A Look Through Thiseye

If I ruled the world, the pay-at-the-pump at gas stations would ask all questions (besides selecting payment and fuel type) AFTER the gas starts flowing! Seriously, who’s the genius who thought they’d make the interface ask if you want a car wash or if you want a receipt up front … immediately preceding a period where the customer is going to be standing there for several minutes twiddling their thumbs? I’ll do an entire survey on your tiny screen during that time … if you just started the damn gas quicker!

I think maybe having to get regular blood tests is my punishment for never donating blood. I never really had a good reason. I’m not afraid of needles. Always felt like it would weaken me even though I pretty much knew that wasn’t the case. Oh well.

“You got a new friend, well I got homies.
But in the end, it’s still so lonely.”

Last night I dreamt that I would get to be with my true love in the
afterlife… but not before then.

As frequent users of Facebook may have noticed, the popular social-networking site has added a feature to suggest friends to other friends. This is useful if, say, Friend A doesn’t know that Friend B is on Facebook. Unfortunately, this feature is currently limited to new friends only; you can’t recommend friends to those that are already on your list of friends. However, I’ve discovered that with a little URL hacking, you can get around that quite easily. >:-)

1. Open the profile of the friend that you want to suggest friends to. The URL at the top of your browser should read something like this: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=123456789 (with possibly some extra stuff at the end)

2. At the end of the id string, type (or copy and paste) the following “&suggestfriends” so that the address looks like this: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=123456789&suggestfriends
3. Hit <enter>, and there you go! Suggest to your heart’s content!

I hope everyone reading this (that’s you!) has a wonderful 2008! Personally, 2007 was an up and down year … my back injury left a scar on the early part of the year, May brought amazing times in Vegas, and July brought 2 of the most memorable weekends of the year in the Indian/Nepalese Heritage Camp and Wyoming. September had to be one of the best though with trips to Crested Butte, Buffalo Creek, 3 concerts at Red Rocks including Muse (the best concert I’ve ever been to), and lots of drinking for some reason. And just to keep the world in balance, October was bad … real bad … with relationship issues and weeks of illness, but it ended with a fun, relaxing trip to Dallas where I tore up some expensive cars on the closed courses at Taste Of Lexus. November to mid-December were also really good times in terms of relationship, volunteering for Habitat for Humanity and finally deciding to go to college! And here, the last few weeks of the year have been kinda tough … having 12 days off with most everyone out of town, going through some tough times and making some realizations about myself and the relationship that I’m in.

So what a rollercoaster of a year! … I suppose that’s how life is. I’m optimistic about the new year, though. I feel like the building blocks are in place for it to be a great year for me! In the meantime, the year changes, but the resolutions remain the same: workout more, figure out what I want to do in life, and find someone to share it with.

And no, I wasn’t blogging on New Years Eve … this was a post from my cell phone (as noted by the “mobile” category on the post). In this particular case, I composed the post beforehand, and posted it from my phone. Yes, I’m a dork.

(and yes, I recognize the irony of the title of this post)

So most people who know me know that I have a tendency to overanalyze things. That said, has anyone else ever thought about the greetings that we give each other during special events such as birthdays, anniversaries and (particularly this time of year) holidays? We say things like “happy birthday” or “merry xmas” or “happy new year” … but are we really saying anything? Sure it’s the thought that counts, but grammatically, these are really incomplete thoughts. A noun preceded by an adjective does not a thought make (man, my grammar teachers would have a field day with that sentence ironically enough). Everyone would agree that “cordless phone”, “blue diamonds” and “purple horseshoes” are phrases that do not make sense by themselves. So in my own weird way, I usually try to extend the normally used phrases into complete sentences: “Hope you have a happy birthday” or “Have a great new year”. Still, when I have to think fast, I admit that I go with the shortened form. I guess in this fast-paced world of portable yogurt and drive-thru liquor stores, it’s too much to ask to take the time to form a complete sentence. I mean, you wouldn’t say to your friend “Great trip!” before they go on vacation, would you? Or tell your girlfriend “Red rose!” on Valentine’s Day and expect her to understand?

Ever notice that Gmail doesn’t have a “view unread messages” option? Well, I figured out an easy way to find all unread messages. Simply type this into the search field for Gmail: “label:unread” … voila! All your unread messages. Similarly, I tried “label:chat”, and that gave me all my chat archives. Of course, you could always click the “Chats” link in Gmail to see this same information, but this is useful from my cell phone because for some reason the mobile version of Gmail and the Gmail java app don’t allow you to easily see your chat archives. Try it out!

Update: You can actually abbreviate “label” with simply “l” (that is, an uppercase or lowercase “L”). So, “label:chat” becomes “l:chat”.

I’m at a bar, and I’m finding that I can’t be on my feet for too long because my back’s weak because of the brace. This sucks.

It amazes me how materialistic people can be. Everything in this country is about getting the bigger, better, faster, more powerful, newer whatever. Does this really make people happy? Actually, I know it does for some people, and that, to me, is rather interesting. I mean I have a decent car, a decent home that I own and even a nice TV. I consider myself pretty well off, but I don’t really get pleasure in buying things or upgrading. Even with the TV that I bought a few months ago, I second-guessed afterwards whether I really wanted to keep it. I mean, I know that I don’t need it. For how little I watch TV, it is excessive. But my open living room necessitates a large TV. But I’ll admit that my place is too big for me, too. So excessiveness begets excessiveness. I really think that’s what happens to a lot of people. I bought this place as an investment/nicer place to live than an apartment. I have an extra bedroom that I use only because my computer is in there. That could easily be in my living room. I bought couches because I suppose that’s something you have to have, but I don’t use them very often. I have a bar so I bought bar stools that I never use. What else am I going to do with a bar if I don’t get stools for it? I bought a dining table that I never use. Again, what am I going to do with all that space if I don’t buy a table for it? I have an extra bathroom that is completely unnecessary for me besides convenience. Only on a few occasions have I had guests that used the tub in there.

That’s what I see in my life. What I see in others makes me shake my head. I know it’s nice to spoil yourself every now and then, and I can certainly understand if there really is a benefit to the excessiveness. But how often do we convince ourselves that “it’s worth it”? Is it really? I think a lot of people aren’t true to themselves when they ask these questions. At what point does it just become a symbol of your social status? Do you really need that eight-passenger SUV? How about that 400 horsepower car? Wouldn’t something that gets, say, more than 20 mpg make a little more sense? But no, this is not a country of sense. This is a country of flashiness, of having the best, of making your neighbor green with envy. I still don’t know what happiness is, but I know that it’s not found in big houses or fancy cars … at least not for me.