The Robot's Thoughts

I turn 26 tomorrow. On that omission, its a slow downhill slide to 30. Its got me thinking about what I need to accomplish, or in other words, where I want to be when I'm 30.

So here's a (brief) list of goals. I'm omitting goals that are, for the most part, out of my control, such as getting married/kids because that "takes two".

• Own property. Or at the very least, save for a house. Hello, tax write off!
  
• Relocate to a more urban area. The three preliminary areas are Seattle, Wa., Boulder, Co., and Washington D.C. I have friends and family near most those areas. Its not that I don't enjoy Morgantown, but I have a feeling that what I enjoy the most (my friends) will have mostly graduated and moved on by the time I'm ready to move on.
  
• Finish my master's in computer science.
  
• Continue to swing dance. I still need to learn the Lindi Hop down pat. My footwork and timing is sloppy.
• Resume playing Piano. I played for six years and hated every god damned second of it. But that's mostly because of poor parenting. Don't ever set up music lessons for your kid on 8am on a Saturday. I don't see how my mother and father, together since they were in high school, and with nearly a decade of parenting experience thought that was going to do anything but inspire resentment and waste money. But I guess my dinosauric instructor was right: I'll be back someday.
  
• Travel. Travel. Travel.
  
• Heart hack. I just invented that term, so if its never been used before, I'm coining it. Engineering and programming teach you to recognize patterns and analyze things. You're given a toolkit to keep learning and recognize problems and solve them. I'd like to develop the same toolkit for emotional, instead of intellectual issues. Part of me thinks this might take spirituality, and re-reading the books I have written by the Dali Lama couldn't hurt, but I'm thinking some kind of rational, objectivist way of recognizing when I'm in an argument with blinders on. Or when I'm treating someone unfairly. In short, I want to re-program my emotional firmware.
• Write a book

I'm open to any ideas that aren't entirely cliche (e.g. "Run a Marathon"). But this is all I have for now, besides "get more sleep" because I'm tired.

Labels: birthdays, goals, personal, thoughts

I had a throat infection so bad that I pretty much lost my ability to speak this weekend, which didn't deter me from trying to wish Megan a happy birthday. We hit the up beginning of Oktoberfest, which was by far an awesome festival, if only Penn Pilsner wasn't such a ass-tastic beer (of this, we all agree). It was fun as we watched one of our group, Alison, get picked up by a first year law student. After he had separated her from the herd and started buying her drinks, he repeatedly attempted to get her to go home with him by using the lines, "Wanna go out to my car?" and "I just wanna talk.". After that, I think those were my catch phrases for the night.

Oh, and the guy was totally not creepy. ;) He just wanted to talk.

After the 'fest we hit up south side, my old home and prowling grounds. It hasn't changed much. The one thing about Pittsburgh is its always full of familiar faces. I ran into two girls that I somewhat knew from college. A former co-worker from my previous job, a friend of a friend, two former Pitt students that used to be engineers, and a girl I remember from being a Tower C ResCon. But at the same time, I don't really know these people enough to care what's up with most of them, so I didn't bother engaging in smalltalk (see Throat Infection).

Pittsburgh feels like a small town. In retrospect, its because it is.

I played a little BioShock on my friend's xbox 360, and I like it. The game has that System Shock feel I liked from my PC Gamer days. Go Rich Story FPSes.

All in all, aside from being sick, it was a good weekend. I needed to get away.

Labels: birthdays, friends, Gaming, personal, pittsburgh

I'm trying this blogger video post to see if it will work better than hosting the videos on my own domain. Give it a shot if you had problems with quicktime. This is FLV so it should work.

Labels: birthdays, blogger, Fairmont, friends, video

If you click the link to this picture, you will see a movie of my friend Kat blowing out the candles of her 21st birthday cake. Props to Kat.

Labels: birthdays, Fairmont, video