Robots Don’t Sleep

Imagine one of the hardest activities you could possibly push yourself to do. Now, imagine that you’re having the time of your life while you’re doing it.

For the past two weeks on Friday, my company’s CEO has been inviting all the employees to a mountain biking ride on these trails around his house. The Huckabee Mansion, we call it. Anyway, I’ve gone on both of these biking adventures, and so far I have yet to be disappointed. I have to admit that it has been extraordinarily difficult, but at the same time, when I find myself at the top of this beautiful hill overlooking green valleys and the pacific ocean in the distance, I can’t help but feel like I’ve made it.

I’ve made it.

Allow me to explain. There are two distinct and extremely bi-polar aspects of mountain biking. The first is the hill climb - the hardest part. You’ve got to use every muscle in your lower half to push yourself up this steep incline while trying to keep your balance (which is extremely difficult at a very low speed). You find yourself at a point where you’re spinning your pedals furiously, only to find that you’re creeping ever-so-slightly up this hill. The end never seems to get any closer.

Now, I’ll admit that during both of these outings, I’ve reached a point in my climb where I’ve given up. My legs simply cannot push me any further and I am forced to dismount my bike and walk it up the remainder of the hill. I remember these moments not as failures but as learning opportunities. I know there’s been plenty of times in my short career as a developer where I’ve reached a point when it seems like I can’t go any further. I mean, I didn’t have the strength to make it up this hill, so why try going over the next?

The truth is that with every hill you don’t make it up, there will be a time when you can try again.

The second aspect of mountain biking is an extreme polar opposite to the first - the downhill cruise. This requires no physical effort from the biker other than quick thinking and fast reflexes. Don’t get me wrong, there seems to be some strategy to this, but I haven’t seemed to figure it out quite yet. Honestly though, I can’t come up with anything to compare this experience to. Your adrenaline is pumping, you’re exhausted from exerting yourself to your full potential to get to the summit, and now you’re trying your hardest not to offset your balance or lose control. Of course, this would most likely mean that you would fly over your handlebars and roll down a steep decline lined with rocks and brush.

In my opinion, this is the best part. However, I can’t help but hang on to the brakes for dear life and take the fall slowly. Hopefully that means I won’t lose control, smash into a rock, and die. However, I like to imagine letting go of the brakes one of these times and riding out the decline straight to the bottom, without a scratch on me.

I can only hope to be so lucky.

Well, the new blog is up and running, and I think I have the layout at a place that I like at the moment. I really like playing around with CSS, but for some reason I always forget what time it is while I’m doing so. For example, Saturday night I got to a good stopping place and figured, “Alright, I think I’ll head to bed now… it’s probably around 1 or 2 in the morning.” Nope, I was wrong. It was 4am. Things like this happen when I get intensely focused - I lose myself in trying to accomplish a task and forget everything else.

Anyway, WordPress is all set up and I added a little RSS button in the top-right corner of the page. I’m hoping that maybe this attempt at blogging won’t be a miserable failure like my past attempts. Maybe people will actually read this time.

Now that I’m done with school and working, I can see how some people start aching for a side project to jump on. During school, it was always really hard for me to focus on getting my homework done and do work for a side project. Now, I’m finding little projects to do like upgrading the Media PC to Vista, swapping out hard drives, and installing themes and applications on my brand new phone. Oh, that’s right. I got a new phone and I love it! It’s an HTC Mogul and it is awesome. I also got on the Sprint SERO plan (1200 minutes, unlimited messaging, and unlimited data) right before it died, so that made me extremely happy. Only 50 bucks a month! Whoo!

Uh oh… time to go to the gym. Today’s my last day with my Personal Trainer unless I buy more sessions, which I won’t be able to do for a little while, so hopefully he can show me the workouts I need to do until I’m able to afford some new sessions. My goal is 20 pounds in 10 weeks. Let’s see how that goes.

I thought I had been doing alright for a little bit in terms of my weight. Around this time last year, I lost about 25 pounds and I was feeling good. I was working out a bit, not a lot, but enough so that I was actually feeling active and good about myself. Then, of course, winter came around and I gained a bit of it back. After Thanksgiving, Christmas, and my trip to Austin in January, I wasn’t doing too well keeping up with my weight.

So once again, I tried going back to working out a bit and just watching what I ate. This time, I was able to lose a bit and maintain it for a while, but eventually my laziness caught up with me. In the past 2 months I’ve gained most of it back and I’m almost back to where I was a year ago (before the weight loss). I blame it on senioritis and the stress of finding a new job and moving.

I figured, enough is enough. I’m out here in California now with a new job and I realized that now is as good a time as any to get back in shape. So, I joined a gym and I got a few sessions with a personal trainer to get a workout plan and a diet going. Yesterday was my first day with the PT but I have another meeting scheduled for tomorrow after work. Hopefully it goes well, and I can keep this up. I’m feeling pretty tired right now, which is definitely a good thing since I can actually start going to bed a bit earlier than normal.

Also, I bought the domain http://www.robotsdontsleep.net today, so I’ll probably be migrating there very soon. No one really reads this anyway, so I’m thinking that I will just migrate entries over there and then sort of start fresh with actual readers. Sound like a plan? Great.

Well, I’m officially DONE with school. I now have a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and I am so relieved that it’s over. I know it’s been awhile since I posted last, but I’m probably going to be moving to a new blog soon. I’ll get WordPress set up and finally buy a domain. I’m thinking probably www.robotsdontsleep.net or … does anyone have any other suggestions?

Also, I have been living in California now for about a week. I just started my new job on Monday and I couldn’t be more excited. I am doing some awesome work and I’m convinced that this is pretty much my dream job. Everything is just going perfect. If only I could get back into shape… Grr… I joined a gym today and I signed up for 3 personal trainer appointments. Hopefully if I’m paying for this damn membership I can get my ass to the gym every day. I really want to go to the beach. I’ve also been watching a ton of Arrested Development lately. God I love that show.

Wayne Jarvis: I spoke with GOB. He appears to know nothing.
Michael Bluth: Yeah, that’s not an act. He’s twice tried to microwave a Ding Dong while it was still in its foil… twice.
Wayne Jarvis: Twice?
Michael: Two times.

Lastly, I just wanted everyone to check out the new neude.net/. It has an entirely new format and I think it’s actually going to succeed. Before, it had kind of reached a niche among Neumont students/alumni/potential students, but I think with this new format it will have a much broader variety of readers. I’m probably going to be contributing to it soon, so check it out. Subscribe to its rss feed if you want.

As always, this is where I promise I am going to write more often. I’m hoping this time I keep that promise.

It’s getting close… I will be graduating from Neumont University in less than 6 weeks. However, our graduation ceremony is actually this coming Friday. I’m really excited about having my parents in town, but we’ll see how well our house can hold as many people as are going to be here.

Michael: Will they throw their hats, you think?
Ryan: What?
Michael: A lot of times, at a school, or naval academy, after a rousing speech, the crowd would throw its hats high into the air.
Ryan: You understand nobody’s graduating?

Because graduation is coming up so quickly, I have been working hard on trying to secure a job before I’m out of school. I’ve updated my resume, thrown it online, and am fielding off dozens of calls from company recruiters that scour Monster and Dice daily. We’ll see how this all plays out. I have interviews pretty much all next week, and I’m looking at applying at some companies that are not a part of our Career Week. I’m really hoping that I can find a job somewhere outside of Salt Lake, but if it comes down to it, I won’t be entirely disappointed if I have to settle here for a few years. Also, I bought a suit! Finally.

Of course, now is the perfect time to get sick. I came down with a sinus infection on Sunday, and have been feeling like crap all week. Hopefully I will get over it by next week for interviews and graduation.

On the political front, I was really disappointed when Obama lost Pennsylvania. It wasn’t entirely surprising, though, seeing that Hillary’s campaign spent its entire time in Pennsylvania mudslinging. I’m so sick of these non-issues that keep coming up and dominating the media. I don’t give a fuck about Reverend Wright, or Obama’s bowling score, or the “bitter” comments. I am just waiting til the day in the near future when I wake up and read that Hillary has finally thrown in the towel. She’s been done for awhile, and everyone has been calling for her to drop out of the race for months.

It’s already May. Holy crap where has time gone?

Michael: May your hats fly as high as your dreams.

I’ve gone two months without posting.
But, I’m going to try to write more.
More for me.

Ok, so today was a very nostalgic day, spent remembering a lot of things from my past. I came to the same conclusion that I always come to when feeling like this, and that is this: while I am only somewhat content with who I am right now, I am glad that I’ve grown as much as I have, and in the direction that I have grown. The old pictures and old memories and old friends all have a great significance to me, but that’s not the way it is anymore. I think I’m almost entirely disconnected from my old friends’ lives, and it doesn’t really bother me. It’s not that I don’t miss them, but the person that misses them right now isn’t the same person that they knew.

I’m graduating very soon, and it’s kind of a big deal. I’m not sure if I’m going to ever go back to school. I may be done forever. Who knows. Right now it feels very strange because I only have one class, and I spend the rest of my day downtown at my internship. I get paid for any hours that I work extra, but this past week I haven’t had a chance to put in any extra hours. This is kind of a problem because money has been an issue as of late. Allow me to explain.

Since these are my last two quarters, and my credit requirements aren’t very demanding, I am only doing school “part-time”. Last quarter I had 11.5 credit hours, and this quarter I only have 11. Sure, I could’ve graduated last quarter, but the lease on my house isn’t up until June, and I didn’t want to feel stuck here working just because of my lease.

Anyway, since I am only doing school part time, I can’t borrow as much money as I could before from my student loan when I was doing full-time enrollment. Therefore, my living expenses was cut by half. Of course, I didn’t find this out until the middle of the quarter, but that is always how these sorts of things happen. So, since my living expenses were cut in half, I barely had enough money to go home for spring break (which, I admit, was actually a really dumb idea). So, I was broke the whole time I was in New Mexico, and had to borrow money to come back to Utah. Then, of course, I was totally broke when I was actually back in Utah. Fun times. See, my parents aren’t really able to support me financially, so I was stuck scraping money together for food and gas for two weeks.

I should be getting my financial aid disbursement sometime this week, so that will help greatly. I’m very much looking forward to getting that check, even though it won’t be for very much. I guess, in a sense, I’m very excited to finally be able to support myself financially for a change. The only problem is picking a job within the next few months…

…and the anxiety continues.

For anyone that’s interested in the power of Microsoft Silverlight, I recommend checking out this amazing project by a blogger named Liquidboy. Basically, he recreates iTunes entirely in Silverlight, and blogged about every step of his process. If you have some time, please check it out. It really blew me away when I saw it.

Here is the main blog post with links to each of his steps. You will need Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh to view any of the prototypes or the finished application. It’s well worth it to see the insane power that Silverlight offers.

Source: dnknormark.net: Silverlight 1.0 Officially Released