Shouzer

Something about this story just irks me.  Now, before I get ahead of myself, I want to say that I think major athletes are greedy.  Not each individual necessarily, but as a whole.  Strikes, lockouts, sitting through training camp…  What a joke.  Just do your job and get paid your millions of dollars.

Now, what bothers me about this story is that NFL owners somehow thing it’s wrong that the players get 60% of the revenues.  Really?  They don’t deserve a slim majority of the money the league brings in?  How does that work?  Honestly, even if they’re greedy themselves, they’re still the ones out there making the plays and bringing in the fans.  Nobody goes to a game because they love the owners.  What a joke.

I saw this over at Penny Arcade, and I thought it was pretty damn cool.  I wouldn’t have the patience (or the skill, for that matter) to do this.

So it turns out that it only took 7.5 years, but I finally agree with Bush about something.  Basically, Congress voted to stop filling the strategic petroleum reserve in an effort to lower gas prices.  Bush is opposed, because he doesn’t believe it would affect oil prices, and he thinks national security is more important.

Now, granted, Bush has taken ‘national security’ to the extreme in his tenure as president, but I think he’s right about this one.  Yes, gas is expensive, and it pisses me off.  I just don’t think this is the right move.  Overzealous military man or not, he’s right that we shouldn’t put ourselves at risk (however small) over this.  I also don’t personally believe that this will affect oil prices in the least.

There were several questions posed to me in my last big update post which I felt were better answered in another post. Namely, Jared was curious as to how living in Thailand for a year has changed me. I’m not sure that I can adequately answer this question to be honest, but I will do my best. I am sure that many of the changes have taken place on a nearly subconscious level though.

I would say one of the main advantages of living and working abroad is it increases your flexibility. Within the first week or so, I found loads of little things in my new environment that bothered me. I had to learn to adjust to a new way of life that mimicked the local people. For example, I had a serious problem with taking taxis before I came here. I saw them as a gigantic waste of money, and I avoided them as much as possible. In Bangkok, that is nearly impossible, and it is foolish. Taxis are cheaper than alternative modes of transportation in many cases.

Living abroad also decreases dependence. This was not a major problem for me this time around as I had already lived in Sydney for a while, but I just thought I’d mention it for the general case. Two examples of this for me are Mt. Dew and NFL. I miss them both here, but I’ve learned to live without them.

In more specific terms though, I have changed the way I look at work and living. When I was at Rose, school consumed my entire life. Yes, I had some outside fun, but it was always there in the back of my mind. When I was looking for a job last year, I felt that I needed to find a career opportunity that would completely fulfill me. This, obviously, proved to be an impossible task. My list of requirements for a job was probably longer than my list for a wife.

Working this year as a teacher, though, has been a blast. I have loads of fun most days, and I have greatly enjoyed my life here in Bangkok. Having said that, I have several major complaints with my current company, and I could never see myself working here for a long period of time. So what gives? Well, I’ve simply learned that there is more to life than work, and a job doesn’t have to be perfect to be enjoyable.

Juvers asked me if I had any plans to work on alternative energy. Sure, I would like that opportunity, but if it never happens for me, I’m not that bothered. I used to feel that my work needed to impact the world, but I am more relaxed about it now.

Being more relaxed is another major change from this year. I am pretty content to sit on my balcony and stare at the view in the evenings, I do not get in as big of a rush as I used to, and I have more patience in general. Thais has a phrase, “mai ben lai”, and it means no worries or no problem. That pretty much sums up the culture. They just don’t get their panties in a bunch about anything, and I like that. Imagine Timon and Puma from the Lion King singing “Acunamata”, and you’ve pretty much got a grip on Thai culture. (That’s a vast oversimplification, of course.)

I feel like I’ve made strides this year in terms of social confidence as well. It’s obviously impossible to quantify this, but I just feel more comfortable meeting new people and interacting with others. It’s good to get away from engineering for a while.

I feel like there should be more, but I honestly can’t think of anything else right now. If I think of something, I’ll try to write another post.

In other news, my flight is arriving in St. Louis on June 3. I’m starting work in the Detroit area on June 16. If anyone is in the Herrin area during that time frame, let me know.

I’ve gotta say, after playing GTA4 for a while, I’m fairly surprised at the reviews it got.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great game, but it’s no 10.  I would definitely say, for instance, that I enjoyed Gears of War more.

My biggest complaint is fairly simple, actually.  The camera is horrible while you’re driving.  It’s too low (the car literally gets in the way of you seeing), and when you turn, it doesn’t follow you quickly enough.  You’re pretty much driving right while the camera is still looking straight.  These probably wouldn’t be big deals in a lot of other games, but you spend a lot of time driving in GTA, so it really gets old quick.  Ah well, it was still definitely worth the buy.

Just about thirteen months ago I shared here that I had been mentioned by name on a story done by an espn.com writer. Today, I have similar news to share. A question that I sent to Jaguars.com senior editor Vic Ketchman was answered in his latest column. I am “Kyle from Carbondale, IL” because I was at work while typing. Great success!

Now, I can say this without talking badly about myself because I don’t really drive my car that much.  When I awoke this morning on a nice lovely day I thought about all my plans: laundry, grocery shopping, relaxing with Scott, maybe going to a park or something.  It all came crashing down when on our way to the grocery store we got to my car.  Some wanker hit my fucking car and then didn’t have the decency to stick around and own up to it.  So we call the police, and they won’t send a cop out to make a report because the car is still drivable.  That’s bull shit.  Stupid CPD doesn’t wanna get off their ass and do their damn job.  Then the cop woman at the desk makes me feel like shit for having to make her stop reading her damn magazine and do her job!  What a major bitch.  I gotta run, have to go pick up another car….I’ll finish this rant later and put the pics up of the damage.

Check this shit out.  The last link on on that page is to Shouzer.  The image in question actually generates a lot of traffic for us every month, and I don’t even remember where it came from, hehe.  I think I grabbed it from somebody signature on a forum a few years back.

[Edit:] This ended up being a monster post. Despite that, I’d be really happy to hear what anybody else has to say about this. Comments are strongly encouraged!

There was a discussion on an email alias at work recently about intelligent design, and though the original conversation got extremely off-topic, I nonetheless spent quite a while thinking about it. From what I’ve seen, the typical debate seems to end up breaking down to religion vs atheism. Those that support religion are ostensibly religious, and those in favor of evolution or natural selection are typically perceived as atheist. What I don’t understand is why the two groups have to be mutually exclusive.

First–and I want to get this out of the way as quickly as possible–intelligent design is not science, nor should it ever be taught in school as a complement or alternative to evolution as science. Intelligent design’s sole purpose is to bring into science the requirement of a higher being. This mere fact alone precludes it from being science. Instead, it’s a giving up. Rather than actually trying to explain the way things are in physical terms, it’s a weak fallback to an unprovable, untestable, and intrinsically unscientific explanation.

Now, having said that, I don’t know why you have to be atheist to believe in evolution. I’m certainly not. I don’t understand what’s so “unintelligent” about evolution. The idea of natural selection explains a lot of things fantastically well. An organism’s or species’ favorable random mutations will become more common in successive generations furthering that species. It makes sense. It’s almost perfect.

So why can’t a typical Christian, for instance, accept this? Couldn’t it be the case that God created the world in this manner? We don’t have to remove the scientific randomness of it–God doesn’t have to be molding every single human, bug, and bacteria created. He doesn’t have to be actively carrying electricity over copper wires. No, science can explain it. If you believe in God, why not believe that He created things in a rational, explainable way? It would be well within his power.

The problem for me is that convservative religious groups often accept science when it’s convenient and condemn it when it’s not. They’ll write up blog posts from their laptops on their planes about how they didn’t evolve from monkeys. Oh yeah, and I suppose angels are storing those posts magically in the laptops while there’s no internet connection. They’re probably carrying the planes, too. Cell phones? They’re really work through a huge network of angels carrying our voices over vast distances. It has nothing to do with radio waves.

I’m a firm believer in science–real science–though I also mentioned earlier that I’m not atheist. I don’t accept the “general” notion of intelligent design, but I think natural selection is fairly intelligent. I don’t believe it’s too far-fetched to say some higher power designed things to work that way (i.e. it was an intelligent design…). In fact, I think it’s naive to believe that science will ever have all the answers.

The big bang, for example, while a fascinating theory, doesn’t actually explain the beginning of anything. Go far enough in the past and there was a single mass of infinite density, which then began expanding at an exponentially rapid pace? Honestly, what the fuck is that? Where did this magical ball (or point) of mass come from? Even if science can someday explain that, the next question will be what caused the thing that caused the big bang and so on? It’ll be an infinite series of questions and answers with no end.

The existence of life, of our universe, of anything is inherently beyond the realm of our scientific understanding. At the end of the day, taking all real science into account, “Why do I exist?” is still a valid question. That above all else necessitates my belief in a higher power, but it does not negate–nor should it supplant–actual science. And to attempt to do so with frivolous “theories” is a waste of time and a detriment to society as a whole.

I rarely ever watch commercials anymore, now that TiVo’s got my back. It might sound stupid, but it would actually be pretty hard to go back to watching regular, live TV all the time for all my weekly shows.

I was made painfully aware of that this weekend while I was watching all the NBA playoff games. In the mix of typically horrible crap between the actual games, I happened to catch a few pretty good commercials. For the record, Kyle linked me to one of them first.

Here’re the links to the first, second, and third commercials.

Well, I’m finally getting around to writing this post now. Sorry for the long absence. I’ve been terrible about keeping in touch the last few months. According to Juvers, it’s been two months since my last post, so I’ll start there.

The term ended at the end of February, and we’re on summer holidays now. I already miss my kids a lot, and I also miss the routine of going to my schools. Since then, I’ve been doing a wide assortment of things, including teaching holiday programs at schools, holiday club at the office, volunteer teaching, and teacher training. I suppose that’s all a bit boring though, so I’ll skip the details.

Last week was Song Kran, which is the Thai new year’s. They celebrate in a variety of ways, but the most fun is by having a nation-wide water fight. You walk down the street, and people just shoot you with water guns. I didn’t go anywhere special within Thailand for that, but I did get shot by some kids on my street. I guess you could say I enjoyed it.

I went to Malaysia and Singapore during the week I had off. During this trip, I visited Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Melaca, and Singapore. Penang is an island in the north of Malaysia. The highlight there was an Indian restaraunt which was highly authentic. KL is the capital of Malaysia, and the highlight there was the Petronas twin towers. They are featured in the movie Entrapment. Melaca was an old capital of Malaysia, and it had lots of historic stuff. Singapore was pretty cool, though it was insanely expensive. I was excited because they had Mt. Dew, and I have been craving it.

The big news, though, is that I will be starting work at GM, probably in July. I am going to be a controls integration engineer in a team working on the 6-speed transmission. Don’t ask what that means, because I don’t really know to be honest. I’m going to be in Milford, MI, which is just outside of Detroit. GM’s test facility is there. It’s called the Milford Proving Grounds.

I’m not sure when I’ll be coming home. It’s the million dollar question. I finish my contract here on May 30th, and I will leave Thailand shortly after that. I would like to go traveling for a month, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford it. I’m trying to find some work at a summer camp or something, but it doesn’t look promising.

Anybody else noticed that iTunes is an absolutely horrible, bloated piece of shit?  For as much love as Apple gets (and hell, I provide my fair share), iTunes 7 really is one of the worst apps I’ve ever used.  The simple fact that it mysteriously requires Quicktime to be installed is bad enough, but on top of that it’s just dog slow.

Stupid iPhone and its software lock-in.  If I could sync that bad boy with Winamp, iTunes would be uninstalled in a heartbeat.

It’s been said that I enjoy the same restaurants that tend to attract an “older” population. A population in which the most popular job title is likely to be “Retired”. A population that might just contain an inordinate number of grandmas and grandpas. A population of senior citizens, if you will.

My friends, the old folks and I share a common interest in places like Bob Evans and Cracker Barrel. I know why I like them–breakfast at any time of the day. It’s absolutely glorious. Anybody who disagrees just dropped a rank on my list of friends.

Now, this is all well and good in most parts of the country. But in Washington? In Washington there just aren’t any Bob Evans. How weak is that? All I want at the end of the day is a delicious Sunshine Skillet. But where am I supposed to get one now? It was a sad realization that my days of Sunshine Skillets and Pot Roast Hash have all but come to an end.

One of the things that I sometimes overlook when asked what I miss about Champaign are the last two months (or so) of last school year when Jared, Al, and I played NBA2k7 nearly every night in my room. Though it will probably never come to mind as quickly as “the restaurants,” “living on my own,” or “Illini basketball,” those games we played were every bit as enjoyable. You see, Jared became a master of the “3 Team Trade” in Association Mode, and we wound up playing with a trio of Gilbert Arenas (Jared), LeBron James (me), and Amare Stoudemire (Al). The point of playing was not to win, but to maximize our winning margin. We started out with the goal of scoring 100 (a “hundystick”), but got to where it was disappointing if we didn’t have 100 by the end of the third. I don’t know if that sounds like fun to the reader, but that doesn’t matter. It was fun.

This post obviously means nothing to anyone but Jared and Al, but it was just on my mind. I was thinking about how the NBA playoffs were coming up, and how the Jazz might face the Suns in the first round, and how that would be an awesome series to watch with those guys and then follow it up with some 2k. We could probably try to play over Xbox Live, but it just wouldn’t be the same.

Anyway, I’m just saying I really liked doing that, and I’m not going to get to this year.

It’s the time of year when readers flock to Juver’s Blog to read an enthusiastic post about how all is right with the world because men are getting paid to cheat at play baseball once more. That post hasn’t arrived yet, but we’ll keep watching for it.

How do I feel about baseball, you ask? Well, since you asked, I loathe baseball. Let me qualify that; it is the MLB, in particular, that I can’t stand. As many of you know, I play some summer whiffle ball and enjoy that thoroughly. I also think fondly of my days as a Little Leaguer. But professional baseball just strikes a nerve with me. It takes away my sports talk radio on my drive home from work because our local Fox Sports Radio affiliate patches in Cubs games. It takes away the mind numbing ESPN afternoon programming that I use to drown out the silence while I play WoW and eat my late lunch. Eventually, it will take the place of such live televised sporting events as college basketball/football, NBA, and NFL. If the MLB backed down, we could just extend those seasons through the summer, and make rational people happy. It takes the place of The Sports Guy’s articles. Fantasy baseball takes the place of conversations with friends. Baseball ruins everything. Baseball is like the guy who speaks at a wedding when the minister askes if anyone has any reason why the two should not be joined in marriage. He (baseball) looks like a fool, and the most important important time (everyday) in the bride and groom’s (my) life is ruined by some uninvited ex-boyfriend (baseball, again) that you hoped had disappeared forever.

I can’t wait until November.