I say that from the handful of geeks with whom I associate. Most of the geeks I’ve worked with or lived with rarely break out of their daily pattern. I had a roommate (still a good friend) who was so consistent with his food selections at restaurants, that I had his order memorized at most fast food joints in town. I was talking to another friend tonight about smoothies (I bet my one reader knows who this is!) because I know he has made a smoothie every day for at least the past two years. I recently bought me a cheap blender, so I figured I’d get good mixtures ideas from him. Turns out he has the same smoothie every day. I couldn’t do that, I get bored with the same old stuff.
I don’t know what it is, but I think there is some kind of tie with geekdom and fear of change. The geeks completely embrace change in the gaming and computing world, but in the real world, they like to feel safe by holding to the same pattern…or something. I’m pretty much just throwing out random ideas, but I think there’s definitely something going on here.
I’m a convert to geekdom, so I don’t naturally follow the flow of true geeks. Certain aspects I stick to easily, like fear of hot girls, the ability to sit and do nothing for hours as long as I’m staring at a monitor, and the love of shameless witty shows like Family Guy and The Office. But there are other things that I can’t quite grasp yet, like eating the same thing every day, thinking that PCs are superior to Macs or vice versa, and the fear of sunlight.
Tonight I played ball with the normal crew of guys that meet on Thursday nights. We usually play at a nice full sized court in a church here. That church was occupied tonight by tables and chairs, so we had to resort to a church with a smaller gym. The three point line met the sideline at about the free throw line extended, and the half court line was about 23 feet from either hoop (roughly an NBA three pointer).
We played for a while, good stuff. It was 4 on 4, which was just right. We learned a valuable lesson after playing man defense for a while. We switched up to zone and we skunked the other team the first game. Since you kill a zone by rotating the ball and bombing threes, when about half of the three point line doesn’t exist, zone works incredibly well.
So we were winding down, and just before the last game, I got back in the gym before anyone had got back from the water fountain. I picked up the ball and tried a running lefty (I’m right handed) from “half court” and it went straight through the hoop, all net. I always try to hit two in a row when I hit a random shot like that, so I tried it going the other way, same result. One more try for three in a row, got it! By the fourth attempt, others had come in and saw me end the streak by missing the fourth.
Anyway, time for another game. As soon as it started, my teammates holler “go back to half court” (which was only a few feet behind me). I did, they tossed me the ball, I tried the same shot and drilled it again! We were all laughing and I tried it next time down the floor and missed. The game went on, and when we were two points from ending the game, I pulled up for a right handed shot behind the half court line and ended it. That was the night.
Of late, I have noticed more and more of one certain problem many people have developed when using punctuation. I find the problem pretty annoying and really, I can’t think of any reason for it coming about. The problem is that people are inserting a space between the final word of a sentence and the corresponding punctuation mark to close the sentence.
For a good example of this horrible problem, here is a link to Mark Cuban’s fine example of my complaint:
Just twice today I have noticed the problem. The first time I recall seeing it was in a letter of appreciation from a customer that my employer received a few years back. The letter did quite the brutal hacking of the English language. I’m not sure there was one rule it didn’t break, so I didn’t worry that it would catch on. Unfortunately, in this world of instant messaging, text messaging, and following the mindless trends of pop culture, it has.
I just came across this by accident. This is a pretty good and humorous history of pop culture dancing from popular music videos and movies. I believe I even saw a little Carlton from Fresh Prince of Bel Air in there.
So at my work, there is a contest going on relating to physical fitness. There are teams of four, each team member tracks certain exercises that count for a set number of miles. The idea is that each team accumulates enough miles to make the trek back to Utah from Torino (oh so special).
I’ve been slacking, so recently I borrowed a friend’s bike and bought a $4 jump rope. Tonight I biked for an hour and jumped rope for 15 minutes. Man, that beat me down more than I thought. I rode the bike for an hour the other day, but it was with some other people and they were taking it pretty easy, so I did too. Tonight, since I was by myself, I pushed it, just naturally I guess. It’s more fun to go fast. I wanted to see if I could ride around the hill I live on in an hour. If you are familiar with St. George, I live on the hill that the airport sits atop. I rode down by St. George Ford, then up to Sunset and back down Bluff Street. It took me 40 minutes to ride up, then 10 minutes to ride back down. That got a good sweat going.
When I got back, I got right to jumping rope. Man, I had no idea how hard it would be to get that going. When I started out, I noticed that my rhythm was off. I couldn’t jump more than 10 jumps straight. On top of that, I was getting very worn out within just a couple minutes. See, I got this jump rope that keeps track of how long you jump, how many times you jump, and how many calories you burn. So, my stats once I finished were 1158 jumps, burning 182 calories in 12:10. The longest I could go straight without messing up was just over a minute. I did finally get the flow back, but couldn’t keep my strength up long enough to avoid tripping up. I made sure I could still do the old moves where you cross it up in front of you, then go back straight. One way I got right away (right arm in front of left), but the other way (left in front of right) took a few tries to get. I like to try most things both ways. Being a fan of Rocky, I also made sure I could do the double jump (pass the rope under you twice in one jump). That took me a while to get, but I did it a handful of times.
I hope that I’ll keep up this exercising thing, it could really get me in good shape. Maybe that will have a positive affect on my wakeboarding this year.