Archive for the ‘General Nonsense’ Category
My Personality
Ok, so I just took the Myer’s Briggs personality test and, according to the results, it seems that I’m riding the fine line between eNTj and eNTp.
eNTj:
“Fieldmarshals will usually rise to positions of responsibility and enjoy being executives. They are tireless in their devotion to their jobs and can easily block out other areas of life for the sake of their work. Superb administrators in any field — medicine, law, business, education, government, the military — Fieldmarshals organize their units into smooth-functioning systems, planning in advance, keeping both short-term and long-range objectives well in mind. For the Fieldmarshals, there must always be a goal-directed reason for doing anything, and people’s feelings usually are not sufficient reason. They prefer decisions to be based on impersonal data, want to work from well thought-out plans, like to use engineered operations — and they expect others to follow suit. They are ever intent on reducing bureaucratic red tape, task redundancy, and aimless confusion in the workplace, and they are willing to dismiss employees who cannot get with the program and increase their efficiency. Although Fieldmarshals are tolerant of established procedures, they can and will abandon any procedure when it can be shown to be ineffective in accomplishing its goal. Fieldmarshals root out and reject ineffectiveness and inefficiency, and are impatient with repetition of error.”
eNTp:
“ENTPs are usually verbally as well as cerebrally quick, and generally love to argue–both for its own sake, and to show off their often-impressive skills. They tend to have a perverse sense of humor as well, and enjoy playing devil’s advocate. They sometimes confuse, even inadvertently hurt, those who don’t understand or accept the concept of argument as a sport.
ENTPs are as innovative and ingenious at problem-solving as they are at verbal gymnastics; on occasion, however, they manage to outsmart themselves. This can take the form of getting found out at “sharp practice”–ENTPs have been known to cut corners without regard to the rules if it’s expedient — or simply in the collapse of an over-ambitious juggling act. Both at work and at home, ENTPs are very fond of “toys”–physical or intellectual, the more sophisticated the better. They tend to tire of these quickly, however, and move on to new ones.
ENTPs are basically optimists, but in spite of this (perhaps because of it?), they tend to become extremely petulant about small setbacks and inconveniences. (Major setbacks they tend to regard as challenges, and tackle with determin- ation.) ENTPs have little patience with those they consider wrongheaded or unintelligent, and show little restraint in demonstrating this. However, they do tend to be extremely genial, if not charming, when not being harassed by life in general.”
GED
I just learned that my little sister Charity took the GED and got a score of 3,480. The average GED score is only 2,250. She basically placed in the top 1-5% of the state.
Wow.
Getting in shape
Lately, I’ve been slowly coming to the realization that my metabolism is slowing down. Yes, apparently all of those endless days spent sitting in front of a computer screen are finally catching up to me. I can literally watch as all those burgers and fries are starting to accumulate on my waist.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen. You heard me. Skinny boy is getting chubby on the edges. My pants no longer fit me correctly, and the six pack is long gone.
Therefore, I have undertaken a new hobby: Getting back into shape.
Keep in mind now, this is no easy task. However, I have been preparing myself mentally for this moment for a long time and I know exactly what I have to do to attain my goal. Lack of fitness knowledge isn’t the problem as much as my inherit tendencies towards an unhealthy lifestyle are.
The treadmill in the workout room at my apartment complex is starting to get used to my old tennis shoes. Yesterday I walked 2 miles. Today it was 5 miles!
Here’s one of the tools I’m going to be using to attain my goal: Traineo
If you want to watch my progess, check out my traineo page!
And now, for Thomas Chapin’s fitness tip of the week!
Two words: Green Beans.
Yeah, you heard me! Green Beans. Preferably french-style (without strings!), for best taste. A can might cost 50 cents, fills up an entire bowl, and a serving size only has *20 calories*.
So next time you get that empty feeling in your stomach, instead of reaching for a bag of chips, do the following:
1. Grab a can of french-style green beans, open it, and pour it into a bowl.
2. Microwave for 90 seconds.
3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
4. Munch.
Do you realize that your body would have to process over 50 cups of green beans in a day before you reached the recommended daily average of 2000 calories? Trust me, you’re not gonna gain weight with this stomach-filling snack, and you’ll be getting some of your daily veggies while you’re at it.
The down side is all the sodium…
Web to Phone
Ok, this may be slightly off-topic, but it’s the coolest internet thing I’ve run across in a while so I figured I ought to share it:
Sprint IP Relay (http://www.sprintip.com)
Basically, you can type in the phone number of someone on the web site and a relay operator (real person) will call them. The relay operator will tell the person on the phone whatever you type. You can literally carry on a completely anonymous phone conversation (for the most part) with anyone of your choice, over the internet. For free.
This service is meant mainly for the deaf and hard of hearing, but my curiosity got the best of me and I tried calling myself with it. Sure enough, my phone rang a couple of seconds later and a real person was on the other end ready to read off whatever was typed over the internet. I typed a couple of phrases to myself like, “Hello!” and “How are you doing?”. It was really creepy hearing a stranger read it back to me over the phone.
After I saw it was real, I didn’t want to waste any more of the operator’s time, so I disconnected. In retrospect, I wouldn’t recommend wasting their time like I did. So yeah. Don’t do that.
One of my best friends is deaf, so I’ll probably tell him about this service since he always has a hard time understanding people over the phone. Now he can talk to them by typing on the internet. Cool!
For those of you who want to try a different flavor of webpage-to-phone calling, check this web page out. You can make up to 10 calls to any phone number, from any phone number (fake caller ID), complete with a selection of computerized voices to read your typed message. Entertaining. I used it to call my fiancee and she was pretty freaked out.
Grand Canyon
This last weekend I got bored and decided to do something different.
I tend to be somewhat random at times, so I suggested to Samantha that we should go to the Grand Canyon. Neither of us had ever seen it and we figured it was about time. Technically, it’s only a 3-4 hour drive from Phoenix, so there wasn’t much of a reason not to. 30 minutes later, we were in the car and on our way!
While we were there, I attempted to take a couple of panoramic photos using the Autostitch method (see the apartment image in one of my previous entries for more details).
I ended up snapping a grand total of 300 photos, which I then pieced together to form the following larger photos. Click on a photo below to view the larger version.
And last, but *definitely* not least… A 360 degree panoramic image which I took while standing at the edge of the canyon. This is a must-see!
I also took a bunch of other photos, which I will attempt to put online in my photo journal here soon.