get around to coding myself. Save your ooooooo-s and ahhhhhhh-s for whoever wrote this theme. It wasn’t me.

But, man, does it make things look different. Excuse me now, while I stare at the layout a while…

***

On to other news: I have a pile of homework, almost no motivation, and hardly anything to eat. I’m going to see about remedying those in reverse order. (Albeit I usually get stuck on number two.)

I may or may not be on later to discuss the philosophical importance of distance when choosing a mate…

… or some other equally absurd topic.

Unfortunately (IMHO), change is almost debilitating to some. Lack of control, uncertainty about the future, a reluctance to surrender the past – for whatever reason some people have a terrible time carrying on when everything changes. They walk backwards into the future, with visible reluctance at every step. It is nearly as painful to watch as it is to perform.

The last few days have startled me into a realization that I don’t really know what’s coming next – for myself. Much less for  anyone else. And I’m fine with that. In all honesty, I’m intrigued by it.

I set out with a point, but I’ll leave this open-ended. It’s more interesting that way.

I’d also recommend doing some in depth research when registering for a computer science class, because you have about a 50:50 shot of inadvertently being in ANOTHER barely comprehensible MATH class. You probably ought not to take an onslaught of economics classes when you do not really care for the subject (hoping it will get better).

Finally, do not post your terrible artwork on the internet for others to see. Leave that to me… More on the way, since I am subject to a mandatory art class.

P.S.
Something nonacademic, that will potentially save you thousands of $$$: do not play online poker without having access to hundreds of thousands of past hands. It makes those with just such an edge feel guilty – and you will lose… terribly.

It is not often that a memory of the past entreats my peaceful mind to act on some fanciful ideas it had wanted for the future. But when the past makes such a chaotic request – how possibly can I silence it? Waltzing in to my stable life – demanding answers for a self I no longer know. Criticizing its own procrastination — if only its demands had come years sooner. Perhaps, perhaps then, it would have been simpler.

And how long can you argue with the side of you that knows no time or space – much less, reason? If you submit, you must look like a fool. If you refuse – a terrible aura of incompletion hangs about your consciousness – indefinitely. You are absolutely bound to take action. Either act invites depression. No one immediately wins, but possibly for some distant part of you that is wanting hope replenished.

You give in to – someone – yourself. You dig up the past and follow transparent, frayed, threads to the present. Where all you can find is disheartening… and incomplete… still largely unknown. With such tattered information – and morale – you attempt to do what you ought to have done so very long ago… you extend yourself to someone else. Wait for acceptance, or rejection…the mail, the phone…

Your efforts may never have been received – even if they were. Years of distance, fear, and faint memories muffle your message into something formal, removed, forced – for the slight chance it is even momentarily entertained. It is almost destined to failure. It barely knows itself what it was trying to convey.

You wonder when the lingering memories will vanish, you almost hope they won’t. Perhaps they are giving you something to daydream about – to wonder about. And how often the possibilities plague you – leaving only a slight smile – as you can constantly create some imaginary life that might have been.

As you may know (by reading some other posts on this blog), I’m not impressed by fancy signs or “glad” service… which is good for Hyde Park Produce (HPP) because they don’t really have either. What they do have, and what I was impressed with, is a nice selection and exceptionally affordable products.

I walked into their tiny building, and the place felt packed. I was elbow-to-elbow with the other fifteen customers. Yet, the atmosphere wasn’t hectic. It was pleasant. Smiles, fresh smells, vibrant colors – these lined the narrow walkways. I had to walk through the entire store three times before deciding what I “needed” – for such a quaint space, the selection is respectable.

I decided just to grab a few necessities – 10lbs of potatoes, 2lbs of carrots, 3lbs of onions, 3 bell peppers, 1lb of celery, and some huge tortillas. The registers (two of them) are somewhat antiquated, but the cashiers seemed genuinely enthusiastic. Unfortunately, or not, my total didn’t meet the $8.00 minimum for using a credit card! I quickly grabbed another 10lbs of potatoes and three more bell peppers. My total was still under $9.00. I was impressed… shocked even – compared to the Co-Op prices I was used to, HPP is dirt cheap.

I’ll be going there again. I like the service, am excited to try some of their less mainstream offerings, and can’t get over their prices! (Nothing I purchased was marked as on “sale” or “special”… so I’m assuming these prices are standard.) They’ll be moving to a bigger building shortly, only a block away – so I’m interested to see if this affects atmosphere, price, or service in any way. I’ll update shortly.

If you’re looking for some place to get produce as the Co-Op shuts down and Treasure Island Foods moves in, I highly recommend Hyde Park Produce. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised if you’ve been buying your produce from a larger grocery store.

Well, anyway… 2008 sucks. Ok, not horribly, and not all of 2008. Only Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays… and not all of each day; sometime between 11:30 and 12:20. Physics – electricity and magnetism – it sucks. I suppose it just happens to occupy some space in 2008. I’ll get over it. I’m supposed to like this stuff! Its just something about computing electric fields by hand that really detracts from the interesting concepts.

So, physics aside, life is alright. The grocery store two blocks from me closed. A new one will be there sometime in the latter part of February. Thankfully, I had already stocked up on canned vegetables, dried beans, and rice. No exceptional flavors coming out of my kitchen for a while… ingredients unavailable.

I’m only taking three classes again this quarter. I tried a few art classes for a fourth, but the first was too boring and the second too disorderly. Something about hands-on-artsy-people that I find disconcerting. I prefer structure, or at the very least, my own disorder. I’m sure my three classes will keep me quite busy, besides.

After trying to get Ubuntu 7.10 (linux) on my new quad-core desktop… I was disappointed. It seems something about a j-micron controller, or non ACHI SATA hard drives  is giving the kernel issues. Luckily… virtualization is alright! A few hiccups and I had Ubuntu running in parallel with Vista on the same machine… at the same time. Not exactly preferential, but acceptable until I have much more time to tinker.

Firefox 3 beta 2 looks promising. I’m sick of writing now.

I’ll eventually update the theme of this blog to look like everything else on this website of mine. Maybe then I’ll have more reoccurring motivation to blog about life.