I’ve never been much for New Year’s Resolutions. I have one main reason: I think they are stupid. Now don’t get me wrong, I strongly believe in making self-resolutions to better yourself and your life. I think that’s a great thing, but why wait until January 1st to enact such a resolution. If you come up with something you want to accomplish or something you want to quit, why not just start right away. That’s how I like to do it. If I resolve to read more books on October 14th, I’m not gonna wait until January 1st to start reading more. I’m gonna start reading more on the 14th (or perhaps the 15th if it’s late). My point is why wait, just do it. If it’s something you want to do it doesn’t make sense, at least to me, to wait to do it.

I took it out of that post after a few people severely objected to it. Perhaps I should have left it up, but I didn’t and it’s been in the far back reaches of my head. Then suddenly today it hit me what I was really trying to say. So I am gonna have another go at it.

I am totally ok and I think it is great and healthy when the new year rolls around to reflect/ponder/think/meditate/whatever on the past year and the upcoming year and figure out a way or ways to make you better. That is good. The point I was trying to make originally is if you do come up with a way to better yourself sometime other than around new years why wait until the New Year to start on it? It’s a good idea now, so why not start now? More generally, when you come up with a way to better yourself, to use the cliche, there’s no better time then the present to start on it.

Update on my previous resolution to stop wasting so much time. Well we tried to get rid of the cable as a whole but they let us keep basic cable for free. I’ve been doing pretty good. I’ve been watching a lot of House on DVD. I am currently reading Introduction to Buddhism: An Explanation of the Buddhist Way of Life. Hmm with what else have I replaced idle TV time … Oh yea, for my birthday I got a Sukoku book and a bunch of extra puzzles my little sister stole from her math class. I have to admit they are addicting. In fact, I am gonna go do one now.

I still need to word my resolution to be more concise and descriptive. I’ll work on that in the next few days but I needed to get this out before I forgot.

Aquarius
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive. You lie a great deal. You make the same mistakes repeatedly because you are stupid. Everyone thinks you are a fucking jerk.

Pisces
You are a pioneer type and think most people are dickheads. You are quick to reprimand, impatient and full of advice. You do nothing but piss-off everyone you come in contact with. You are a prick.

Aries
You have a wild imagination and often think you are being followed by the FBI or CIA. You have minor influence on your friends and people resent you for flaunting your power. You lack confidence and are a general dipshit.

Taurus
You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged determination and work like hell. Most people think your are stubborn and bullheaded. You are nothing but a goddamed communist.

Gemini
You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you because you are bisexual. You are inclined to expect too much for too little. This means your are a cheap bastard. Geminis are notorious for thriving on incest.

Cancer
You are sympathetic and understanding to other people’s problems, which makes you a sucker. You are always putting things off. That is why you will always be on welfare and won’t be worth a shit. Everyone in prison is a Cancer.

Leo
You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are an idiot. Most Leos are bullies. You are vain and cannot tolerate criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieving motherfuckers and enjoy masturbation more than sex.

Virgo
You are the logical type and hate disorder. Your shit-picking attitude is sickening to your friends and co-workers. You are cold and unemotional and often fall asleep while fucking. Virgos make good bus drivers and pimps.

Libra
You are the artistic type and have a difficult time dealing with reality. If you are a male you are probably queer. Chances for employment and monetary gain are nill. Most Libra women are whores. All Libras die of venereal disease.

Scorpio
You are the worst of the lot. You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You shall achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics. You are the perfect son-of-a-bitch. Most Scorpios are murdered.

Sagittarius
You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless tendency to rely on your luck since you have no talent. The majority of Sagittarians are drunks. You are a worthless piece of shit.

Capricorn
You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You are basically chickenshit. There has never been a Capricorn of any importance. You should kill yourself.

Current Favorite: IS250 Legacy GT

I have this interesting conundrum and I don’t know if other people have this problem. Ok now that I think about it I know other people have this same thing going on. Looking back and currently a lot of the girls I am attracted to I know are bad for me, yet for some reason I am still attracted to them. Why is that? Maybe I’m attracted to the challenge. Maybe I’m attracted to her because I want to make her better. That doesn’t really make any sense to me though. Why not just find someone that I don’t need to make better? Why not just find someone that is already awesome? A subset of the girls I’m thinking of I know well enough to pretty well conclude (and usually verified by my friends) that the two of us dating would be a bad idea for one reason or another. Yet I’m still attracted to them for some inexplicable reason. As someone who is left-brained it confuses the piss out of me (not literally cuz that would be weird).

This whole thing reminds me of how attraction is not a choice. Which is also really weird. You don’t really pick who you are attracted to, you just are. Why is that? What in our heads turns that switch that says “yes, yes you are attracted to her.” Further, how is that defined/determined? I don’t think you are born with it, so it comes from something as you grow up … but what?

I don’t where I’m really going with all this …. sooooo discuss!

Ok, selection. What I mean by that is people selecting their parking spots. People seems damned determined in their ways. They want to park in that exact spot or as close as physically possible to the door of where they want to get even if they have to drive around for 20 minutes. They don’t even realize that they by the time they find the ideal spot they could have grabbed any open spot, did what they needed to do and be back on their way home. That’s only part one. The next aspect of selection is the camper. They are the person that will hold up all the cars behind them for 5 minutes and slow-fatty takes 5 minutes to get into their car and back out. I mean is it really that hard to take the currently open parking spot that’s a whopping 20 feet further away? Is that too much to ask? The last group is similar to the campers. I call them the stalkers. They are very prevalent during the busy Christmas shopping season at malls. This is how it works. The instant you walk out of the mall with your 27 bags full of crap you will be very slowly followed by a minivan. This minivan will slowly follow you until they determine which vehicle you drive at which time they revert to camper behavior. All the while there are 5 poor saps behind the minivan who just want to get the hell out of the mall parking lot and go home. I really like to mess with the stalkers. If I am walking towards my car and end up with a stalker I love to weave back and forth between different rows of parking or cut across multiple rows to throw off all their hard stalking work.

Now execution. People in general either suck at parking and/or don’t care. How hard is it to stick your vehicle between the two yellow lines. It’s like coloring for adults. Just stay between the lines! Oh this just reminded me of an interesting site I found a while ago: http://www.youparklikeanasshole.com/. Also make sure to check out their galleries and flickr page, they are linked under various news posts. I must admit it is awfully entertaining to watch some moron try to parallel park their car in a spot that’s big enough for at least 2 cars and still fail miserably (saw this one earlier tonight). Is it really that hard to make sure that you’re within the lines? Is it really that hard to take the extra 10 seconds to correct your park job if you are over the lines? Man people are lazy and ignorant.

As a side note why do parking garages around here consist of 80% compact parking spots when only like 13.4% of the actual vehicles are compact. It makes no sense dammit!

I think Dale Carnegie sums it up quite nicely in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People:

Remember that a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

At first I thought to myself she’s just really really busy and so it’s no big deal. But then I kept thinking, what is so dammed important that you can’t 30 seconds to talk to a friend? I mean seriously, I can think of a very few jobs (of which neither her job or mine are on that list) such that you can’t spare 30 freaking seconds. Anyways, a while later I got an email from her saying that she was sorry but she was just too busy and too stressed. That got me thinking, why am I not like that? I have more then enough work to last me a long time, yet I am not stressed about it. No matter how busy I am, I’ll always take a few minutes to shoot the shit with a co-worker. I think it’s generally a good thing. I mean it’s a quick break, it brings a smile to your face, it relaxes you. All of those are good things, especially at work. Those few minutes could make someone’s day. Conversely, denying someone could ruin their day (no, my day was not ruined).

… I hope that made sense. I don’t feel like reading it again to see if it does. So good luck.