Baby Syndrom

I find it odd how every stage of life throws a different set of social pressures at you. There is no avoiding them and the most recent one to come my way is the pressure of having a child. Within the past 6 months friends around me have given birth to four children and the joy with which the talk about the children makes me want one too!

Yet, if we have a child, then we are immediately cemented to our location and many of the pleasures that I take part in on a daily basis will go out the window. Not to mention that the pressure of providing for the family will take my rather calm attitude and test its mettle. I certainly don't feel ready to be a father from an intellectual point of view. I'm sure that all fathers say that and by the time my daughter or son is looking to me for advice that is beyond the elementary I'll have another 10 years of experience under my belt to truly give them the worldly advice they desire... still it seems like I haven't accomplished enough yet to warrant being the adviser of something so malleable.

With the advent of social media I'm also witnessing first hand things that only parents themselves would have witnessed before or I would have only heard of months or years after it had occurred. This added insight makes me even more curious and more hesitant. As long as I don't hesitate for too long, no harm, no foul, but time is ticking the pressure is on.

Built a New Computer

Last weekend I went to Akihabara to purchase a computer. Most places you can go and pick up a computer that is prebuilt and preconfigured, but Akihabara lets you customize and outfit your computer in any way you want. For example, buy computer parts and get a free English lesson as one sign touted.

This was the first time that I've pieced a computer together from scratch. Something to be proud of? There was a lot of giga-this and that, bus speeds, slot sizes and a thousand other odds and ends to trip up along the way, but I had my trusty advisor and coworker along with me to navigate the murky, silicon waters. Thanks to his expert guidance picking out all of the parts basically came down to finding as many of last year's pieces as we could and seeing if they worked together or not. Picking up the goods from last year easily saved me half on what I would have payed for either a prebuilt system or one that had the latest specs.

The only piece of advice that I would relay on to people building their own computer, because all the other steps are intuitive, is that when you go to install the processor and the processor's fan on to the motherboard, to do it before you place it into the case. This saves you a lot of headaches, like if the fan doesn't snap into place right away and you want to inspect the other side of the motherboard for issues. Aside from this tip, I would say throwing in the ram, hard drives, etc is all as you would imagine it.

Needless to say, but I am very happy with the purchase and the system is buzzing along and working like a charm.

Happy for 'Bron

It's about time LeBron made for some kind of controversy. I read in the ESPN forums about how LeBron should grow up and be more mature and shake hands at the end of the game. I think it was exactly that, immature and selfish, not to congratulate the other team on a great performance on their end. It's natural to be frustrated and not to want to look your opponent in the eye or give them a pat on the back just after they whopped your ass, but that's something you grown into.

LeBron should be judged heavily for this and maybe a chip or two can be laid on his shoulder. The guy has been so unbelievably mature from the moment that he entered the NBA that this kind of slip up is necessary for him to know or at least for us to know that his is human. I think that you need to let your guard down and give people the opportunity to poke and question you to bring them closer to you. If LeBron learns (and he's been a very adept learner to date) from this it will, as they say, only make him stronger.

Stuck in the Web

I read about a mother finding her lost child on Facebook after 20 odd years of separation and reminded me of friends that I had been out of touch with since high school or earlier. Conveniently and, admittedly, frighteningly I was able to traverse the deep roots that run deep into the society of America and the world. I was equally fascinated and disturbed that information can be this easily accessed from anywhere in the world.

What we put up online will now be forever immortalized in the digital kingdom. Even if I was to remove my account from Facebook, the bots and spiders from Google, the Way Back Machine and numerous other sites will have cached and indexed every last image and word to make going backwards impossible. This is not a web that that can be unraveled. The web, while it started off as a metaphor for interconnectivity can be extended to the true nature of a web, which is to catch the fly passing by.

While I didn't mean to go off the deep end and wax pessimistic, I ended up there. In the end, though, I'm grateful for all the freedoms the web allows for information it unfurls to the curious.

Just check out the search feature of Twitter to overload your senses in no time.

Bing!

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Bing

Top 10?

In honor of the Cavs historic collapse so far in the playoffs I thought I would try and counteract the negative forces in the universe by helping my bowling team look a little less lowly by winning 4 of 4 tonight. A strong performance in the first and third games pushed us over the edge and we narrowly edged out the 11th place team to grab all four. We were still so far behind the 11th place team in terms of total wins that we are stuck firmly in the cellar, but it was nice to see our win total leap over the 10 win mark.

On a personal level I have my fingers crossed that I'll land within the top 10 within the league this season, which would be an all time high for me. Bought time that I moved up in the ranks versus all these old guys anyway. Sure, some of them have been bowling since the league started back in '62 or when the war ended... but what have THOSE guys got!

As always the Golden League was great fun again tonight and a 42% increase in wins for the season doesn't hurt either.

Tron

Watched Tron for the first time today (in its entirety). 1982 release date and computer graphics above and beyond anything else that came out in the late 70's or early 80's. The dialog sucked, although the infusion of numerous geeky phrases and puns made up for it a bit.

Come on, you scuzzy data, be in there. Come on.

Never having seen Tron as a child leaves me feeling joyous and empty. On the one hand, it's one point missing from the geek column, but on the other hand, it suggests I had other things to occupy my childhood aside from movies. I do remember the video game, which apparently the movie studio made more money off of than the original movie. So from that perspective I just followed the masses and was never a member of the cult following that originally supported the movie.

This is the key to a new order. This code disk means freedom.

Interestingly we watched the movie with sub titles and at least 10% of the lines said in the movie were not reflected in the subtitling. Not sure if this is an original flaw with the release of the movie or just the DVD production somewhere down the line. I can understand it when going from one language to another, but was surprised to see so many words dropped. Is this common practice for subtitling?

20 years ago I would have given this movie two thumbs up (for blowing my mind with computer graphics). Things are always relative, so hard to say this, but would give it one thumb up as of today. Thoroughly enjoyed watching the movie though and will always make a prime candidate for the now defunct program Mystery Science Theater 3000.

End of line.

May is the best month for sports

The Cavaliers lost today to the Orlando Magic, second loss in three games now and they have yet to dominate a game like they did all regular season. James continues to put up impressive numbers, but I get this sinking feeling that he's trying to put the whole team on his back. One man can make a difference, but I don't buy the rhetoric that one man can carry a whole series.

The French open has also started. My own foray with tennis succumbed to a rain delay on Sunday. Good since my forearms were pretty tired from climbing in the morning, but bad because I was looking forward to playing against my two coworkers. I'm going to pick Nadal to win it all again at Rolland Garros. Would be fantastic to seem him pull off yet another win on clay. Equally thrilling would be to see Roger Federer come back and stick it to Nadal to revenge the Australian Open loss earlier this year and upteen other loses at the French Open. It will be another thrilling fortnight for sports!

Oh, and go Penguins.