CUViper

One of my favorite things about reading books is when I find something immediately worth quoting. I found this bit in The Fellowship of the Ring:

Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.

J.R.R. Tolkien

I enjoy the fact that a passage from a fantasy novel, written over fifty years ago, can still have so much relevance. Just replace “the Dark Lord” with “terrorism”, and Tolkien might as well have been Nostradamus. He often said that he wasn’t trying to make any metaphors with reality, but I suppose things like this are just universal truths. It is what we do in fear that is dangerous to our way of life, more than any one person who would do us harm.

Hmm — I haven’t blogged in while, so here’s some random tidbits for you all…

Millie and I started a Picture of the Day photo album. The idea was that we would take a picture of us every day, and over time we would have an interesting log of how we’ve changed. Yeah — that lasted exactly eight days. It’s boring to take pictures when you’re doing it just for some stupid album. So, instead, we’ll just make that a general album for pictures of us, as often as we have such pictures. I filled it back with older ones as well, so go check it out.

Last weekend we went up to Berkeley with our friend who used to go there. I was going to blog about the things we did up there, but she beat me to it. So I’ll just say that it was really nice there — a lot like Boulder in many ways, though perhaps a bit more upscale. Berkeley seems to have a lot of similar values, like supporting independent business, liberal political views, and strong school spirit (with the whole college town feel). I posted our pictures here.

On Friday night we went to a Halloween party. I left the camera in the car during the party, but I do have some pictures of the preparation. I was kinda lame anyway and didn’t wear a costume; Millie at least found a cute skeleton apron. My friend Dave decided to go as a school girl, and he embraced the costume fully! It was quite funny going to shop for all the accessories for him, especially the shoes. The amazing thing is that he actually pulled it off quite well — get rid of the beard shadow and get a better wig, and he would be very convincing.

Finally, a little note about Battlestar Galactica. (If you’re not watching this show, shame on you!) I was browsing around the official website watching some of the extras, and I noticed an ad for the latest MS Visual Studio: “Cylons. Why debugging matters.” I hope whoever came up with that got a raise, because that’s just perfect.

In the spirit of my last post, and the 9/11 5-year anniversary (yesterday), I wanted to point you all to a post by Luis Villa:

In the next five years, unlike the last five, I hope we use their memory to inspire us to actually make the US and the world safer for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, instead of making us less safe, or settling old scores. [more]

Perhaps it is a bit idealistic to hope for everything that he says, but I do believe that things can be much better than they are…

In a comment below, Chris mentioned God’s Debris, by Scott Adams. This is a book that I recommended to him, and I’ll recommend it now to everyone I know. It’s available as a free pdf download, so you really have no excuse not to check it out. It truly is a thought experiment, and even if you disagree with everything written, it should still open up some interesting discussions.

Anyway, without spoiling too much, one of the characters in the book talks about “levels” of the soul. Level 2 basically amounts to blind faith and complete self-assurance, and he asserts that most leaders fit into this category. My initial reaction with a laugh was that our dear president nearly defines this level, and he would love it if we would blindly follow him.

But it’s still generally true that this is a good level for leaders, as confidence tends to lend charisma — the more the better. Even if you’re wrong, it’s really about convincing other people that you know what you’re doing. And that will always frustrate people like me who aren’t so set in their beliefs, but would rather consider all options carefully and logically.

I guess I just need a leader who blindly believes in something that I can get behind…

I’m happy to report that the tag on my car has been removed! Ben has some “miracle” wax with a mild abrasive in it, and that took the marks right off with very little effort. A tiny bit in the crack evaded our effort, but it’s hardly visible, so I’m not worried about it. I hope that whoever did it realizes how stupid that kind of behavior is, but now I can put it behind me.

We were up in Eugene this weekend to attend a wedding — I’ll put up pictures from that later…

I know, I know, I still need to post pictures from Mexico. I’m getting to it, I promise. But in the mean time, take a look at what I found on my car this afternoon:

Seriously, who does shit like that? What did I do to piss you off? It looks like one of those silver markers was used to write this dumbass message on my car. I managed to get some of it off with a rag, but not all. I may have to try buffing it out with wax or something. I don’t think there will be any permanent damage, but it still makes me want to hit someone…

My car, my precious car!

Hi, my name is Josh, and I’m a recovering couch potato.

Sounds dramatic, huh. Really all this means is that I’ve been pretty lazy the past couple years, but I’m now actively taking steps to be more, well, active.

I used to do a fair amount of active stuff. Rock climbing, hiking, camping, and racquetball used to all fit into my life. Then, for no particular reason, I stopped doing those things. And my weight responded — I put on about 40 lbs in a year and a half.

Now I’m trying to get that back under control. About six months ago I started limiting meal portions, and that alone has brought me down about 20 lbs. I already mentioned that Millie and I have started running, and that’s going great. I actually feel really good about running at six in the morning, which surprises me. And yesterday I went with Dave down to Planite Granite to do some climbing. That was really good too — my arms hate me for it today, but it was a lot of fun.

So I’m starting to get off my ass a bit more. And now that I’ve blogged about it, I expect everyone to make sure that I don’t fall back again. Mkay?

Several times I've tried to get into running, and I never stick with it. It's all of the usual excuses — I push myself too hard, and then I'm never able to make it a proper habit. I know if I just stick with it, it will get better, but knowing something and acting on it don't always go together. It's a strange disconnect between intellect and emotion, and if I ever figure out an easy way to reconcile the two, I'll write a book and retire. In the mean time I'm going to coin a new word for this: autostruggle.

Of course the basic answer is almost always that you have to condition your body to the shape you want it. This has to be incremental and repetitive. It's boring — but it's effective. Anyway, Millie found a running program called Couch-to-5K, and we're giving it a go. It's a very gradual program, so the first few days have been pretty easy. I think the fact that we're both pushing each other for this may help it work. So we'll see, maybe I'll be a marathon runner yet.

It's still annoying to make time for running though… but I know it's good for me… but wouldn't it be nice to just sleep in instead… but if I keep it up it will become habitual… but… but…

Stupid autostruggling…

Wow — I just advertised my blog out to my family and already I have a subtle comment from my Granddad that’s basically asking when Millie and I are going to get married. He posted an essay that he wrote in 2004 about gay marriage and civil unions, and it’s a very intelligent discussion about an issue that has polarized the nation. I wouldn’t have expected such an open viewpoint like that from any of my grandparents. It is definitely worth reading, so please go check it out…

That said, I’ll try to clear up the “situation” between Millie and me. Yes we live together; no we don’t have any marriage plans yet; and no, that doesn’t mean that we won’t ever get married. I’m really happy with where things are at right now, and I’m pretty sure that Millie feels the same way. When we talk about the future, we talk about what our kids will be like, what kind of house we’ll live in, where we’ll live, etc. I can’t imagine my life without her anymore, and assuming she continues to put up with me, I’m sure we will get married someday. I’m just not ready for that yet, and I don’t feel like we need it.

But rest assured, you all will be well informed when we do decide to take that step, and I promise it won’t be just a random blog entry…

Seems almost everyone has a blog these days, so why not me? I decided to set this up and see how it goes. I’ve never kept a diary or anything before, so I can’t really predict whether I’ll even like doing this. But it seems like a good thing to get into.

I’ll set some ground rules for myself first, which may also tell anyone reading this what to expect.

1. This is not a professional blog, so I won’t talk about work stuff here. It’s just too much of a pain to dance around confidentiality issues, so I won’t even bother. Besides, I have an internal blog at work if I need to write about anything, so there’s no need to bring that here.
2. Being a personal blog, I’ll talk about whatever matters to me. I won’t try to keep my posts to a specific theme, but I’ll apply categories wherever appropriate.
3. I will try to update this somewhat regularly — at least once a week.
4. I reserve all rights to amend all rules as I see fit.

Ok, so maybe all that is boring, but see rule #2.

Now to pull away from trying to customize WordPress and actually think of interesting things to write about…