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Life, And Other Bored Games
Posted by pzer0 on 01.04.11
So far 2011 has been a heckuva year. I’m really sorry if my tweets and facebook status updates have been somber and melancholic as of late, things have not been ideal in my personal life. Katy has been dealing with some undefined illness (if you follow me on twitter or are friends with me on facebook, I’ll spare you the rehash– needless to say it’s been troubling, frustrating, and unresolved), our 2 month old puppy got sick, and I have been struggling with trying to get registered for classes. At this point, it looks like I’m going to have to make some student loan payments due to the ineptitude of ITT (their inability to successfully mail a transcript) and the laziness of Franklin (their seeming lack of desire to register a new student). Money is always troublesome. There is never enough of it when you need some, and when you have a surplus it always seems to disappear.
There are some positive notes in all of this. Katy and I got engaged, and will probably marry this year, so it appears 2011 will have some bright spots. We are discussing opening a restaurant, although it will likely be several years down the line. My friend Robert self-published a novel on Amazon (Cagey and 2 others, I highly recommend it – http://t.co/dQXknYd), which has made me think about getting back to the story that I was working on years ago. I had over 60 pages written on an old laptop, when the hard drive died and I was unable to retrieve any of the data. It was a lesson on backups. I think that I will begin working on it again. I enjoy my job and the people I work with, which is a welcome change for me. My primary resolution for 2011 is to not take things so seriously, to realize that not every roadblock is a wall (or the end of the world), and to take solace in the people and things I have in my life that bring me joy.
I also have begun to be more vocal about my beliefs (or, more specifically, my lack of beliefs). I have been an atheist since the age of 18, after spending the better part of my youth as a very active evangelical christian. While my de-conversion experience was not a simple process, or an easy one, I became a fairly staunch atheist and spent a good part of my early 20s active with a few humanist and free-thinker groups. As I entered in to my mid-20s, I began to back off from being as outspoken and confrontational, even going so far as to label myself as agnostic to avoid the negative associations most people think of when they hear the word “atheist”. No more. I am an atheist. My jury is not out, I do not believe it is unknowable. I believe that the concept of god put forth by the christian faith (and others, but let’s deal specifically with that since it’s the most common belief in western society) is something that would manifest in an overwhelming abundance of evidence if it were true, and since no such evidence exists a rational person must come to the conclusion that no such god exists, either. I reject all gods as superstition, and belief in them as counter-productive to both reason and societal progress. As a direct consequence of my reacquired voice, I have recently lost a few friends (and will probably lose more), but I would rather by honest with myself and the world than to hide behind a ruse for the sake of not offending the delicate sensibilities of others. If you are a believer of any religion, I am still quite happy to count you as a friend, but I reserve the right to be just as vocal about my lack of belief as you are about your beliefs in the supernatural. I will be using this blog as a platform to discuss my thoughts on this subject more in the future, and plan on writing a post soon that describes the process of and events leading up to my departure from evangelical christianity.
I think this is something that has been stewing within me for awhile. I have felt intellectually restless, and I think that between writing, planning for the restaurant, being more vocal about my thoughts on religion, and thoughts for subversive political protests (in the vein of carlosmiller.com and copblock.org style exposing of government corruption, starting at a local level), I have finally begun to feel some connection and engagement again with the world around me. Please note that the title of this post is not a typo– I have felt bored for the last several years on many levels (romantic relationships, friendships, and career aside), and I think that this will be the year that I begin to take the appropriate steps to grease the gears in my head that have started to rust.
Thanks for reading.
You Are What You Meat
Posted by pzer0 on 10.27.10
I’ve been meaning to write this post for awhile, but things have been a bit crazy lately. Fortunately, I’m on vacation this week and now have plenty of time to sit and write! I have gone through a pretty crazy transformation over the last couple of months, and would like to share it with you.
I quit a 10 year pack a day smoking habit on April 14. I became a vegetarian August 23. I got the first gym membership of my life August 31. I became a vegan on September 20. I also quit drinking coffee and soda, not entirely sure when. I think that a lot of these changes have been due to my quickly approaching 30th birthday, but at the core these are things I’ve been thinking about for awhile. I’m not entirely sure why I seem to have developed willpower, but I won’t lie when I say I’m enjoying it. I feel better than I have in years, possibly better than I ever have in my life.
I’m writing this post because this week is World Vegan Week. While I’m sure that quitting smoking and joining a gym has contributed to feeling better, I do feel that I owe the majority of this feeling to my much improved diet. I have had 0 cholesterol over the last month, I have had reduced amounts of fat, and my fiber intake has increased. My blood pressure has gone down, my resting heart rate is between 60-65BPM, and my energy levels are consistent and through the roof. I have no mornings where I can’t do anything until I’ve had my cup of coffee, and then have a food coma after lunch because I had an unhealthy meal full of processed foods and junk. I feel better about the foods I eat, my taste buds have changed to the point where I no longer even have to put dressing on salad to enjoy the taste (and this is coming from someone that used to load my salad up with cheese and ranch dressing), and as an added bonus I’ve lost 30 pounds. Also, while many of the people I work with have been ill to the point of missing several days of work, I have had nothing more than a sniffle. I guarantee you that if you choose to become a vegan and begin to make healthy food choices, you will feel better as a result. You’ll probably look better. You’ll also probably live longer.
I know that people don’t like they’re being preached to or judged– goodness knows that I don’t either. I am sharing this with you because of my convictions that it is a healthy and more compassionate way of living, and that what has benefited me can benefit you in a similar fashion. Heart disease, cancer, and obesity are the biggest causes of disease and illness in this country, and I have made the decision to not fall in to the same trap as so many others do. You can make that choice, too. Here are some good resources to check out if you’re interested in becoming a vegan or vegetarian, of if you just want to research it because you’re curious:
World Go Vegan week
Vegan A Go-Go
3 raw meals on $10 a day or less
3 vegan meals on $10 a day or less
VegWeb
Doubting Thomas
Posted by pzer0 on 10.12.10
I’ve been making a concerted effort to eat better as of late, both from an ethical and a health perspective. While the reasons behind this really deserve a post of their own (and one will be forthcoming, probably within the next few days), I wanted to express some dismay about my breakfast. About a month and a half ago, Katy and I made the transition to a vegan diet. I have been searching for foods that are both filling and wholesome, and I thought I had found a perfect meal in Thomas Light Multigrain English muffins. They are 100 calories, have 1/3 of your daily recommended fiber intake, are reasonably low in carbohydrates and sodium, and taste pretty darn good. I would have one half with Cascadian organic blackberry jam, and the other half with Maranatha almond butter. All told, my breakfast clocked in at about 240 calories and I was mildly hungry by lunchtime, but only in the “boy lunch sure sounds good” sense rather than a “dear lord my stomach is devouring itself” sense.
Yummy Vegan Breakfast
I was caught by surprise last night when Katy brought up the fact that the English muffins are not vegan. I checked, and sure enough it clearly says “Whey (milk)” and “non-fat milk” in the ingredient list. What’s annoying about this is that we both have become very vigilant about checking the ingredient lists of things we eat now, going so far as to check ingredients we’re unsure/have never heard of to verify that they do not come from animal derived sources. I could have sworn that I checked the ingredient list, but apparently I just zoned out or imagined doing that. My first instinct was to just replace the English muffin with a bagel thin, as they are roughly the same calorie-wise. However, after checking the ingredient list this morning, it turns out that they (and many other bagel/English muffin/bread products) have Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, which is one of those ambiguous “maybe vegan, maybe not” that may have animal byproducts or could be 100% plant derived. Since most manufacturers do not feel it necessary to clearly label whether it is vegan or not, and standing in a grocery aisle at 6:45AM is not generally the best time to call a company and ask them about the source of their sodium stearoyl lactylate (not to mention the low likelihood of getting anyone on the phone who would actually know the answer, regardless of the time), I chose to err on the side of caution. I started looking at other brands, having found 3 that include ingredients that are clearly or ambiguously not vegan, and I was pleasantly surprised that Kroger whole wheat English muffins had the shortest ingredient list out of all the products I saw, and appeared to be vegan as well! I spent about 5 minutes looking up various ingredients to verify, and then flipped the package over and noticed that it is clearly labeled on the front as vegan! Happy day! They are about 30 calories more than the Thomas English muffins, but that’s a small price to pay in my opinion.
It’s great to see Kroger providing options for people with special dietary restrictions, and they have minimized their packaging (just a plastic bag vs. a plastic bag and cardboard for other brands). Way to go, Kroger!
Once More, With Feeling
Posted by pzer0 on 10.02.10
I know that I just changed my Twitter name and made it private about 5 weeks ago, but I’ve decided to change it back and to make it public again.
Briefly, here are the reasons why:
- In reading my employer’s published social media policy, I have determined that I am not in violation of said policy. Even if their interpretation of this differs from mine, I feel that I have no reasonable obligation to censor a personal account on a social site used by millions of people.
- Making my Twitter account private caused difficulty in interacting with others on the service, which is the ultimate goal of, and primary reason I use, Twitter.
- I will not willingly self-censor an obviously personal account, especially one that is followed almost primarily by people who know me personally, because any employer feels it reflects poorly on them. My life outside of my job is exactly that.
- I paid for a frickin’ domain name of pzer0.com. It’s my internet “identity”, and I’d really rather not change it, so I’m not going to.
So, I am changing my Twitter name back to @pzer0, and it is public as well. I apologize for any confusion this may cause, but I assure you it will be the last time it changes. I would rather close the account altogether than change the name again.
I Feel Special
Posted by pzer0 on 08.21.10
So here’s the story of how I made fun of a mentally handicapped kid. I woke up this morning and noticed a missed call from a number I did not recognize. The missed call was from around 1:30AM. Those of you who know me know that I am practicing for hitting up the Country Kitchen at 5AM by the time I’m a 60 year old man, so I normally go to bed around 9-10PM and get up relatively early. So I listen to the voicemail, and this is what I hear: Dog the Bounty Hunter.
So I figure I’ll turn the tables on my new prank-calling little friend. I call him back, using my best “New Yawk” accent, and start ripping in to him. I start by telling him that he really needs a haircut, because the real Dog the Bounty Hunter looks like someone threw an 80′s hair metal band in to a blender, shit in said blender, then poured it out on Dog’s head (proof). I don’t remember what else I said, but he started spouting off profanity that no kid should know, stuff about fellatio and threatening to kill me and such. I was honestly having a hard time understanding him, so I asked him if he had something in his mouth… and oh boy did he lose it. He started telling me he was going to find out where I lived and all that. I told him that I was recording this call and was going to turn it over to the cops (not true, but I bet it made him poop himself) and to never call me again, and hung up. However, it dawned on me after I hung up that he sounded a bit on the slow side, and I felt kind of bad for making the comment about not being able to understand him. I mean, I really *did* have a problem understanding him. While I would never go out of my way to mock someone with special needs, when you prank call me all bets are off.
So yeah, I’m a horrible human being that ended up making fun of a special needs kid. Commence the flaming.
My Thoughts On The Apple Announcements
Posted by pzer0 on 09.01.10
I’m a big Apple nerd. I was always a PC guy until I won a free Mac Mini about 5 years ago, and I’ve been a convert ever since. I *love* my iPhone– seriously, it’s kind of sad how much it’s changed my life and how much I rely on it now, but I feel like the Apple event today was, to quote a Gizmodo commenter, “pretty meh-tastic“.
Apple is a company that loves to throw around hyperbolic adjectives like “magical”, “revolutionary”, and “amazing” whenever they announce a new product or service. Frankly, in my opinion, they’ve come pretty close to living up to a lot of the hype, at least with certain products. Today? Not so much. Given that Apple was live-streaming this event (something they NEVER do, you usually have to wait awhile to watch keynotes), you would have thought that they were announcing the iMidas, which will turn any available matter in to gold. Instead, we get a neutered Apple TV, an absurd pricing scheme for iTunes TV/movie rentals, delayed iOS 4 on the iPad, iTunes 10 with some very vague social network integration, HDR photos, and some updated iPods.
Let’s start with the Apple TV, which was what I was most excited about. There’s no local storage, it again locks you in to Apple’s walled garden (not surprising, but given no mention of USB connectivity or local storage = no homebrew software like Plex or Boxee = no MKV/AVI), and it only does 720p. Apple’s argument is that 720p allows for better compromise between quality and bandwidth. You know what would fix that, Apple? A freakin’ hard drive. Seriously, 2TB hard drives are under $100. C’mon. I do give them points for inclusion of Netflix, and the $100 price point. If this is the best Apple has to offer, I think GoogleTV might end up being a better choice. Since 99% of my content is MKV or AVI, I’d probably get a WD TV before I’d buy an Apple TV.
On to the rentals. $.99 for a -single- TV show and $4.99 for a movie? Are you kidding me? I can rent bluray movies from Redbox for $1.50 each, get virtually unlimited movies from Netflix for less than $10 a month, and TV shows for free on Hulu (or just torrent the damn things. Hell, you could buy entire seasons of some shows on DVD for less than what Apple would charge to rent a full season of episodes). I think this is a huge ripoff, and can say without hesitation that I will never, ever pay for a TV or movie rental through iTunes. The only thing I can give Apple props for here is securing rights to rent the movie the same day it hits DVD, which is something Netflix capitulated on when the studios put their collective boots on Netflix’s neck. I’m not fully blaming Apple for the pricing, because I have no doubt that a lot of it was dictated by studios and television executives.
I don’t own an iPad, and won’t buy one until at least version 2 (if at all). If I were an iPad owner, I’d be pretty peeved that they originally said iOS4 would come in September, and now are saying November. The only upside is that you can jailbreak it, assuming you haven’t upgraded to 3.2.2 (which offered nothing in the way of enhancements, but merely patched the PDF exploit used to jailbreak iOS).
Yet another version of iTunes, which means that about 3 months after it hits they’ll release an iOS version that -requires- iTunes 10 in order to install (nobody does forced obsolescence like Apple!). I didn’t get to watch much of this part of the keynote, so I’m still not entirely clear about the point of Ping. I used to see a lot of people tweet what song they were listening to. I don’t see that much any more. I don’t think that a music based social network offers anything more compelling (at least overall) than Twitter or Facebook offer. I suppose time will tell.
HDR photos are kind of neat. I think they will work best for outdoor shots, and should provide a new angle for the notoriously bad cell phone cameras (not saying the iPhone camera is bad, just cell phone cameras in general). Then again, I think HDR is kind of a fad, and frankly I’ve seen some truly awful HDR images. Hopefully they keep the effect minimalistic. I do like the sample pictures they showed. Is it sad that this was the most exciting part of the keynote for me?
The iPod shuffle looks exactly like the old one before they removed the buttons, maybe a bit smaller. Big yawn there. I thought the design with no buttons was stupid, anyway. Touchscreen nano seems overly complicated, but it’s neat if you’re in to that sort of thing, I guess. Adding cameras to the iPod Touch was an inevitability, and the only reason it didn’t happen before now was to make sure no sales were siphoned off from the iPhone. The next version of the iPad will have a camera, too. FaceTime will reign supreme for video calling on mobile devices, unless Apple refuses to open it to other manufacturers. If they don’t, a multi-platform alternative will come along and take away Apple’s thunder. You read it here first, folks (unless you already read it somewhere else… in which case, you read it here just now).
Let’s hope the next Apple event really brings the jam, because today fell pretty flat.
apple, commentary
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