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Monthly Archives: May 2006

May 25, 2006 · 8:04 pm

Cleaning House

Well, those of you who read yesterday’s post may have noticed a blurb about coins from places not named the United States. I ignored them yesterday but today finds me back probing my inventory. All the numismatic advice columns say that one should focus one’s collection. If you try to collect EVERYTHING you’ll just end up with a mess and I have to say that they’re fundamentally correct on that one. So today I’m officially declaring the previous silly goal: “Type set for the world” (Note: This means one coin of each particular design from each country on the planet) officially at an end. Instead, I declare that I shall henceforth focus my efforts on… well, some poorly defined subset of the entire planet. To do that, however, I have to cull out certain items from the old collection that don’t fall into the new area of focus. It’s quite a list. Anyone wanting to trade anything they happen to have laying about the house for some real life money from around the world drop me a line.

Gettin’ rid of:






May 24, 2006 · 7:49 pm

The Path Less Traveled

I’m so torn. As I sit here, I’m pulled between five different routes I could take to spend the next three hours until bedtime. Let’s go over them, shall we?

The first is apparently the one that’s winning at this exact instant. For some reason, I feel compelled to write things. Not great works of art necessarily and not long winding diatribes about this, that or the other thing. Just to write. There are words which, finding no outlet into the ears of real humans, must find their way out into the blogosphere in a more textual form. Many times they amount to inane babbling but nonetheless they must make their way to someone… somewhere. So here they are.

Number two has been a real perpetual loser as of late. Yes, it’s that massive queue of literary classics waiting on my shelf to be read. Considering that I quickly lose the contents of most of these mighty tomes a month after I’ve read them I sometimes wonder why exactly it is that I bother.

The third… well, the third has been nagging at me for a while. I have 20 pounds of miscellaneous, unsorted foreign coinage from around the planet that is simply begging to be put to rights somehow. For some reason though, on a night like tonight I can’t find it in myself to break out the Mylar flips and stapler to make any progress whatsoever. In fact, most nights I can’t explain why I have 20 pounds of foreign coins in the first place.

And number four… oh, ho, the mighty number four! This nasty little beast harkens back to that very first day in the local antique (read that: junk) shop back in my home town of Frankfort, Indiana. There I was, a wee lad of only 13 or so and what should I come across? Why the holy grail of geekdom! Yes, you guessed it, a Latin Textbook! My GOD how that dusty lore calls to me. Ah, the time I spent as a child with many an agricolae… sadly, I never actually stuck with it long enough to become truly proficient but even today, that little voice calls to me to take up some jargon of a far off land. Any rate, task four is not exactly Latin but brushing up on the old college Spanish seems a good place to start.

But lastly there’s that pernicious slayer of free time, number five. Most of us have a number five of some sort or another. I’m a computer programmer by trade so my number five is the evil inclination to open my computer and start doing some form of actual work. It’s particularly insidious because I can do it at any time of day or night and I don’t need input from anyone for the most part. I could work for 16 hours a day, talk to nobody and completely blow my entire life away if I wanted to. I suspect my co-workers and management would be overjoyed at such a prospect; think of all the extra work and productivity! At this point though, I don’t see how people maintain the level of interest required to work such long hours. My boss works from 9am through to 1 and 2am the next morning with breaks for meals and I honestly don’t see what keeps him that motivated. On one hand I feel like a slacker but on the other I sometimes think I’ll be the only sane person left in the office this time next year.

On an only slightly tangential topic, I completely don’t understand computer people. It seems in many cases that they enjoy computing simply for its own sake but without any greater purpose for their work. For example, I was talking to my boss’s boss the other day, the VP of somethingorother, and he asked the standard “What are your goals?” question and I said simply that my real goal in the department was to streamline processes and improve procedures to make the department more profitable (no, this is not a boilerplate bullshit answer, I really think this way). He seemed confused by my response; apparently the typical programmer answer is “I want to learn such-and-such language or whiz-bang new technology.” It’s probably a good thing I’m not in management as my response to such an answer would be a resounding and confused: “Why?” Let’s face it, anybody can program. You can teach a monkey the .NET framework in about three weeks if you have enough bananas on hand to keep him interested. Putting code together is officially not a challenge, at least not on the level required by the average software company. So what kind of a goal is it to learn yet more ways of doing the exact same thing but in a slightly different way?

Anyway, enough number one. It’s officially time to four but not until I check in on five.





Filed under personal

May 11, 2006 · 8:17 pm


So the wife and I were having one of our usual bedtime discussions this evening and my thoughts wandered to this exact blog. I mentioned that one of my co-workers recently asked for my blog address and I of course provided it with the bemused thought that chances are they have no idea what they’re getting themselves into. I told the wife that looking at the traffic logs it appeared that the subject had come in, looked around for a while and then left without saying a word. Her somewhat disgruntled response was that no doubt I had offended the person with some comment or other and in particular she mentioned that I “bash religion.”

Clearly, this is a point in need of some clarification. Nothing I’ve written here is really intended to “bash” anything. I have questions; I have concerns and in general I’ll openly and inarticulately provide them to anyone who asks. The only way to really improve on any situation is through open, honest dialog about it. If I’m wrong about something I’ve posted on here or someone disagrees then it’s time for them to step up and say it. I’d frankly welcome the exchange of ideas. I’d be giddy to be proven wrong in any and all of my ideas and am anxious for the act of self-improvement that would represent.

As I understand it, there are many reasons people wouldn’t bother, sadly. For most, it’s just plain not worth it. Who wants to invest their time in talking to someone else who has started out at such a diametrically opposed position to their own? It’s much more comfortable to surround yourself with same-thinking people and get instant affirmation. That’s understandable I suppose but does belie a certain degree of intellectual inertia. Grow or die, someone says to me about once per quarter. The same isn’t just true of corporations but also of people.





Filed under religion

May 9, 2006 · 7:21 pm

It’s nice to know I was this cool even from birth

Honestly, does it get any cooler than this? Hard to believe this was 1973 and I’m still as cool today as I was then. 



Filed under humor?, personal

May 6, 2006 · 10:36 pm

That Demon Drink

There are at least a hundred things that I completely fail to understand about humans and their constant fascination with intoxication has to be in the top five. American society is absolutely enthralled with the concept of kicking back and having a ‘drink’. “It’s Miller Time”, “Tastes Great/Less Filling”, frogs croaking Bud-weis-er, all these images and slogans aren’t just advertising gimmicks, they’ve somehow made it into our everyday culture. People went around for a year saying “Waaaaassssuuuppp!” to each other because they saw it on a beer commercial. There’s even a significant portion of the population that has redefined “fun” to mean “get drunk.” You can’t have “fun” in this country unless you’ve first had something to drink.

As an outside observer who’s never had a drink of alcohol in his life (yes, I’m serious and yes, I’m 33) I’m completely befuddled by the popularity of this activity. From my viewpoint, here’s what boozing it up basically looks like:

• Drinking is REALLY expensive. Not having consumed such drinks I’m not exactly an expert on the costs but everything I’ve ever seen for sale from Pabst Blue Ribbon to … well, whatever’s considered expensive has been pricey. Pricier than soda, water or any other equivalent volume of beverage.
• From what I’ve been told, alcohol tastes like crap. The same people that provided that information also assured me that one acquires a taste for it over time. That too is nonsensical. If it tastes like crap and costs a lot, why would anyone bother drinking enough to become accustomed to it?
• As is often the case with things that taste foul, it also smells bad. You can tell someone’s been drinking from a mile away. In some cases, the smell of it seems to ooze out of every pore in their body.
• It’s poison. There’s a reason alcoholics end up dead, it’s because they drink poison that their livers are dutifully trying to save them from.
• Alcohol makes you stupid. People tend to get into a hell of a lot of trouble over this little leisure activity for exactly this reason; it’s a really good way to earn a trip to jail. I have to say, that never in my life have I thought that my judgment was so sharp and so precise that I needed something to dull it.

So if I came up to you on the street and said, “Hey! Drink this. It tastes horrible, makes your breath smell, will impair your judgment and eventually kill you” would you drink it? Would you PAY me for it?

All that said, people seem to have one hell of a good time with this stuff. I was recently in extremely close quarters (somewhat against my will) with several people who were drinking and they were having a BLAST. On examination, I can’t really see what it was that was so entertaining for them but they were sure tickled by it whatever it was. Despite all the apparent fun around me, I’m still not in the least tempted to drink. It seems evident that the ‘fun’ being had was a sort of fakery. It wasn’t that whatever was going on was fun but that their brains had been tricked into thinking so.

I’ve never seen the sensation of joy or fun as an end to be achieved. People don’t set ‘Be Happy’ as a goal in their life. Happiness is a byproduct of doing something meaningful and exciting. Fun is something that happens because you’re doing something you enjoy. If you just take your happiness out of a jar like you do your mayonnaise, then you’re cheating yourself. You’re missing out on the real experience of actually generating real and meaningful good times for yourself and those around you. If you add enough alcohol to even the most meaningless existence, it will seem like fun. Staring at a broken TV in a roach-infested apartment will seem like a blast if you take enough chemical inducements to puree your mind into a confused slurry of disconnected thoughts.





Filed under mankind

May 6, 2006 · 8:40 pm

Vampire of Society

There comes, I think, in the lives of many introverted people a time when all the fellowship and goodwill is sucked out of a place or group of people. For example, I changed high schools twice when I was a wee lad and each time I felt a keen and overwhelming sense of relief. It felt as if the people around me had simply used up all their extroverted goodwill towards me and gone back to revolving in their own private circles. I hoped somehow that after moving this new set of people would come along and I could somehow have a ‘fresh start’ with them. It wasn’t that I disliked the old set of people or was tired of them; heck, in most cases, I barely knew anybody and in their own way they’d tried to approach me at some point but had been rebuffed in some way or simply lost interest.

It’s not as if I’ve intentionally pushed people away in my life but for some reason, once they get to know me just the tiniest little bit they all just seem to slowly back away. Even today, I don’t know if it’s that they find out something about me that disturbs them or that I simply don’t provide the right social feedback to them to make them feel like their efforts are fully appreciated. It would be handy to talk to someone that would tell me frankly and openly what it is about me that spooks people.

Whatever this problem is, it is also inherited by my blog. Most of the people that I know in real life who are aware of my blog have stopped reading it for some reason that I simply can’t explain. Perhaps it’s my duty to honesty. I tell things frankly and openly the way I see them to an almost insulting degree. I call a duck a duck when I see it and await counterargument. Sadly, most of the time I don’t get any argument, the disagreeing parties simply disappear into the ether. Or if they do argue, it’s with nonsensical repetition of their original statements.

So yeah, in my life I’ve managed to alienate two high schools, six workplaces and innumerable random unconnected people and I have absolutely no idea why. Well, no idea with any certainty anyway. It seems apparent that something in my wiring is incompatible with the bulk of humankind. Even if I knew what it was, would it be worth correcting? What would I have to give up in exchange? What would I gain, if anything?

I do sincerely wonder what it would be like to have… well, actual friends, people that I could actually TALK to beyond the realm of meaningless small talk. People I connect with, have things in common with and can actually be open with. Now, I should point out here that I do HAVE friends (family doesn’t count), exactly two in fact. I’ll say that they’re both great people and are damn entertaining to talk to but I don’t really DO anything with them. An occasional lunch perhaps but it’s not like we’re taking off to concerts together or building a deck. What changes would be wrought in my life if I had 10 such friends? Or 20 and we actually did things together? Or even three? What is it that keeps me from building that easy rapport with anyone and everyone I meet? I’ve seen it done a million times, so why can’t I recreate it? What is this basic human skill that I’ve completely failed to master? Ahh… the myriad meandering convolutions of the human mind…





Filed under people
