travis' brain dump

So, I figured I’d at least get one post in every month in 2012. That being said… it’s January 31st. I think for a while there I was shunning technology a lot. Crawling into my little hole and trying to ignore electronics for a while seemed like a fitting thing to do with all the workload I was under for so long. It’s been really nice to have the last couple of months be somewhat “normal”, if there is such a thing. I rolled into 2012 with some cool tech toys… upgraded my failing HTC G2 with a nice Samsung Galaxy S2, scored myself a Transformer Prime and I’ve been on a rampage of updating things the last few days on the backend of my servers. Feels good to be back in the saddle again. I may even pick up some lightweight development projects for android along the way if I can keep this up.

So, 2012… a new year and lots of things to do. Fitness, major revamp of that project in order this year. I haven’t gained any weight back but I’ve been in this maintenance mode for all too long. It’s quite pathetic and I need to bust out of the plateau and just finish the job. I only have about 10-15 lbs to go out of my journey, why just settle now? 215 is right around the corner and is taunting me. Still, where I’m at is quite the departure from the 270 I started at. *shudder* Aside from the obvious non-resolution, I’ve decided this year to spend some time getting some things in order in my life… the typical gambit of things… doing more family stuff, finances, future goal setting/planning, etc… etc… I figure I’ll get it all figured out just in time for the 12/21/12 apocalypse… *laughs* whatever. Top on my list of things to do, be a little more focus on who I should be… This blog is probably going to turn into the most bi-polar representation of my psychological state that anyone has ever seen trying to meet that goal. Should be fun from an observers point of view though so stay tuned!

With that… I need to go to bed.

So walking to the bus today I saw a homeless man standing ther with a sign that read, “anything is a blessing” and it made me stop and think…

If someone who has nothing deems anything a blessing, how should someone who, by comparison, has everything view what they have?

Everything is in fact a blessing. No matter how much we feel we lack or what we feel has been taken from us, we should always appreciate those things which we do have. Hard to think like that sometimes through all of our human imperfections, but it’s a solid lesson that can definitely change one’s outlook on life in the bigger picture.

Man, I must be getting old. Lol

Wow…

And that’s all I have to say about that… It’s been a little over 24 hours since completion and I’m still feeling like I just got done. If there was ever a course on the planet that could make you feel every ounce of just how out of shape you could possibly be, this is it. Blistered, burned, bruised, scratched and cramped should about sum it up… Major thanks out to Randy and Nef for dragging me through that last bit… I never would have made it without them. All in all not too shabby… I do have to admit, I skipped a couple obstacles – I had to… Mostly due to pure exhaustion and a throbbing pain in my hand/arm from having it stepped on in the cargo net, but hey… that’s part of the game right? 20/25 obstacles is still OK in my book when you look at the scope of what that course is like. Next year I must best it though.

I do have to say though… I’ve never experienced anything like that before and the training I did to prepare for it was GROSSLY INADEQUATE. There will definitely be MAJOR changes to what I do to prepare for it, should I decide to submit myself to that kind of torture again. Two things on my list… hill running and cold water treatment. Those are the two things I need to focus on because traversing 4200+ vertical feet of Beaver Creek on foot is no joke nor is swimming through sub 40 degree water. I quite honestly thought I was going to collapse from the shock of that alone.

I still don’t think I’ll ever have the guts to do electricity though… That particular obstacle I had no physical reason to skip, that was all a solid wuss move. Electrical current is just something I can’t purposely subject myself to. lol

Props out to anyone who tried that event yesterday, bigger props to anyone who finished and ultimate respect to all those who completed all the obstacles and finished. Amazing.

Ok, I love Science Fiction. It’s fun, it inspires and overall it’s pretty entertaining anyway… But I feel that SyFy has pretty much killed mainstream delivery of any quality science fiction.

Last night I watched the season/series finale of SGU. After watching it, I kinda wish I hadn’t. The ending was a great season finale, but a horrible series finale. It just didn’t fit well and quite honestly was a blatent banner for how horribly mismanaged that company is. Upon reading up on some things this morning and seeing the giant axe driven into the chest of the Stargate Franchise by SyFy I couldn’t help but feel as though SyFy has done nothing but KILL science fiction over the last few years. Don’t get me wrong, some of the shows out there are pretty decent and whatnot, but overall they seem to wipe out the really good and interesting shows in lieu of something less appealing. Looking back specifically at the StarGate franchise, they cut short SG-1 leaving only a DVD movie to finish the series out;  they cut Atlantis, albeit at least with a decent ending but nothing really out there to wrap up the story and then left you hanging out to dry with SGU right when it was finally getting interesting… It wasn’t the best SG series ever, but it was finally gaining some traction in the story line and actually had me intrigued as to what would happen next.

So, I’ve come to a conclusion… I’m done with SyFy… I hope some others of you feel the same way and do what I’m doing. While I enjoy Warehouse 13 and Sanctuary, I’m sick of getting invested in shows that the network just seems to come along and wipe out without any possibility of a solid wrap-up. It happens constantly and they continue to blame the shows when they should be blaming themselves… I’m deleting my DVR schedules and ignoring the pathetic offering SyFy has out there. I’m sure my life will be much better off because of it … Since when did wrestling belong on a channel that was supposed to be dedicated to science fiction? It’s fiction, yes, but there is no science to it. LOL

I took a good long look over the last few years of what SyFy has done and I was just appalled. I remember being able to see some pretty interesting (albeit some even short-lived) shows fill in the gaps during the days that were dedicated to the story theme of science fiction and be ramped up to get into Sci-Fi Fridays with some friends and such… but slowly but surely they’ve replaced those shows with re-runs of semi-reality shows and the removal of good ole b-rated scifi flicks filling in where they lacked content for shows… it reminds me of the loss of MTV to “reality” shows in the 90′s… on a side note to that: it’s disturbing that Beavis and Butthead are being brought back… what will they talk about? the latest episode of 16 and pregnant? *rolls eyes*

While I’m bashing in SyFy, I think it’s fair to say and worth mentioning that I think TV in general has gone down the tubes… looking over most of the shows I used to watch and watch now… I spend FAR less time watching TV now than I did even 5 years ago. I guess that’s a good thing though right?