Harman's Room

I didn’t quite wake up in the late afternoon, but I did have a very nice Sunday full of WoW, some schoolwork and finishing up a Web Development project I’ve been working on since November. I finished up my part and we’ll go from there, in terms of the client doing what they need to. I think that’ll finish up somewhat soon, but I’m happy with the site and my work on it — I’ll show you guys soon!

My night class, HCI has been going well. I’m looking forward to our project there, which should be a lot of fun and very eye-opening. Usually, my work on interfaces stems from what I want, not from what data shows people want, so this should be fun. I am sure the results will be awesome and I’ll post those here, too.

I have also been learning valuable lessons in life. Don’t chase too hard or care too much about people who won’t care about you back. Always be honest. Don’t keep people around if they don’t want to be, or if you don’t want them to be. Always be honest. And stop being such a goddamned packrat, Alex.

More soon, and more often. Pinky swear.

Last week I really needed to get something done, and so, out of desperation to try and find myself some mental peace and quiet, without things buzzing, dinging, flashing or blinking, I tossed my phone onto a pillow and signed off GTalk. For the longest time I had no idea why that feature was there. I’ve never been a very social person, but I _have_ always kept myself on AIM, GTalk or Skype pretty much 24/7 forever. And so there I was, without GTalk, and so subsequently without AIM.

And I was so productive.

It was a rush. I felt like a champion just by clicking a little button. I was free from the confines of a digital friends list. No one could say “hi?” as though I was online staring at the list of names choosing to ignore people with whom I didn’t want to speak. No one could pop up in the middle of the brief period of time during each day that I actually am focused on completing tasks. And behold, my productivity skyrocketed. Back into Omnifocus I went for a mental dump for the first time in a while and I breathed a loud sigh of relief: I felt organized, less stressed and calmer. ANd that’s how things have been since.

When I was in eighth grade I briefly dated Kimberlyn Knowles, a Staples Copy Center Employee who doesn’t currently return my text messages. In High School, it was Amanda. Then Kait and Jen. And Nikki and Courtney. And Sada. And Allison. And through all of this, I never took the time to realize how nice it feels in the middle of all of it when you aren’t being tugged in any direction. Perhaps my aversion to commitment is actually not such at all: I’m just too exhausted from trying to appease others that I have needed a break from this for years.

When I leave a relationship, I’m usually like a dog who knows there’s good food around somewhere. Sniffing. Looking. Sensing. Always alert. I feel such loneliness that I seek to escape by replacing those feelings with happier thoughts of a new beginning. When one door closes, I’m sprinting out the other. Well, not right now. I’m have come to the realization that I am perfectly lonely.

Had a little love, but I spread it thin
Falling in her arms and out again
Made a bad name for my game around town
Tore up my heart, and shut it down

Nothing to do, nowhere to be
A simple little kind of free
Nothing to do, No one but me
And that’s all I need

I’m perfectly lonely, I’m perfectly lonely
I’m perfectly lonely (Yeah)
‘Cause I don’t belong to anyone
Nobody belongs to me

I see friends around from time to time
When their ladies let ‘em slip away
And when they ask me how I’m doing with mine
This is always what I say

Nothing to do, nowhere to be
A simple little kind of free
Nothing to do, no one to be
Is it really hard to see

Why I’m perfectly lonely
I’m perfectly lonely, I’m perfectly lonely
I’m perfectly lonely (Yeah)
‘Cause I don’t belong to anyone
Nobody belongs to me

And this is not to say there never comes a day
I’ll take my chances and start again
And when I look behind on all my younger times
I have to thank the wrongs that led me to a love so strong

I’m perfectly lonely, I’m perfectly lonely
I’m perfectly lonely (Yeah)
‘Cause I don’t belong to anyone
Nobody belongs to me

(It’s the way, it’s the way, it’s the way that I want it)

Thanks, John. Nothing like hearing exactly how you feel from someone you respect.

The title alone could mean one of many things to you. You are likely in one of these camps:

1. You have never heard of WoW
2. You used to play WoW
3. You currently Play WoW
4. You despise WoW because the people in group #2 disappeared from your life for the duration of their account’s active status, and when they did talk to you, it was solely about WoW and because the people in group #3 are currently nonexistent in your life and will be until their account is as frozen as the Lich King.

There are two groups intentionally missing from the above: People who have never played WoW because they know they will become addicted to it, and People who have heard of WoW and have no real opinion on it. I don’t know anyone who would fall into the latter category who would not describe WoW as “that stupid game everyone plays and goes on raids for?” nor do I know anyone who really can admit to the former.

I used to belong in the first group, for a short time. In Spring 2006, I knew a few classmates who played religiously. They spoke of nothing else and I quickly tired of it. My ex-girlfriend (she was my ex-girlfriend in 2006 as well as now) Amanda began playing sometime around there was well and in August when we went to Ruby Tuesday for lunch she spent 45 minutes or so of our seventy-five minute long lunch explaining how much fun she had and how much she loved playing, and also how it scared her: that the girls at school would think she was some freak or not want to socialize with her because she played an MMO. By this point, I was a #4.

I got to school and some kids in my hall played WoW pretty hardcore. I resisted, instead getting myself excited for the Wii I would have in a few months. Everyone loved my Wii and made plenty of time to come by my room and play Wii Sports and whatever else I had. Even my roommate, who I never saw play any video games (save for Pokemon Blue, emulated on his laptop) thoroughly enjoyed TLOZ:TP on there. It was awesome. Come the spring, I inquired with a good friend of mine about the game and wanted to understand a little more about it after seeing another good friend play it non-stop all weekend. So Wrathos told me all about the game because Graveshatter was having way too much fun with it. He explained a lot about it and said “The best thing you can do is see for yourself” and invited me to a ten day trial. He helped me get acquainted and learn the ropes.

Before the end of my ten-day trial, I walked down to Gamestop and purchased a copy. The next month, I attended less than 75% of my classes. I slept less. And I played a lot of WoW. In retrospect, it was a big time-pit. My friends who were still in group #4 placed WoW-bans on lunchtime discussions. And distanced themselves from me (with good reason). But WoW is really nothing more than an excellent video game.

That’s right, I said it. It’s just a great game. The difference is that in most great games, you can explore the entire world by foot in couple of hours. In WoW, running North to South through the Barrens (From RFK up past WC and into Ashenvale) takes a good 45 minutes. That’s one of the 50 or more zones in the World of Warcraft, each of which have their own NPCs, Quests, Lore, Mobs, Rewards, Intricacies, Instanced or Non-Instanced Dungeons and more. The world is expansive and the choices and options of how you play your game vary so greatly you can play it through 20 times and have a different, rewarding experience each time.

Pikmin, one of my favorite games ever, is great, and I am skilled enough to 100% the game in 4 hours. WoW, on the other hand, is impossible to 100%. What I’m getting at is that a good game draws you in and hooks you, and WoW is no exception. The difference is that in WoW, there is no ability to 100%, but there are so many things you can do at any given time that spending time outside of Azeroth seems like a daunting task. On one character who can no longer level, there are daily quests which offer money or reputation rewards, loot to grind for to use for either of your professions, an auction house at which you can buy or sell items, player versus player experiences in which groups of subscribers battle against another group in a setting with no monsters, dungeons to PUG, complete with your guild or raid, and that’s just on one character. You might have three. Or seven. Or a few on different servers. Options are just about endless, and I’m sure there’s a ton I forgot there.

What I’m getting at is that today I headed to Gamestop and picked up a retail disk of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King and will soon be reactivating my account (I’m currently using the 10 day free trial. I look forward to my return to Azeroth and all it entails, but am aware of everything I just said: playing can have a profound impact on your life. And so, I return to Azeroth with three simple rules to keep myself from turning into an antisocial hermit devoid of any topics of conversation that don’t involve the most fun video game I’ve ever played.

1. You may not cancel any plans in order to play WoW: academic, social or otherwise. This does not exclude you from neglecting to make plans or making plans around a raiding schedule or any other form of play.
2. All obligations must be completed on time. Any deadline missed will result in a forfeiting of playing time until that task has been completed.
3. You must physically exert yourself at a gym or playing a sport for at least three hours a week unless some legitimate, non-WoW restriction becomes imposed on you and prevents you from doing so (illness, family matters, etc.)

To prove how serious I am about this, initially, I wrote “go to the gym” before acknowledging that a true addict could misconstrue that to mean “be at the gym doing anything one pleased.” I changed it to “work out” before realizing that a true addict could misconstrue that to mean “walking briskly” and occupy three hours just commuting to and from work. I am very serious about ensuring that I responsibly take up an old habit which alienated people I love. And so I firmly intend to play WoW to my heart’s content assuming the above three rules are constantly examined and I can be sure that I am not allowing it to negatively effect my life.

This may seem like overkill, but if someone abused alcohol, and hadn’t had a sip in five years, wouldn’t you want to be sure they were being cautious before telling you they planned to start drinking socially again? Perhaps the only different is that this is not “playing socially” or its equivalent but in my mind, rather, something to which I wish to make a commitment. I want to fall in love with this game for all the right reasons I did initially, without the negative effects of it. Let’s see how I do, hmm?

To provide you with background on this story, I will link you to coverage of what is potentially the largest consumer data loss ever from both Engadget and T-Mobile (TMo). In short, what seems to be a large number of users of any Sidekick, who have, from my understanding, been without reliable service or access to any of their data in over a week are now being told that their data is almost certainly gone forever due to server failure at Danger, the company who manages the software side of the devices which are still made my Sharp (save for the Slide, made by Motorola). I’m going to try as best I can to ignore the fact for as long as possible that Danger is now owned by Microsoft and that this never happened before said acquisition.

I will call out Perez Hilton for a number of reasons, namely the fact that his website, twitter feed, and poor (immature) drawings composed, I assume, in MSPaint bother me to no end. He lost a ton of contacts and data, which is a travesty, but totally avoidable. My main issue is that he then proceeded to bitch about it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t totally disagree with him (as TMo should actually be giving users a refund for time without their data as well as making cutting ties with the company in whom I know I could never trust again with my money, let alone data) but I don’t agree with John Mayer, either (because those are as easy to lose as any data). I think my real problem with his whining was his reason for not backing up his data:

PS T-Mobile used to tell Sidekick users they personally didn’t need to back up their data. They did it for us. That’s why I never did. :-(

Really? That’s your reason? The ejaculatory-mouthed drawings make a lot more sense now: you’re just not an intelligent human being.

So there are a numerous points of failure in the Sidekick Data System. Perez is not the first Hilton to have a data problem with their Sidekick (warning, Nudity) since a simple password protects all that data, and people do not know how to make a password to save their lives as we all know. Another is that, while most GSM phones either default to storing numbers on the SIM cards which grant cellular service to the device, Sidekicks default the data to the device itself, and migration is not made simple. There is no “move…” or even “copy all data to SIM Card” option. There is an option users can set to store their contacts on the SIM card when added, but I do not believe this will migrate existing contacts over (if anyone has a sidekick and wishes to correct me, please feel free). I have not used a sidekick since November 1, 2007 but users from “my day” likely would have had their contacts stored on their devices already and not made the switch. And then, perhaps, the largest point of Failure in the whole system: no backups?

The true test of a backup system is what happens in the case of total data loss. I use Mac OS X’s built in Time Machine to backup data to an external drive. You can bet that if that drive failed, I would overnight a Seagate Barracuda to replace it at nearly any cost and backup my data again the next day. But if someone stole my iMac what would stop them from taking the little hard drive right next to it? This is a problem I don’t have themoney to solve, but when I upgrade my external from the 750GB I am currently using, to something a little more spacey (either a Seagate 2TB or a Drobo) I will surely do it. The plan is to backup my machine onto two drives, and keep one offsite (preferrably) or at least somewhere other than right next to my machine (another room, closet, in a drawer, etc.). Backups are great if your computer dies of natural causes. If my computer were consumed in a fire, what’s to say the data would be okay on my external?

You’ll notice something here: no one had to tell me that my data would be okay. Seagate tells me their drives have a five-year warranty, so they expect them to last for at least five years. Apple tells me that using Time Machine is all I need to keep things backed up. Common sense tells me that one set of backups should be enough but if you’re actually relying on your data that much, you really can’t be too safe. I personally cannot rebuild my 11k Music Library: there are too many bootlegs I taped, and too much time spent organizing it. Photos are traditionally harder to replace as music can be reobtained through ripping, downloading, etc. whereas photos are usually just your own, though you might have them somewhere. Documents, again, are very personal and not distributed. But to me, those things are small losses compared to my music library. Unfortunately for me, the priceless data in question weighs in at about 60GB. Pretty substantial amount of data to backup, as versus what Perez had: some pictures, and 2000 address book contacts. How much data is 2000 contacts?

Alexander William Bradley
x-(xxx)-xxx-xxxx
someemailaddress@gmail.com

I even gave him the benefit of the doubt and included a country code, and think my name is pretty long. 25 characters for my name. 15 for a properly formatted phone number. Regardless of the length of my email addresses, again, benefit of the doubt, I’ll throw in 50 characters for an email, to be safe. That means a name, number and email is 90 bytes, which makes an entire phone book a whopping 180k worth of data. Even if you printed your phone book as a PDF (something I did before leaving TMo and periodically throughout my year of little to no service most everywhere) the file should have been small enough to email. He could have likely exported to a CSV file and imported it into something useful (Google Contact Manager, I’m looking at you).

The point is that there is no excuse for not backing up data seen as this precious, but people do it all the time. It is frustrating as a technologist to have someone rely on me to bail out a dinghy with a paper cup, when I usually don’t even need to ask if they have life-vests: it’s just assumed that the computer will be okay and they don’t need to worry, but they don’t have backups if they’re wrong (and they usually are). I am not proposing a foolproof solution here, but have a few ideas and things I actively do:

1. MobileMe iDisk – While I primarily use the service for syncing small bits of data across machines, it’s nice to know that this data is backed up somewhere, including my address book (which syncs with my phone). iDisk gives you 20GB of space and syncs pretty seamlessly through a mounted drive on your Mac.
2. Time Machine – Again, Mac specific, but, if you have Leopard or Snow Leopard and are not using Time Machine, you’re out of your mind. A free utility I have been able to use countless times for contacts alone, this takes the guesswork out of creating backups. The last time my father’s Mac Mini gave him some troubles, I went and bought one for him. “Merry Christmas,” I said. “Your data’s safe now!” — This was in September, by the way.
3. Dropbox – I have sung its praises before, but this thing’s the real deal. Imagine a 2GB Flash Drive you can’t lose that is on you no matter where you are so as long as you have the internet. It can also sync to numerous computers. I have it on four machines, so if they ever lose my data, unless they go crazy and start erasing data on your machines, my data’s safe in at least one location. Even if it wasn’t, Time Machine is backing up that data on one machine, and two are laptops, so I could just turn off wireless and grab my files (Yes, I have considered the possibility of a full Data Loss by Dropbox and syncing ‘nothing’ down to my machine. I’m paranoid).

I hope this information helps and teaches some people. This is serious stuff, guys. Don’t pull a Perez (or just don’t use Microsoft Products). I wonder if people thinking about using a Web Based, In-The-Cloud Office are watching this and making a mental note that Microsoft is not necessarily the best place to store all your files…

Selections from The Academy Is…’s Down & Out

I don’t ever want to see you again, my friend. This is the end.
Out of the house, she grabs the keys, runs for the hills and doesn’t leave a letter.
That way the impact will be much better.
Away from the man that she’s grown so fearful of, so fearful of.

Why, oh why, do you wear sunglasses in the home
when the sun went down about an hour ago?
Life should not be that way.

Always up or down, never down and out.
Dream of demons while you sleep
That make you stutter when you speak.

Some things are far too good to go ahead and let go.

Always up or down, never down and out.
Dream of demons while you sleep that make you stutter when you speak.
Speak now or forever hold your peace in pieces.

::sigh::

Last night, I was checking my email as I usually do before bed: in the bathroom, while on the toilet. Yes, it’s a very strange habit I’ve gotten in to. My dad often asks me while I’m home “what I could have possibly been doing in the bathroom for 20 minutes.” The answer is simple: urinating for one, checking my email, twitter, text messages and todo lists for nineteen.

And so I finished the one minute segment of the aforementioned ritual and stood up. I turned to my right as I always do. As I did and leaned over to flush, I really only tapped my iPhone on the doorframe, but it was accidental and unexpected enough for it to leave my hands, landing facedown for a brief moment on the inward-slanted toilet seat. Plop.

The toilet is flushing, and the unsanitary nature of reaching one’s ungloved hand into the toilet is not apparent to me in my panicked state. Having been said, even if it was apparent to me, I would have been just as quick to reach into this to grab my phone had it fallen into it. Let it be noted here that as I have already let you all into my bathroom for this story, I went “#1,” not “#2.” So in my hand went, and out my phone came. The backlight flickered and I quickly shut it off. I was shaking, thinking to myself “one second: $700.”

And at that point, all reason flies out the window. What do you do when a piece of technology gets wet? You have a few possible solutions, and none of them take less than a week, really. If you send it off to some company, it takes a while. You’re without your phone. If you put it in a bag of rice, or those little packets of desiccant that come in shoe-boxes, you’re supposed to wait a few weeks. If you’re reading this blog, you likely know me, and that means you know that I don’t even sleep through the night without using my phone. It’s a part of me like no other device has ever become. It is the digital extension of my analog self. So what did I do? Likely, all the wrong things.

1. Turn it off: good. Duh…
2. Towel: good. Get as much surface wetness off of it as I can.
3. Eject the Sim Card: this was good, too. Let’s remove the only other pieces of it to keep the water stuck to them from effecting the device. I dried them with dry sections of the same towel. After this, I start to lose my composure and subsequently try to do a few things which likely are terrible, terrible ideas.
4. The old NES Trick: some say that hair dryers are a good idea. My breath couldn’t have been too warm, but it did do one of the following (not sure which):
   • Remove water from the headphone jack, SIM slot and Dock Connector, OR
   • Push water further into the phone through those same ports. AND
   • Pushback partially-flushed toilet water onto my face near my mouth. Again: I lacked reason at this point. It was nearly 1am and I felt stupid as it was. Don’t remind me.
5. Compressed Air: this, in hindsight, was dumb. Likely did all of the pushing water in with very little of the cleaning out part.
6. Turned it back on: this is a huge no-no, but how else do I know if what I’m doing is working? ;)
7. Synced the phone with iTunes: okay, at this point, I had given up. The backlight was dead. The phone still worked, though! So I figured if I was going to need to replace the phone, I may as well back my data up, right?

Step seven above likely saved all of my data while simultaneously ensuring that my phone would never work again. So if I did it and the cell shorted, I’d have no data and a bad phone. If I didn’t, I might have a working phone in a few weeks, but I might not. And would have no data, or cell phone. Thanks to that backup I made last night at 1:11am, I now have an iPhone 3GS which looks, really, just like my 3G. It’s got all my apps, all my texts, pictures, everything. That’s all a very good thing. The $430 price tag for the replacement, which extended my service contract with AT&T for 2 years from this date, was okay, too. It’s better than the $650 I’d have paid for the “contractless” phone.

The funny thing with all of this was that I’ve owned a lot of cell phones…

• Nokia 5165 (one month, to see if I was responsible)
• Nokia 3360 (my first real cell phone)
• Motorola 120e (few months. Hated it)
• Motorola 730c (the c is for color; Amanda had one, and I wanted it. Loved this cell)
• LG vx6000 (everyone had this phone. I was late to the game, but loved it)
• Palm Treo (my bag got stolen with my cell phone in it. Charlie let me borrow this clunker. It had a stylus, hahaha)
• LG vx6000 (Courtney’s when she replaced it. She’s been through more cells than I have though)
• Danger Sidekick II (Data only. Casper made me jealous. It was great. TMo blew chunks)
• LG vx8300 (The best non-Apple phone I’ve ever had. Wonderful device, build quality, everything)
• iPhone (jailbroken and sold on eBay for $400)
• iPhone 3G (uhm, haven’t you been reading?!)

and now the iPhone 3GS. It took me that long to let a cell phone take a drink. After years of rowing, with my phone near water so much, and even in the boat sometimes, I’ve never gotten a phone more than a little wet. And so, at the request of Ted Reed I present to you a short list of Pro’s and Con’s of this situation:

Pro’s

• Faster processor, new battery, etc.
• Better camera which takes video; has a compass
• Newer, non-scratched body and screen. I popped it in my case immediately
• Battery Percentage Indicator (sorry, this is just a huge plus for me)
• 16GB of storage as versus 8GB. This means more Phish to bring around with me
• Video Tweets when Tweetie 2 comes out

Cons

• $430. This is the biggest one for me: Sonnovabitch
• Extended my contract by 14 mos
• I could have gone to bed earlier and woken up later today
• I may not be eligible for upgrade pricing come the iPhone 4G or whatever it’ll be called
• I really didn’t need any of the pros listed above, if my phone still worked

And finally, the best thing to come of all this. A Google search sent me to an Apple Support page which detailed a man who dropped his iPhone in a river while saving a drowning kitten (his story is not nearly as heroic as mine). He later asks how to remove a grain of rice from the SIM card slot. The answer is priceless:

Flush it out with river water?
;)

I think I forgot how wonderful this service was. I’ve been a member for over a year but just got back into this now that I have a few programs I use (also wonderful programs 1password and omnifocus) which I want to share across multiple machines (and two macs).

So if you have two machines, imagine having a folder on each of them, and anything you put in either of them from one of your machines will show up in the same place on your other machine. Or your other twenty machines. But even if you don’t have a particular machine configured for use, you could always just log into a website and download the files.

That’s what Dropbox is. 2GB of free storage you always have both locally and backed up on the server. No longer will you ever think “Oh, that’s on my other computer” if you store your files in DropBox. I absolutely love it. Try it out with my referral link and give me some extra storage!

So I was an “early adopter” of Snow Leopard—aka I started using it on Friday evening, the day it came out—and I have run into very few issues thus far. The only real snag I hit had to do with iStat Menus being currently unable to run on Snow Leopard: if you have it installed when you boot into Snow Leopard, you’ll see something pretty funny: all system icons in the Menu Bar—for me, this included VPN, MobileMe, Wireless, Time Machine, Monitors, Volume, Time and Spotlight—will be flickering/disappear. Also, taking a screen shot wasn’t working for me, but it also asked me to find “System Events.app” (which is in /System/Library/CoreServices/ by the way) so that may have been why.

Anyway, I actually think this one is a bug. I had some issues connecting to my apartment’s Wireless Network. I restarted the network (disabled and re-enabled) and that didn’t do anything. I hard reset the router and reconfigured everything and that didn’t do anything. I was pretty frustrated. When I typed my password (correctly, mind you, and without the assistance of CAPS LOCK) immediately said “Connection Failed.” This was obviously frustrating. I deleted the saved password in Keychain Access. I deleted my network from the list of remembered networks. I deleted the interface in the list in Network Prefs. The outcome was always the same. I was getting upset. The weirdest part was that the “Turn AirPort Off” button didn’t seem to have an effect. I could click it infinitely and I couldn’t get anywhere.

Let me describe the steps which solved this problem:

1. Open Terminal (it’s in /Applications/Utilities/).
2. Type: sudo ifconfig en1 down (replacing the en1 with whatever your Airport Adapter is).
3. You’ll likely be told that sudo could screw up your machine. Type your password in.
4. At this point, the Turn Airport Off button will still be showing. Clicking it should successfully deactivate AirPort.
5. Type sudo ifconfig en1 up (again replacing the en1 with whatever your Airport Adapter is).
6. At this point the Turn Airport On button will still be showing. Clicking it should successfully enable AirPort.

So there are a few ways to find out what you type in place of en1. Click the Apple in the upper left hand corner of the screen, and click “About This Mac” and then select “More Info…” which will open the System Profiler. You should see something like this if you select Network >> AirPort in the left hand side.

The other is to use a tool in /Applications/Utilities called Network Utilities. You can of course search for either of these in Spotlight without opening any Folders or anything. Anyway, the dropdown in the upper left hand corner of the screen will show you in parenthesis what everything is.

I hope this helps someone! If it does, please let me know :)

So since some of you likely don’t know what sudo is, it’s basically the “pretty pretty please” of computing. Your computer will abide. If you need a pictorial representation, XKCD has a great one!

I broke my blog. In hindsight, I should have known why much sooner than I did. The good news is that I posted a few new themes, and I like this site design much more than the old one. One day I’ll spend some time on this. Until then I’ll just muse about random things on it.

Lately I’ve been shown some very interesting things. I’ve learned who in my life has grown with me, and who is standing back at 17 (or sometimes, unfortunately, younger) staring at me screaming, stomping their feet and wondering why things aren’t going their way. I’m not being selfish, here, either. I’m not bitter at people from whom I’ve grown away, but rather at people whose idea of growing up lacks any clauses that involve their expanding, taking root in new soil, or trying to be a bigger person. John Mayer’s Bigger Than My Body seems to ring true here. I wake up in the mornings and literally spend my waking hours trying to leave the carbon-based shell to which I am confined. Some days I succeed, and others, I fail miserably. But I try.

My mother told me a few months ago that she was “really surprised with me” over the past year, and that she’d seen a remarkable change, as the boy she raised and yelled at for eighteen years lived at college for two years before hiding in his cocoon and emerging as a man. One who was responsible, mature and who even offered to assist her with things in order to host company at holidays. One who didn’t avoid going home. One who has, for whatever reason, spoken to his parents more this year than last. That’s when I started thinking.

Thinking about the friends I had whose idea of a good time was waking up in a strange bed with a thumping headache. About those whose favorite class started at midnight on a Friday. About people who, even in High School, were numb to the things going on around them. I can attest to being one of those people. High School was a chore I did for my parents to validate their $10k/yr. purchase and ensure that they felt I was being a good boy. I came home and quickly resorted to wasting hours online using AIM, Myspace, Napster, KaZaA, Limewire and whatever else I could find to distract myself from life.

When I come home from work now, I usually relax for a little, whether that involves some video games in my cushy recliner, or lying in bed listening to music text messaging a few friends. Then I eat (or I don’t, which is a problem) and I go and sit on the computer and do something. Very rarely is that something talking for hours and hours. Anyone in my life can tell you that more often than not, I respond to their messages when I feel like it, not when they want me to. I’m reading Google Reader, or seeing if I can do something in jQuery, or reading some programming book. My life has turned into coding things at every possible chance, whether I’m in class, at work or relaxing at home.

And I am in love with this life that I lead.

The problem in my life at the moment is that I’m too in love with things. Complacency is taking hold. I’ve got a few projects to complete

• Hoboken Tech Repair
• Aunt Jackie’s Laptop
• Haircut One-Hundred
• jQuery Form Builder
• Freelance work with Chanh

but once those things are done (I hope by Christmas) I need to get out of this rut of just sitting and coding. I love it, but I’m feeling as though that’s just when you stop something. When I got tired of being a lemming, I asked myself “Do I actually believe that some guy rose from the dead and walked on water? No.” When I got tired of bands whose songs all sounded like everyone else’s, of uninspired lyricists singing along to uninspired guitarists with uninspired drummers backing them up, I was sure to keep my ears open and, like that fateful bag left under The Enemy’s bed in Almost Famous, music has set me free, to a place and time where computers didn’t exist. I’m not tired of code (For the sake of my nearly $200,000 education, I had better not be!) but I am tiring of the monotony of coding all the time.

People tell my that my job requires absolute resolve and focus to learn; not only things that I was taught, or things I wasn’t, but things that aren’t even real yet. Computers change too fast to really teach anyone anything. My life is the application of countless abstract ideas and tools at my disposal to solve problems for others in a friendly fashion. I adore my job and all it entails, but with this love of learning comes the realization that I made the jump necessary to leave my High School days and High School ways behind. I enjoy learning, sometimes even if I don’t like the subject. I like knowing things to know them, in a lot of instances. I try to read the news that pertains to my field, and some news that doesn’t, to keep myself well rounded.

And so I wonder who, of my friends from five years ago, does this? Who, of my friends from three years ago, does this?

I’ve always been satisfied with myself musically–it’s not until after the fact when I look back on my life and say “I listened to _that_?”–and I’ve always been proud of my drinking habits: a) I have still never been drunk, and b) I drink mostly water. But now is one of those times where I am just plain satisfied. I feel myself shedding my skin more often than I ever have; reigniting my passion for football, and the passion every child has to learn and know things. I’m excited about what the coming months and years will bring to me.

Academically. Professionally. In terms of my relationships.

It’s those relationships that have surprised me the most lately. As I see myself growing not personally, but through the eyes of others, I look around. And I wonder “are you keeping up?” In some cases, people are keeping up enough, or growing with me, such that this is a nonissue. Other times, I think back to relationships I once called a part of my being, and wonder why I was so surprised when things fell apart: sure, initially the cause seemed like growing apart, but it turns out that it was a matter of growing up. I can think of a few people specifically who always had this put-together façade. And now I sit here thinking about each situation, laughing at how ridiculous things are now, and do I feel badly? Yes, because the people I’m thinking of — mcd, reh, hav — are missing out on something great: Alex Bradley, New and Improved (Now 33% more for the same price).

Let me step off the pedestal you imagine me on right now by saying that I know I have so far to go; that the quest to be a better person doesn’t end. On your death bed, you think back and say “was it a good run?” You’d better hope the answer is yes. Or it will make saying goodbye to the lives you wish you could have touched more just a little bit harder. It is with this in mind that I am placing three simple goals on myself for 2010, and beginning to think and plan now.

1. Read three non-computer related books in 2010: this may seem like a puny number, but consider it relative to the 0 books I’ve read in the last 5 years.
2. Hit the gym three times a week: again, this may seem small. It’s when I feel the need to go daily that I screw things up and get lazy.
3. Learn how to love foods you don’t love. I know my arteries will not make it to 40 if I continue to eat pork roll on a daily basis.

These activities will require a lot from me: time, mental effort, concentration, focus, money. There will be times and days when I will not want to do these things at all. Likely, these times will occur more often than the times I actually want to do these things. But am I confident?

Yes.

Why, you might ask? I have good people around me. The traitors are behind me. And, one person in particular, on whom I can always count, is going to be there for me always.

Since March of 2005 my life has always had some degree of this person in it. She has helped me through very dark times, helped me to see who I really am, and look into the future to see where I was going. Think Lakutu in Mario Kart: he’ll tell you if you’re going the wrong way. The best/worst part about Lakutu is that even if you’re trying to right yourself, but still not there, he will relentlessly tell you. This 180 degree, no grey-area attitude is also shared by this person in my life. She expects the best from me and has always demanded it. If I don’t give it to her, things are simple. She leaves until I tell her I can, and when I do that, she scolds me for making her leave. Do I argue it? Yes. Do I deserve it? Hell Yes.

This person questions the little things in my life and keeps me on track due to it. She’s a huge cheerleader of mine, even when no one else is. She objectively helps me when I come to her for advice. And most importantly, lately she’s shown me something I never felt was there: that she was here for the long haul. No matter how volatile our relationship seems, with minimal effort and good intentions, it’ll always be there for me (like Stewie promises for Brian in The Untold Story of Stewie Griffin). This has come as somewhat of a surprise due to my inability to understand just where I sit with this person. I am never met with resistance from her because I am not doing things her way. I am met with resistance from her because I’m not doing them my way. The truer I am to myself, the better off she and I are, and I will never get enough relationships like this.

She and I have never had it easy. Our relationship was short-lived and rocky would be a kind word to describe it. The rocks in our relationship were all introduced by me, and I still have trouble coming to terms with how difficult it must have been to listen to me defend myself angrily over things which were, at the time, so cruel. I reserve some sliver of my heart always for the girl in question, whose love for me will never fully vanish in some way, and who will always care for me, what’s best in my life, and who will never fail to be there for me in my toughest times, and accept me and forgive me even when I am, for lack of better words, a “douchebag”.

Thank you, Sada. For being just the person I need, and a tried-and-true best friend for about four and a half years now. My life is happier when you and I are on good terms, and I hope to, with your help, continue on my path to becoming a better person. As always, Hue and Mer.

Now, nearly 2000 words later and with much less on my chest than before, I think it’s time to put my twitter feed in the sidebar over here. :)

Today really was, in a lot of ways, a day of friends: both with and without. I got to see someone I haven’t seen in ages. I was studying for my test and she came to the desk with her computer unable to connect to the internet, and for those few minutes, my test didn’t matter and I didn’t think to worry about studying, nor leaving the desk on time as I should have. “Are you still working, Alex?” “No, I’m just here because I love Jill and want to get her online.” She smiled and laughed with her internet working, wished me luck on my test, threatened to beat me with her laptop for some wise-ass remark that I said, and left. I left smiling, too. It’s nice to know that there’s still some kind of remote and minute connection there. If I only get to see it once every few months (or less) I think I’m still okay with that. I also have gotten to see a friend with whom I haven’t spent any time save for once all year, and it’s nice to be able to hang out with her and share a laugh.

And without friends? I was pretty busy today so I didn’t really get to speak with very many of the people in my life. Of the three people who left my life a few weeks ago, two of them have left again. For reasons they deem terrific, but which honestly don’t show the signs of a strong friendship. As I come to the conclusion more and more often in my life that my abilities to hold onto friendships and prioritize them appropriately are lacking very heavily, I am truly concerned for these things, and none of the relationships in my life are easy. They are plagued by distance, complicated histories, my abilities to harm and hurt others so easily and willingly in the past, and also my inability to fix things from my past as well as, perhaps, I should have. Things now are not easy or fun, and I am struggling to keep a few of them afloat. I don’t have any issues with one of my friendships, but I won’t be able to speak with this person for a week. And no, it’s not the end of the world, but I’d love to be able to speak with them and ensure them that I am their friend and will be there if the need arises.

And then there’s another of my relationships. Things with Sada and I have hit rock-bottom. A conversation which I just knew would be too dangerous to try to fight. I sat nodding like a scared toddler without the knowledge of why the wrath of his parents were coming down on him. And since, I’ve been sitting in my room, uspet with myself and dwelling in my own boredom and pity, and came to many-a-conclusion, not the least of which is why I was getting “yelled at” (”coached loudly”) as I was, what it meant, and that the consequences of my actions are not only real, but very very important. I am Under The Gun as it were, and the gun is that of my own. My relationship with Sada has always been one of if not the most important relationship in my life, and it’s troubling to know the disparity between that fact and the way she sees it, regardless of the efforts others see. The “others” in my life really aren’t important in comparison to how she feels about my treatment of her, and if that’s lacking, then clearly there’s a game to be stepped up. I am hoping that my choices from here on out are seen as, if nothing else, a good decision for me–this may sound selfish, but in my mind, the most important thing is to make a decision which will make me happy and progress my life the most. I will continue to do that, as I have always tried to do, while thinking of all the important people in my life: the problem with these decisions is that they require time and patience, something I didn’t initially think I need.

I know I want my life to get better and improve. I don’t know if a change of scenery is what’s needed in this case, to be honest, but I feel comfortable in my life, which is never a good thing. And why should I feel comfortable with so many things going on in my life. I feel like I should do _something_ though I’m unsure as to what that is. I don’t know if I need to shuffle my cards, or get a new hand. What I know is that I am truly trying to improve my life, and will seek to continue to do so indefinitely. Class is over. Gotta go.