New visitors, Warcraft, Batman, and Teeth

The number of my blog visitors has increased greatly within the past two weeks and I thought, “Hey Jon, maybe you shouldn’t throw the SERIOUS ISSUES post in the face of new visitors.” So to all new visitors, I encourage you to think of sunshine and flowers. Yes, yes, how nice.

Tiffy had her wisdom teeth removed a few days ago. Overall it is going pretty well. She stopped bleeding on the first day and is now just dealing with the pain hangover. She’s a trooper. When I had mine removed, I bled my own blood for two or three days.

Despite years of trashing MMOs and their addicting qualities to any video gamer who would listen to me, Tiffy and I started playing World of Warcraft a month ago. We’ve played almost every day since installing it, for at least an hour. These type of games bore the hell out of me when I tried playing them alone, but it’s actually a lot of fun when playing with someone you know. We also picked up Lego Batman the other day for $20 at Best Buy and man, that game is hilarious.

I’m beginning to work on a new web site and I’m excited about it. Classes start back up on August 24th so I’d like to get a good start with some momentum going by then.

Currently I drive a Subaru but I’m beginning to think of what car I’d like to buy next. Maybe a Honda. I’m going to drive my Subaru until it can’t stand me anymore, which hopefully isn’t any time soon. I bought the car used for $2,880 in 2007 and I’m hoping it will last me until 2010 without needing any major repairs. It was made by the Japanese (they actually know how to make reliable cars) so I have faith.

The Big Issues: My Views

Here I will summarize my thoughts on some of the big and popular issues we face in life.

God
I have no religious affiliation, but I do hope there is a God and an afterlife. I can’t scientifically prove there is. I don’t think anyone can. I don’t care if you believe in God, just be respectful of others. I enjoy life and prefer if it goes on after Earth. Being dead sounds so boring and… well, lifeless. I hope God’s not as childish as some claim.

I think some Christians need to chill out on damning everyone to Hell, and I think some Atheists need to chill out with attacking religion as if the whole world would be perfect if religion did not exist.

Meaning of Life
Humans inherently want freedom and happiness. So anything that contributes to these two things for everyone is a good idea, I think. So my meaning of life is to enjoy it and help others do the same. If I can’t help someone, then at the very least let me not get in their way.

Morality
The Golden Rule sums it up well. Think about how you would want to be treated, think about how the other person would want to be treated, and find ways to create a win/win situation.

Philosophy
I’ve studied some philosophy since my early teens. Not the really really deep stuff, but fairly deep. My conclusion: Philosophy leads you to think a lot about pointless crap. Still, it can expand your mind in useful ways. Sometimes I thought I think too much and just needed to turn off my mind.

Abortion
People should practice safe sex and avoid abortions. I feel women should have the right to an abortion if they so choose (especially for cases like rape, which is uncommon), but it is better to just be smart and avoid that moral and physically distressing decision to begin with. Even if you have no moral objection to abortion, it’s not like it’s a fun thing to go through regardless. Just use a condom, swallow a pill, or do both. It’s easy!

Politics
I have no political affiliation. I am not a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or anything else. I think each party has some good ideas and some bad ideas. It depends on the issue.

If you’re curious, I voted for Obama last election. He had a nice logo. I strongly considered Ron Paul but since he practically gave up on winning, I just sent in my vote for who I knew would be the winner anyway. There’s nothing wrong with choosing not to vote. There should be a checkbox for “None of the above.”

Marriage
I like the idea of a monogamous marriage and plan to have one. An increasing number of people my age don’t like the idea of marriage, I’ve noticed. It is common advice to “wait until your 30s before you get married.” This is good advice for many people, but it doesn’t apply to everyone. Some people can become happily married in their 20s, others should wait until their 30s or 40s, and many people should probably never get married at all. It all depends on the person.

True love is more often a decision than just a feeling. Every couple has their rough spots but if both members are willing to communicate and remember that they’re working together to build something for each other and for themselves, then it can be a great gift they share.

Homosexuality
I don’t think most homosexuals “choose” to be gay, just like I didn’t “choose” to be straight. Why do I hold this opinion? I’ve read a lot of research and discussed this issue in a couple of college courses. The scientific consensus is that homosexuality is mostly biological and partially influenced by society.

Health
Being healthy is important. It’s probably more important than time and money combined. If you have all of the time and money in the world, but are stuck to a hospital bed in pain, what good is it? Taking care of our health (in developed countries) is simple enough with our vast resources of fresh foods. It can be easy to slack off though. I sure slack a lot, but I’ve been getting better.

Being Green
Using renewable and cleaner energy is very important and we need to strive towards that. We should all be driving electric cars by now. With that said, I feel many “green” people go way overboard, especially with some of their conspiracy theories, and they just end up looking like silly hippies.

Career
Whether you work for yourself or for someone else, it is important to find a career you genuinely enjoy and make enough money to support your lifestyle. Most of us spend a significant amount of time working and we should be happy and fulfilled while doing it. I know for some this is easier said than done, but it is worth pursuing. Your career (and your life) should be contributing something valuable to the world, even if that means you’re just sweeping a sidewalk so that no one trips.

Memorial Day Weekend

I hope you had a great holiday break! Tiffany and I went to the Omni Orlando resort for the weekend. It was fun and relaxing.

I’m thinking about creating a new web site, likely computer related. I’m still doing a bit of research into what subject exactly I’d like to talk about. Something with computer programming. I want to write about getting started in it, not only to help others, but to reinforce what I have learned in my own mind.

Not much is going on, really. We’re back home now and I go back to work tomorrow. I want to play tennis soon.

End of trial habits and new theme!

New Theme
I’ve been browsing WordPress.com themes for my blog and trying out different ones. I originally had a darker theme that I liked, but I wanted to have black text on a white background for readability. So I tried some other themes, but I felt they were too white. My current theme has a mix of dark and light, so I think it will be good. My header image is currently a picture of the knights from Castle Crashers. I plan on changing it once in a while to something else that I enjoy.

Habits
Two of my three last entries were dedicated to me trying out new things and seeing how they worked for me. Here are the results:

This month has flown by!

Water & Exercise Trial
This one didn’t go as well as I had hoped. I did a good job of staying consistent with my goal of water intake. Some days were missed, but overall it was a good effort. I drank more water this month than probably at any other time in my life. Some people report feeling “cleaner,” more energetic, better skin, and overall feelings of better health. For me, I did not notice any strong difference. I think I felt a little healthier and cleaner, especially inside my mouth, but I didn’t notice any major differences to my energy or skin or general feelings (once I got over my initial headaches from lack of soda). Maybe I have already been getting enough water in my system so it didn’t make much of a difference.

The only downside was that I felt bloated sometimes, like I just had too much water in me. I especially felt this way on days I didn’t exercise. Maybe 80-100 ounces is good on exercise days, but I should cut back to 60 ounces on non-exercise days. I’ll need to experiment some more.

Although my water intake went well, my exercise program failed horribly. I started out mildly consistent, but then I came down with flu-symptoms for over a week. Some people suggested swine flu, but who knows. I never went to the doctor. I don’t like the idea of paying hundreds of dollars for someone to look at me and say, “Yep! You’re sick. Here’s my bill.” Geez, thanks Doc! So I had to take it easy during that time and jogging around was the last thing on my mind. I did manage to play some tennis but I ended up feeling worse because of it, so that might not have been the best idea.

Hopefully the next 30 days will involve more daily exercise. I’ll keep you updated. I did notice a weight loss of a couple pounds, but my weight always goes up and down a few pounds every month it seems, so my water intake didn’t seem to change that. I enjoyed drinking the water and avoiding the empty calories of soda, so I will continue to replace my soda with water. However, I don’t think I want to give up soda completely. It’s something I enjoy sipping on, especially during a movie or something like that. I used to drink a lot of green tea but fell out of the routine. I intend to start drinking more of that again. It’s yummy and full of antioxidants. Tea helped me feel a lot better when I had my flu/cold/illness.

No Forum Trial
Technically, it hasn’t been 30 days yet, but I’ve learned what I wanted to learn about myself so I cut this one off a little early. Basically, I saved a lot of time by avoiding forums, and I really don’t feel like I missed out on anything. I’ve started posting again with the new frame of mind that I don’t need to look and engage in so many conversations. I’m going to be very specific with what I want to talk about and not waste my time on “pointless chatter.”

I think I may setup a timer every day, for maybe 20 minutes, where I’m just focused on visiting and posting at my various forums. If I’m focused, this should be enough time to contribute everything I want to. This is easier to monitor the time than if I were to visit the forums throughout the day like I usually have.

So that’s all for now. Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

Happy Anniversary to… me!

Exactly one year ago Tiffany (my girlfriend) and I started going steady. I honestly can’t believe how fast it has gone by. I try to think about it and wow, time really does fly. We’ve had a very good first year. We went on a few exciting trips, like Canada and London. We’ve spent a lot of time together, learned a lot, and even had some fun arguments! I’m looking forward to the future.

Despite today’s celebration, this week has been rough. I’ve come down with some sort of cold. I’ve had headaches, bloody runny nose, body aches, joint aches, stiffness, dizziness, and so on. Today at work I was calling a nurse to give her a username and password for an online tool I helped develop and I had to hang up on her in the middle of it. She heard me start coughing and I just couldn’t stop for a good 10 or 15 minutes. I started sweating like a marathon runner and it was just awful. I was able to go into a bathroom and calm myself down but it took a good amount of effort. The coughing fit came out of nowhere. I got back in touch with the nurse and apologized for my sudden rudeness. She didn’t mind and wished me to get well soon. It’s kind of embarrassing to start coughing uncontrollably and hang up on someone, but I really had no other choice because it was so rough I literally could not speak.

I’m glad the weekend is here. I hope by Monday to be back to 100%. This sickness has greatly interferred with my efforts of creating a normal workout routine. I can’t really jog and lift weights when it takes so much effort to even walk around in an ordely fashion!