Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 - General Nonsense
Much to the amusement of many of the people I have bowled with, I can’t bowl in a straight line for the life of me. In an attempt to solve the problem I took up experimenting with throwing curve balls, and, after a lot of trial and error, eventually learned how to *occasionally* get the desired effect.
Now, I just want to take a moment to emphasize the fact that I’ve never been a good bowler, probably only bowling a couple of times a year (if that). Even with my best attempts, I have never really averaged more than around 115.
I *do* enjoy bowling, though, so I was pleasantly surprised when my Aunt Pam bought me a pair of bowling shoes as a gift. They are extremely comfortable (maybe even more so than my normal shoes), and fit me perfectly. Bowling shoes usually rent for $3-5, so bowling just got that much more affordable.
Since receiving the shoes, I have gone bowling a couple of times and have been amazed by what a difference they made. Each time I bowled, everything just seemed to click… Literally overnight, my average game went up over 20 points!
At any rate, last week I went bowling with my two buddies, Brian Shaler and John Murch, and I bowled a 201!! Now, I know that a lot of people out there bowl around 200 all the time, but for me that was a big deal (the highest I’ve ever bowled). I even got a print-out of the scores (upon Brian’s recommendation) as proof!
So, yeah. Go get yourself some bowling shoes! 
Posted in General Nonsense | 3 Comments »
Thursday, December 27th, 2007 - General Nonsense
I just finished putting together this fun little web site:
100 Facts About Literally Anyone
Basically, you put in someone’s name, and it returns 100 (funny) “facts” about the person.
Let me know what you think!
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Monday, October 22nd, 2007 - Featured Posts, Rants and Musings
If I ever get down on my luck, I’m totally going to start a business selling “No Soliciting” signs from door to door.
The way I see it, it’s practically a guaranteed sale…
“Sorry, we’re not interested in whatever you’re selling! In fact, we hate door to door sales people!”
“Well in that case, you’ll love this sign!”
The best part about it is that if they don’t buy the sign, you can just come back every week until they do. After all, they don’t have a sign saying you can’t!
Posted in Featured Posts, Rants and Musings | 2 Comments »
Saturday, April 7th, 2007 - General Nonsense
Art, in my mind, is defined as the manifestation of creative expression. By “creative”, I mean “invented from nothing”. Creativity is a by-product of our intelligence, self-awareness, and seemingly random, un-explainable imagination.
If someone paints a picture by number, this is not art. They are not “creating” something from nothing. They are only following directions in the same sense that your printer might follow instructions from your computer. Would you call your printer an artist? No. It’s just a machine following instructions.
If a young piano player presses the keys on a piano in exactly the manner he/she is instructed to and hammers out a musical sequence, this also, is *not* art. It would *only* be “art” if the student were to connect with the music on some level and create a *new* song or variation using their imagination.
So when you ask someone what art is, why do you get so many different responses? Why is there so much ambiguity in the overall definition of the word? If you ask one person if a trash can is a piece of art, they might say “yes”, whereas another person might promptly reply, “No!”
I believe this problem arises from the way how humans arrive at definitions in their mind largely from context. They see an amazing painting and they hear it referred to as “art”, so they assume that “art” is defined only as “an amazing painting”. Another person might hear a piece of music or poetry referred to as “art”, so they come to the conclusion that “art” is defined as “music and poetry”.
As a result, if you stick the two people together, they might hem and haw and argue for days about what “art” is and what it means. Eventually they might arrive at the conclusion that “art” is defined as “amazing paintings, music, or poetry”.
The problem is quite simple. They’re failing to look at the true underlying concept that all these items share: None of these things would have been possible without human imagination and creativity.
So what about all the other paintings? You know, the crappy ones that never make it to a museum? Are they art? The people that created them would most certainly argue that they were! After all, many of the most famous paintings weren’t given proper credit until long after the artist was gone. It appears that “amazing” isn’t necessarily a requirement for something to be “art”.
You see, there are many different kinds of “art”, some of which are fascinating and amazing (the Mona Lisa, etc…), but there are countless other day-to-day creative expressions (an email written to a friend or a new spin on a pastry dish, for example) which are largely ignored.
However, just because a “creative expression” is ignored as “art” doesn’t make it “not art”. All it means is that it’s not intriguing or amazing art. It’s boring art. It’s every-day art. Or… something.
Posted in General Nonsense | 2 Comments »
Thursday, January 11th, 2007 - General Nonsense
Anyone who knows anything about me knows about my car trouble nightmares. As such, when I bought a used 2004 Nissan Sentra SE-R (with 35,000 miles on it) from a dealership at the beginning of 2005, I made sure to buy an extended warranty. Sure enough, within two weeks of owning my new (used) car, the fuel pump needed to be replaced. This repair alone pretty much excused the extended warranty that I had purchased, but after that everything was pretty much smooth sailing without problems.
At around 45,000 miles, I noticed that my car had developed a “ticking” sort of noise in the engine during acceleration. However, once the engine got warmed up the noise went away, so I didn’t give it much thought. My extended warranty wasn’t going to expire till 60,000 miles and I figured that if the problem got worse I would just have to make sure to have it checked into before then.
At around 55,000 miles (a couple of days ago), I finally decided to do something about it (that warranty expiration was getting too close!). So I drove the car up to a local Nissan dealership, where I left it overnight (so they could hear the cold engine ticking the next morning). At first, they couldn’t replicate the problem, but I persisted, and they were eventually able to hear it.
Turns out, my engine had developed “piston slap”, where the pistons were hitting the side of the cylinders when they went up and down. The compression in cylinder #1 was only 90 PSI, when it was supposed to be 175 PSI! Not only that, but there was scoring of the metal where it had been rubbing together, and there were metal shavings in the oil. So yeah, not pretty.
So they gave me a new engine.
How do you like that? 5,000 miles from warranty expiration and my used car gets a whole new lease on life! I hope it lasts me a long time, because I still owe a small fortune on that darn car.
Posted in General Nonsense | 2 Comments »
