Jacob’s Blog

Immediately, it doesn’t seem bad to aspire and fulfill dreams. But when does that aspiration come at the expense of dealing with reality?

I could guarantee you a cookie now. Would you take it if there might be the possibility of someday accepting, instead, a delicious slice of cheesecake?

A dream dictionary claims the following about dreaming about a platypus:

To see a platypus in your dream, suggests your tendency to wallow and dwell on your emotions. It may also suggest that your repressed thoughts and unconscious material are slowly coming to the surface and making their presence known. Alternatively, it is indicative of shyness and reservation, especially in social situations.

It didn’t specifically mention the meaning of dreaming of exactly two platypi.

Of all the lies that could be told, the worst are the ones that are not spoken. They occur when we are dishonest with ourselves.

It bothers me sometimes when I see someone who is a completely different person depending on who they are around. Or someone who’s loyalties are always placed with the people present, but never with the friends distant. Sometimes we call these people two-faced–those who speak out of both sides of their mouths, or those who flip-flop allegiances.

You might think that these people lie to others. In cases of deliberate deception, this may be true. However, I think the case is more often that they are simply not honest with themselves.

To be honest with yourself, you have to know who you are, what your fundamentals are, and what you believe to be true. Conviction is a sure quality of those who are honest with themselves. Honest men and women confront their problems and sticky situations straight on, because they know that they will be true to self whatever the result is. Those who hide from their problems, only do so because they betray their own courage and natural ability to confront their fears.

Too many times we hide behind the excuse of self-discover. I do not claim that any man can know himself completely, because we constant evolve and grow such that our knowledge of our full selves can never be fully acquired. Rather, I think we can all obtain a satisfactory idea about who we are now, and what we believe now, without having to color in the whole picture of our future. Those who cannot invent even the simplest self-mission statement will always be bound by laziness to be someone they aren’t.

Tonight I watched the 2002 film, About a Boy. One of the themes of the movie deals with the main character’s search for meaning in his life as he admits that he really does nothing in life.

The theme made me think some more about the different things that motivate us in life. In particular, the movie illustrated some of the meaning that comes through service and love to others and family.

Sometimes I’m not sure how much of that meaning I am currently finding. Sometimes its hard being single when you see all your friends going off and getting married. I hate to admit it, but sometimes I even convince myself to have little crushes, because, as I think I’m figuring out, it gives me a little bit of hope of things that may come. To find the meaning and to find the hope, I think these things would help me cope.

Happy May thirteenth. I hope today means something in your life.

At my place of work I now have two 24-inch monitors side by side connected to my Xeon workstation. I have Windows running on one screen, and Kubuntu running in a VM on the other screen.

At times, I’m a little overwhelmed about what to do with all that screen space. I leave my laptop closed so I don’t blow my mind.

One thing I like about the weather in Fort Collins is that the actual current temperatures can actually be higher than the high for the day. Right now, for example, it is 55 degrees, even though Google only said the high was going to be 42.

Tomorrows predicted high is higher than todays predicted high, I wonder if that means that tomorrow will be warmer than it was today, which would be nice because I want to go hiking tomorrow.

On a New York Times blog, Stephen J. Dubner asks why people comment on blogs, although unfortunately, he didn’t provide any more insight over simply raising the questions.

It is a good topic, and I would love to know what causes people to leave a comment so I can facilitate more comments on my blog. I do know why I often don’t leave comments:

1. Login Required. I hate having to create an account and log in just so I can leave a three sentence comment. The effort is too great.
2. Nothing of value to add. While the post might have been great or insightful, I personally don’t have anything I could write that would add value to the topic, and I’m not going to spend time to sprawl garbage out on your post.
3. If I’m going to add discussion to your presented topic, I might as well write it on my own blog so I can maintain ownership of what I’ve written.

If you have any reasons why you do or don’t write comments, please feel free to leave a comment. No login required.

Additional thoughts added March 21: Apparently, users on ZDNet are discussing talkbacks, which is what they call comments over there. I’ve been reading more and more ZDNet posts because I’ve seen them come up in my Personalized News Google Desktop Gadget. Every once in a while I want to add a comment to either add value to the discussion or to challenge the writer. When I hit the register screen, I give up, mostly because it looks too big scary. More than once I’ve written a slightly longer comment not knowing that I needed to be registered until after I tried to submit it.

I don’t know that ZDNet should eliminate registration altogether or allow fully-anonymous comments, but I do think they should make it easier by:

1. Forcing authentication/registration before the comment form is shown
2. Simplifying their new user registration form
3. Allow alternate forms of authentication such as OpenID

I also have to admit to rarely reading other users’ comments. Although when I do make a comment somewhere, I like to read the replies to my comment.

Blockbuster does something similar to Netflix, where they will rent you DVD movies through the mail. I recently tried their 14 day trial period, and these are my suggestions to make the most of your trial:

• Sign up for the biggest plan you can get, because after all, this is a free trial. The risk in this though is if you don’t cancel in time, you get charged for the big plan. If you end up liking the service and wanting to continue, you can always switch to a smaller, less expensive plan. (Make sure you switch before your free trial ends)
• Don’t sign up for your trial late at night. Sign up really early in the morning. The idea is to try and get them to ship you your first set of DVD on the same day that you sign up for the trial. I signed up at 8:30am, and they didn’t ship until the next day. Maybe they never ship on the day you sign up, but if you signed up really early in the morning, you would have the best chances.
• Check the calendar, and make sure there are no holidays. If there is a holiday in the middle of your trial, you might not be able to fit a whole extra shipment into your trial.
• Return your DVDs the day after you get them. This might cause a lot of movie watching when you get your whole shipment, but it is a way to maximize the number of free rentals. You could also get creative of other ways to use your rentals without actually spending the immediate time to watch them.
• Returning DVDs directly to the post office as soon as possible will help make sure that they get in the earliest shipment back. If you put them in your regular mailbox, your mail delivery person gets to drive around with them all day.
• Signup for your trial early Wednesday or Thursday mornings. I think this allows you the best weekend watching.
• Cancel your subscription on the 14th day. If you signed up on a Wednesday, make sure you cancel it by Tuesday. When they say 14 trial days, they mean calendar days and not full (24 hour) days. If you signed up Tuesday night, you don’t have until Tuesday night two weeks later to cancel, because they will charge your card Tuesday morning, because it was the 15th day of your trial.
• If you returned DVDs the business a day or two before the end of your trail, wait until the evening before canceling, to give them every opportunity to send you more DVDs just before you cancel.
• Manage your queue just right so that your favorite DVD are the last ones to arrive during your trial. This is because they allow you quite a bit of time to return the DVD that they’ve already sent you. For me, they gave me over a month to return the movies they sent me right before I canceled. If you favorite movies are the last to arrive during your trial, then you can watch them over and over.

And remember, if your Blockbuster free trial wasn’t enough for you, you can get a Netflix free trial as well. Or do some Google searching, and you may be able to find even more services like this providing free trials.

I think the game of monopoly got it wrong. When there are bank errors in your favor, if you want to be ethical and try and correct the error, you rarely are left benefitted.

I found this in a magazine and I really liked it:

Remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

–Henry Ford

I love a lot of people. I love my friends, I love my family. I love my roommates, and I love many of my classmates.

The problem is, I can’t say so. The word love is so tightly tied to romantic interest that it makes it difficult to use it in any other context.

Today I was thinking about a past situation of mine.  For a second I thought:

How could I have been so stupid!?

Then I started thinking about the situation, and I realized that I currently find myself in a very similar situation, making all the same mistakes.  Maybe now that I realize this, I can pull myself out of the depths of conundrums and cease making the same mistakes.

I had a lot of time to think today driving from Oregon to Utah. I found that I have a lot of questions about myself, and about life in general. Here are a few of them: Continue reading Like swarming bees, questions of life…

I’ll keep this short. I’m moving again. This time back to Utah. I really don’t like moving for many reasons. Packing and unpacking is such a chore. But more internally, I feel like every time I move, I leave a piece of myself behind.

Some of the feelings of a procrastinator are, “there is always time to do this tomorrow.” I think procrastinators especially hate moving because there are many things which cannot be done tomorrow, because tomorrow I won’t be here any more.

Other people hate moving just because they will miss what they’re leaving behind.

I have a long car ride ahead of me tomorrow, so I’ll have plenty of time to think about all of this. Maybe I will have further insights into the psychology of moving.

(Arriving in Provo hopefully around 7 or 8 on Friday)

Today I thought up a troubling question; troubling only because I have yet to find an answer.

Do people in pre-arranged marriages need to date? If you were in a pre-arranged marriage, do you date and get to know your arranged fiance?

On one hand, dating can be a stressful activity, and one that could be avoided completely in a pre-arranged marriage situation. Not only that, but eliminating dating could be financially beneficial.

On the other hand, dating can be a fun activity where the couple can get to know each other. Even in a pre-arranged marriage, learning about the other person in various situations, including pre-marital and dating situations, could prove to be helpful later when married. Not only that, but the beginning stages of marriage can be difficult time merging two lives into a companionship, and dating before marriage could alleviate the difficulties during that phase.

Fortunately, this question doesn’t really need to be answered.

• If we fail to plan, we plan to fail
• Preparation is key
• The hardest thing to know is how to use what we know
• Expect good from people
• We need to improve in our plan to improve