Tuesday, November 29, 2005

judo

I went past the maxercise (www.maxercise.com) studio yesterday. I go to Landmark Education in philly, and the Maxercise studio is right around the corner. They teach gracie jujitsu, judo and aikido. I want to do the judo and aikido first. Not only because it's cheaper, but because i'm a little scared. Pain and injury, i can handle it. I would just expect that the people that go right into gracie training have got an axe to grind. I'm not trying to be the chopped wood. I also like that they have a gym. I can go there to practice my bodyflow (http://www.rmax.tv/kinetic.html -watch the video montage). I also want to go do judo because i'll have a community with which to practice. I don't exercise much because there's nothing to exercise for. Exercise right now exists like its for nothing in particular, but if i had a sport to apply it to, hype stuff. I did some light research on judo through wikipedia, basically it's a refined form of jujitsu.
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ipod and computers

So they're the greatest thing ever, next to breathing eating and sex of course. They even beat the invention of fire, sliced bread and gluestick. There's a commercial were a young person is walkind down the street listening to their ipod, while their shadow is going balistic, dancing. The cool think is that that really represents how much people are really jamming to the sounds of their ipod internally, while having a hard candy shell like m&m's.

The only problem is that my computer situation is outta-whack. I have the ipod shuffle, a present from my girl. Wonderful thing it is. These small players were made for people who have laptops, or consistent access to computers where they can play with their playlist. I have my computer in my brother's apartment, and i'm almost never there. So, i'm not really building my music library that much. I got wind of a few sites that are really cheap (www.mp3search.ru and another one i can't think of) so when i get a moment i'm going to drop like $50 (at 10 cents a song, that ain't bad eh?)

I can't wait to get a computer. I'm going to get the baddes MFin computer under $400. Just kidding, i'm looking to get something with an althlon 64 (3500), 19 in monitor, 512 ddr2 ram and a dvdburner (cd burner gotta be fast). I'll probably partition the hard drive into three sections, one for music, one for games and one for the rest of the XP OS.

Speaking of which, i got a norton three-pack (systemworks, firewall and spam filter) for 89.99 and a $90 rebate. I put it on every computer i could get my hands on (mine, mom's, girls and soon my dads). I feel so much safer with that on it. My folks haven't had something that does the 'dirty-work' such as defrag for speed, run anti-virus and prevent them, for a long time, perhaps ever.
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10 year reunions

So i went to my high school ten year reunion on friday, the day after thanksgiving. I had a blast. Apparently i had to learn the hard way what 'semi-formal' means. I went in a blue-brown-white striped shirt and some slacks. I cared for about five minutes that other people were in suits. But then i realized that most of the people, already know i'm a fool.

There is nothing like partying with people that you know and who you care about.

That's about all there is to say. The only problem i have with reunions is that they're a one-time thing. Why can't we have like an alumni gathering like twice a year (for each graduating class) and like monthly as a networking thing. Well, that's just an excuse for me to drink some more, but so what.

I'm just glad i didn't make a fool of myself (i think). I realized i knew a lot more people than i thought. I have it that i was some introverted nerd in high school. I think the real problem was that i didn't hang out with school friends outside of school. The weird thing was that throughout the whole reunion, there were no weird 'get re-acquainted' moments. Soon as two people knew who each other were, family again.

Central High School of Philadelphia
Graduating class 254
. . . and so much more
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Thursday, November 17, 2005

why the revolution, or anything like it, won't be televised

Yo. I just read one of the hottest articles ever. you can find it at http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8673. When i tried to read it a second time, the server was under attack. By who? i don't know.

Anyhoo. The article is about how the Net as we know it (or as most know it) will die if the telecoms and cable companies get their way. Basically they're doing what big oil and car companies did back in the day. You see, the big oil company used to be Standard Oil, owned by John D Rockefeller. One of the the richest men to ever walk the planet (he owned 35% of the American economy!- makes Gates look poor). I guess he was obsessive compulsive. Basically he had a little company selling gas. However, he'd get shaky kinds of gas and he didn't like that. So he bought a couple refineries in order to make sure that he had a good quality of gas. Then he didn't like how his gas suppliers were unreliable, so he bought them. His basic thing was to make sure that people got good quality gas on time. And from this singular vision, he created an empire. Standard oil used to be the combination of texaco, exxon, mobil and two other oil giants!!! You thought they were big.

Now the car companies. If you look at pictures of cities back in the 30's, you're bound to see lots of light-rail: trolleys, small trains etc. Back in the 30's, car companies started buying congress to make sure that these rail systems became underfunded and died. Why? because they didn't make trains, they made cars. So bascially they lobbied and bought national and local congresses across the country simply to get them to stop funding their competitors. If you notice, people argue about AMTRAK all the time, but nobody says anything about the billions that the oil, car and airplane companies get in government subsidies and write-offs. Why? Cars.

So what's happening with the Net? Well, the telecom services are basically acting like the car companies. They don't like giving people access that want it. They want to restrict access to the Net to specific ways: cable and satelite. However, there are new things like wi-fi networks and various other ways of choosing how to get on the net. They're trying to outlaw and restrict how people get on the net.

The article goes really deep into what the phone companies are doing, and why the people vying for a 'free net' are losing the battle, not only in the public domain, but also in the courts and committees of congress.

So basically the phone companies are doing what the car companies did: eliminating the competition. I'd go on, but just go read the article. It's long, but its hot.
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Monday, November 14, 2005

Google RULES!!!

So i got the google sidebar. It's not doing much becasue most of the time i leave my computer on. Apparently it's supposed to be able to search your hard drive and all your computer-related history to find all the stuff you want. I heard of this in a program called "groxis" that displayed the information in terms of a mind-map or something. That program sounded cool, but light years away from me at the time.

I just hope that anything i type won't be used against me in a court of law. What would happen if Ashcroft and Cheyney became heads of google? argh
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Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Metis

A friend of mine, and seems to be future partner of some sort, has been toying with similar ideas as i have - the creation of a business engine. Basically, an incubator, but accelerated. I guess its more so an incubator network.

So Kareem, his name of course, has the name "metis". Apparently Kareem found some reference where some anthropologist talks about 'metis'. Metis is supposed to be a ancient greek word for the knowledge that veteran seamen have about the tides and storms. This isn't something that you can teach in the course of a couple years. Rather, its the life-long wisdom that they gain from thier particular trade. Unfortunately, most of what i've seen, metis is the name of a tribe in australia. I'm waiting for the footnote reference. Basically he wasnts to create a 'metis' for enterpreneurship.

I'm all kinds of excited.
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Tuesday, November 01, 2005

i haven't been here in a while

blogging must be a fickle thing. but life isn't.

In the past couple weeks i've been grappling with some deep issues, committment, spirituality, existence, why my socks keep getting holes (because i don't cut my toenails very often). I think i'm in my 1/3rd life crisis. I dont know what to do with myself. I don't think i'll get into grad school. I only kinda want to puruse a career in teaching, and i'm half-a$$ing the idea of starting an incubator (but that's what i really want to do).

I'm a new fan, again, of my ipod. I lost it for a couple weeks, until i found it in my shirt pocket while doing laundry. Now it's loaded with a 5* mix of hip-hop -mos def, roots, biggie, common. From this i notice that i'll have to be way more careful about how i listen to and rate music. I got a best of Jay-Z mixtape and went through my 5* hov songs, not all of them were 5*. Because i don't want trash on my computer, i'm more apt to listen to an album a couple times to see what i want to delete. I'll have to make songs to delete 2* instead of three. That's just so i can keep track of the three levels of songs i have: 5*-eternal classic, 4*good, but not classic, 3* mood good. so that basically means that i have to re-star many of my songs. It doens't help that my computer for some reason plays song in some weird techno-electronic mixup where i can barely understand the beats and words. So i literally can't use itunes to listen to music. I just charge up my ipod and listen to it while on the computer. I don't mind the inconvenience, becasue then i can blast the music. but then i think about hearing loss becasue i'm gonna live a long time. rambling i am, enough yet for you?
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