Link of the Day [1.13.19]

broderic on January 13, 2019

Another year, another year of “Link of the Day!” Perhaps I will find something better with my time. Maybe…

There are a set of films that I believe have described my life. “Office Space” is one of them. Both when I was a server at some shlock place like Tchotkes or working at IniTech, this film speaks to me.

I remember catching it with the Shore Studios crew. We did not laugh one bit during the show. It took video and us maturing to see how funny it was.

I really miss the Shore Studios crew.

https://ew.com/movies/2019/01/11/office-space-oral-history/

Selfie Project 2016

broderic on January 13, 2017

2016 Selfie

This was my big art project for last year — a selfie a day. I’m not sure it worked out very well. Someone told me that it should’ve been in the same place every day. As you can see, I did it wherever and whenever. I missed days. I used cameras attached to computers from my iPhone to my iPad mini to my laptop. It was ridiculous.

You can see the whole thing on my Flickr album.

2017 New Year’s Resolutions

broderic on January 1, 2017

New Year’s Resolutions are lame. You will break them by the January 2nd if not before. That being said I’m writing out my New Year’s Resolution in order to be transparent. How long will they last? It is up to me. I need to work on my perseverance.

Health

  • Target weight 210. Stretch goal of less than 205. Today I’m about 230 wet. 210 is 20 pounds away. I have 12 months. That’s about a little over a pound a month. It can happen. It must happen because my pants are getting too tight.
  • Lose 5 inches around the waist. What is it now? What constitutes the waist? I would like to lose my belly or decrease that by 5 inches. Anything to get me to fit in my pants.
  • Lower my resting heart rate by 4 BPM. What’s it now? I will say 84 BPM. If I can get it to average under 80 BPM success!
  • Lower my blood pressure targeting 120/85. What’s it now? I would say 125/92. Maybe it might be, but it needs to be less.

Exercise
In order to get healthy, I’m gonna have to get off my butt and do some exercise. I got an Apple Watch to help me track it, but I need better metrics.

  • 150 miles on a bike. I haven’t ridden faithfully for 5 years. I’ve always wanted to get back to the feeling of joy as I pedaled by bike. Two hundred may be a bit too far. My rides around the block were usually 10 to 13 miles. The ride at the NCR trail to Sparks is 12 miles. The airport loop is about 12 miles, too. There’s gonna be a lot of bike riding if I actually get on the bike.
  • 120 outdoor walks. That’s about 10 a month. I didn’t say the average, because it depends upon the weather. What is a walk? 15 minutes!
  • 5 sessions a month on the rower. I’ve got it in the house. I’ve got to use it. What’s a session? 15 minutes! Hopefully, I don’t hurt my elbow doing this.

Professional Life

  • Learn a new language and use it. Maybe use it to write an actual iOS app.
  • Maybe a new job. Not a new position, but somewhere else. Is it possible to even change jobs at this age in this particular field?

Personal

  • Blog more. Not just movie reviews or link of the days. Blog something meaningful. Start a series of posts on a topic. Blog about the bike rides. Something. Anything.  Target five meaningful posts a month.
  • Cook more. Don’t eat out too much. Lessen my snack spending (lattes, donuts, ice cream) by 25%. Lessen my dining out by 25%. Currently, Quicken tells me I spend a total of $6700 on dining out of which $1400 is snacks.
  • Read more books. Read literature a bit more. Maybe finish the novels on the nightstand. There are 3 or 4 I believe. Whatever needs to happen so I don’t stay on the computer all night.
  • Japan. I really want to go there. I will. Tokyo for maybe a week. Really want to go there. Tokyo would a start.
  • Study Japanese more. Maybe 30 minutes a night or an hour for 3 days a week.
Is this too much?  Can I do it.  Follow me and find out.  2017 here I come.

Link of the Day [10.7.16]

broderic on October 8, 2016

I had some dizziness on Tuesday. I felt like I was tipping over. And then I was anxious. It blew over and I was fine.

I had some dizziness on Wednesday. I had 3 events. I was weak at the end of the day. I thought I was fine. I thought I was going to die. I went to the emergency room to see if I was dying.

I spent the night in the ER. Then I was admitted for observations for another day. I was at the hospital for the next day.

Turns out I have Type I Arnold-Chiari malformation. Yeah sounds scary. Not sure if I should be fine. Who knows. YOLO.

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/chiari/detail_chiari.htm

I, too, can be a wanker

broderic on January 28, 2012

How Thick Is Your Bubble?
View user's Quiz School Profile
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Score » 9 out of 20 (45% )
Result

On a scale from 0 to 20 points, where 20 signifies full engagement with mainstream American culture and 0 signifies deep cultural isolation within the new upper class bubble, you scored between 9 and 12.

In other words, even if you’re part of the new upper class, you’ve had a lot of exposure to the rest of America.
Quiz School Take this quiz & get your score

But not that much…

From the same wanker who brought us The Bell Curve. It’s all non-sense. Each of the questions on the quiz makes tons of assumptions. You should try it. And have a good laugh.

Mac Development

broderic on October 20, 2010

I need to revisit my 5 year plan. Get the fuck out of IniTech and go all Delicious Mac development.But no.I'm a pussy.That's why I work at IniTech.(I think I wrote this post 5 years ago) FML

“I am. I am. I am Superman. And I can do anything.”

broderic on October 8, 2010

25 And Living Large: I'm an alcholic!

If there was flickr in the 90s, I would’ve favorited this photo.

The funny thing about this photo is that it was taken on September 18, 1996. It’s my birthday! Happy birthday, BrowserMetrics! You’re 25!

Now take a look at who’s helping me to celebrate. They are co-workers from Ruby’s, fellow servers. For my last birthday, it was just my family. I can’t believe that I had celebrated a birthday not with family. It’s been a long time.

The other aspect of this photo is that the girl I was crushing hard on at the time is also there to celebrate it as well. That’s why I’m ducking out of the picture. This can’t be real. Someone pinch me. The problem though is that I was a drunk at the time. So it was hard to figure out what happened on this night.

When I pulled this photo off the floppy, I didn’t know any of these facts. I had to search my memory for it. I had to look at the date on the files just to be sure that I had the right year. This time of my life is a drunken blur. I must’ve been having too good of a time to chronicle it. And yet I wish I had.

Currently, I like to chronicle my life with social media. Blogs, flickr, twitter are all contributing to making my memories indexable by google. Yet, these formative years of my twenties weren’t and they make it a big, black hole. So I look at this photo, and smile as it’ll help me recover them.

Here’s how I think the night happened. Drinks at the Harryman House. More drinks at one of these guys’ house. Passed out drunk. What a birthday! As I look back on it, I wish I wasn’t a drunk and I had put the moves on that girl. Some things are still the same with me.

So what I have here is an artifact of funness, something which I’ve been missing these last few months. I’ve been in a funk. I just need to get my drunk on and just have a good time. Like that bastard in the photo.

“Who are we? What we see? Whoa, I can’t comprehend.”

broderic on October 5, 2010

25 And Living Large: I'm an alcholic! 25 And Living Large 25 And Living Large

Remember this? I had promised a few posts related to these pictures in which I look back to who I was back then. Before doing so I want to get into the technology of these pictures, because it struck me as funny as to how far computing has progressed. And it was in thinking of how old these photos were that made me realize that even though I am in these pictures that person is not anything like the me of today and neither is the technology.

You already know I pulled these pictures from a 3/4″ floppy disk, but you don’t know that they were formatted as a gif file. That’s funny because the best way to store pictures onto storage media would be jpg. Why are they gifs? Who in their right mind would scan photos into gif files. What year is it again?! I remember when and where I got these photos scanned. It was a camera store in Hunt Valley by the Giant, and according to the time stamps of the files, they were created on Saturday, October 12, 1996. That’s just about 14 years ago, when the Internet was barely walking, the floppy drive was the favorite removable storage media, Windows 95 was within its year of release, and you didn’t own a scanner. Plus, cameras were still using film.

Look at it today, October 4, 2010. Our storage media contain 1000 times more floppy disks. The Internet is in its unruly teens. I don’t care anymore about Windows 95, because OS X kicks its ass, and Apple still rulez. I have a scanner and could scan those analog film pictures on my own into jpg files if I wanted. And my camera is pure digital.

We change. So does technology. What happens when we try to go back? It becomes somewhat of a hassle because things may not be compatible anymore. All the trouble to update outdated things, is it worth it?