The Lie

Remember a few weeks ago when I said I was going to college.  Yeah, I haven't even thought about it since that day.  I guess now would be a good time to tell everyone that I'm not going to do that.  Well, I guess I shouldn't say that I'm definitely not going to go to college, as I think I really am ready to take classes, but once I thought about how much bullshit I will have to go through to get into a higher learning institution, I just sort of gave up on the idea.  Right now, it's not my priority, just the same as it's been for the past 10 years.  I just don't want to go to school.  Simple as that.

I'm dancing around the words a bit in that above sentence because I always want to keep the option open, even if it's only a mental thing, which gets you nowhere.  Right now I'm focused on the immediate future, which is a very real and unavoidable family life.  Bettering myself will come soon enough, I'm sure.  Right now, I need to focus on what I can do with the resources I have.  That probably means working shit jobs for low pay.  I obviously don't care all that much because when I weigh the options, I'll stick with the status quo, which has been the status quo for me for my entire adult life.  The only times I make a change is when I'm forced to, and no one is forcing me to go to college.  Therefore, I'll just continue to bitch and complain about things without actively trying to change the situation, because I'm an American, and that's what we do.  

I won't lie to you or me about this anymore until it's actually changing.  

Trying to Buy

I spent a portion of yesterday morning in line in front of the Apple store in the Mall at Green Hills attempting to buy an iPad 2.  To be honest, I never thought I would be doing that in my life anytime soon, but because this was not a fancy new device for my personal use, it makes a bit more sense that I was where I was.

You see, my wife runs a call center at a university, and she if given a budget in which to work with.  One of the things is using awards as incentive to help the callers do a better job.  She is giving away to the winners, an iPad 2, an Xbox 360, and a Kindle.  Now, maybe it's just Deja Vu, but I swear I already typed that recently.  I even looked at my recent posts and I don't see where I would have, but if I have, I'm sorry to repeat myself.

Anyway, there I was outside the Apple store at 7:30 a.m. when the store, nor the Mall technically opens until 10:00 a.m.  We were seventh in line, which I felt was pretty solid.  We were looking for a specific model of iPad, so it had to be that one or bust.  You see, this Apple store told us on Saturday that they only get a certain amount of iPads in a shipment daily, and they never know what's going to be in the shipment, so you just have to show up at 7:30 in the morning if you want a shot at getting you hands on one.  No other details, just show up and wait.  Wow.  Well, we showed, and all they had was the 64 gig WiFi, the 64 gig, AT&T and the 64 gig Verizon versions.  We wanted the 16 gig WiFi only one.  Bummer!!!

I'd have to say this is either brilliant, or fucking stupid, I can't tell.  But the argument towards brilliant seems to be winning in my mind.  You get people showing up at your store three hours before it actually opens to wait for your one specific product?  Talk about build a buzz.  (Let me clarify, the timeline for our wait wasn't that dramatic.  We got there at 7:35ish, the store was due to open an hour early at 9 a.m.  A lady came out and told us what she had for sale at 8:30, so we really only stood there for an hour or so.)  On the other hand, you're jerking around your loyal customers, asking them to wake up super early and wait around, just to tell them their Princess is in another castle, so to speak.  Plus, these iPads they're buying are a minimum of $500, so it's not like you want to permanently piss these people off.

I don't think that what their doing is wrong, I thing that the Apple company could really do a better job of making something they're selling so fast and advertising so hard.  But really, it's not that big of a deal.  If you want one bad enough, you'll jump through enough hoops to get one.  So this morning we were set to go try again, but when that alarm went off, we both said "fuck that" and reset the alarm for 8.  I couldn't sleep so I got up anyway and fed the dog and started writing.  So maybe we'll try again tomorrow.  Maybe we'll try on Thursday, Friday...Who knows?  I think It's fun, waking up and heading out entirely too early in the morning.  It's something new and exciting!.  

A Change You Can Believe In

It was rudely pointed out to me a while back that the name of my blog is "the stupidest name ever."  This opinion seriously effected me ever since.  So, today (or rather as of yesterday) this blog is changing it's name.  Sort of like when Pizza Hut or Radio Shack tried to make themselves more versitle by tweeking their names in their advertising, I am doing the same.  Pizza Hut tried to make themselves The Hut, and Radio Shack tried to make themsleves just "The Shack."  Now, while I'm not going to change it to "the Bloggerated,"  I will just shorten it to "Bloggerated."  Why?  I don't know really.  I just think it's a bit cleaner and hipper.  I honesly just threw out the first thing I thought of when I named the blog two years ago.  I never hated it, but never really liked it either.  But I am willing to adapt to the times, and that means shuffeling a few things around, I will.

Now as you may have noticed if you have been visiting the blog in the past few weeks, that I have added at store so you can buy products related to the blog and show the world how much you like reading mediocre, meandering rambelings of a dude who wants attention.  Well, now those old products are outdated.  I've gone ahead and updated the store to reflect the new change in blog.  Now, if you have bought any of the products with the old name on it (which no one has) I will gladly replace it.  Just send me the old, outdated product and a check made out to me for $15 dollars and I'll send you out a shiny new whatever it is you bought with the updated text on it.  It's my way of saying "I'm sorry."  I mean those quotation marks to mean exactly what they sound like, by the way.  Read that with the air quotes, that what I mean.

Another change I was ready to make was the URL you use to get here.  I thought it would be prudent to take my given name out of the URL, to protect myself and the innocent I talk about herein.  Granted, it's been the way it is for two solid years now and nothing has happened yet, but, you know, I'd just like to get it out of there.  So, I tried to.  I went to the design function here and changed the URL to bloggerated.blogspot.com.  Well, it said it already taken.  What?  I made that word up, who would take it?  I guess it was someone three years before me...and they only posted like, 5 times.  JERKS!  How can that happen...

Here's bloggerated.blogspot if you care to check it out.

But yeah, Change is good. You cant stop it now.

P.S.
You can now read the blog translated into Russian, so that should be fun.  I don't want to exclude the Commies! 

A Boost of Energy?

It really works

There are two things constantly on my mind lately.  The Nashville Predators race to the Playoffs and the impending birth of my first born child.  One, you would say, is seriously more important than the other, and that is true in the long run.  But in the immediate, both are equally important to me.  That's all I really have to say on that subject.

I'm not sure if this new gum is actually doing what it says it does or if it's all mental, but I'd have to say that this new Stride "spark" gum does what it's advertised to do.  It claims that it has b6 and b12 vitamins in it which give you a boost of energy when you chew it.  Now, the cynic in me says "fuck you, advertisers," but the dude chewing the gum says "yeah, that totally does that."  You see, I didn't know there was anything special about the gum when I grabbed it off the shelf at the store.  I just wanted some gum, and I always grab whatever is the newest flavor.  I'll try every new flavor of gum once, especially if it's the new flavor.  Typically, I'm enjoy the gum, with a few major exceptions, which I'll discuss in a minute.  But this gum, this one tasted pretty good, I'd say.  I chewed a few pieces, and found the experience pleasurable, I guess.  It wasn't until a few pieces in that I noticed the packaging said it had these vitamins in it that give you the supposed boost of energy.  That's when I realized that while chewing the gum, I had a serious uptick in finger drumming.  I thought, "yeah, that did that!" even though I'm typically not one to buy into that bullshit.  If you want B vitamins, eat a fruit or vegetable, ya sucker.  But no, I didn't just believe I had more energy because the label told me I would.  I noticed I was more alert and stuff.  When I have a lot of pent up energy, I drum my fingers.  This made me do that.  Honestly.  I'd say try it out, but I believe that now that I have pointed this out to you, you will probably say you are experiencing a placebo effect.  I'm not sure how you could test this out, but I found that my unknowingly getting this energy boost if proof enough for me.

Now, as far as buying a new gum that sucked ass, that would also be a flavor that Stride came up with.  It's called Sweet Cinnamon.  Holy fuck was that shit gross.  Now, I like cinnamon gum every now and then, like any typical dude or chick might.  Not my favorite, but I can handle it.  I bought it because it was new, but it just burns you tongue and makes you want to gag and hurl.  So gross.  I ended up giving an almost full pack of gum to someone who said they wanted it, and I was glad to get rid of it.  Totally gross.  Don't buy that, just trust me on this.

So yeah, gum is good.  Most of the time, if you see me with gum, it's probably the newest flavor available.  But if I can keep on finding this Spark kind, I'll keep chewing this for as long as I can stand the flavor.  Because it works, damn it.

Today, I Learn How to Spell "Entrepreneur"

This morning, I had a great idea for a blog post, and now I've spent the past hour racking my brain to figure out what the subject was.  Why don't I write these things down?

No, instead, I'll just move along and talk about something else.  I watched this show on ABC last night called "the Shark Tank."  On the show, they bring in people who have a little business and are trying to get an invester "the sharks" to invest in their company to help it grow.  It's a pretty good concept for a show, because they're not searching for the "next great thing," which expects to find something that is nothing and turn it into something bigger.  This show takes a good idea, and the "sharks" invests their own hard-earned money in it.  If it's not good, they'll take a pass on it, but if it's a good idea, they invest, while taking a steak in the company in some way, shape or form. Great idea, as this sort of thing happens all the time anyway, just not always on TV.  People have great ideas for businesses and they pitch the idea to people with a lot of money, and when the idea or company takes off, the investor makes more money on top of their already massive pile of ching.  It's a reality show, and I'm not all that crazy about reality shows in general, but this show kind of grabbed me in a way I didn't expect.

You see, with the sellers market I've been in, I want to find a non-traditional way to make my millions, because at this point, I have too.  Working for this security company is not supposed to be permanent.  I want to be an entrepreneur, but I need that golden plan.  I need that Facebook.  I need that Napster.  I need that eBay.  I need that Twitter.

I mean, not that I'm going to get into the tech department, but you get the idea, right? I need to come up with that idea that will make me a million.  I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and I think if I work hard enough at it, I could do anything.  It's all about what you put in, that's what you'll get out of it.

Also, on related but altogether side note, I had created some products to sell on the site Zazzle.  Someone bought one of the orders I had made, but soon after that, some of my products got pulled from the site because of "copyright infringement."  Total bullshit.  So I thought I was about to cash in with my clever "iPad mouse pad" which looked like an iPad, but it was just a mouse pad, but now, I'm not.  Makes me sad.  But you know, I was totally ripping off Apple computers inc.  Haha, well, it was worth a shot, right?

Posts About Babies?: The Sellers Market

What can I sell next?  That is the question.  You see, last Saturday, I got home from work, and started taking pictures of some jerseys I have in my closet.  These are jerseys I never wear, yet are pretty sweet items that I'm sure someone out there would want.  So, I took pictures of them and posted them for sale on the legendary auction site eBay.  I have bought things on eBay before, but never sold anything, so I was excited to see that people were "viewing" my items.  Then came the bids.  I have one bid, the minimum amount, on each of the two jerseys I have up for auction. That means they're sold, essentially. The final amounts will be settled when the auctions close at approximately 3:00 p.m. this afternoon. The money I will make will probably be low, and the hassle will probably be not worth it in the long run, but you know what?  This is starting me out on a new path.  What else can I sell?

Now, I know what I like and what I would be interested in buying on eBay.  There are thousands of things up for sale and auction on that website, and most listings I just don't trust.  Not that I think everyone on there has become a scam artist, but it looks like a lot of folks have found a way to make a buck off unsuspecting web surfers via a large, trusted site like eBay.  I don't want to deceive people, I just want to sell some things and make a buck or two.  It's not really about the money for me anymore, though that's not to say it's not about the money at all, either.  This is exciting.  I believe it's also my natural instinct to try to better myself in preparation on the newest member of the family.  But you see, I can't just throw any old thing up for sale on eBay.  I have to have confidence that someone else out there would be willing to pay money for it.  I also have to be willing to part with it, whatever it is.  It's that balance I'm trying to find, and I'm looking around the apartment for that balance.

I know I would buy a jersey off eBay, because I have before.  I know that if I was willing to buy something like that off there, someone else probably would as well.  Well, I only have so many jerseys that I'm willing to part with, and those are currently up for auction.  So that's no longer an option.  It's not worth my time to sell CD's on there because I promise I could sell them back to the used record shops around town and make a better profit, and it's less hassle as far as shipping and what not.  Plus it's instant transaction at the record stores.  So, I'll be doing that again, as I did back in December.

Why do I want to sell everything?  I don't even know.  My friend Cindy says it's perfectly natural, and I would have to agree, but to just be randomly compelled to go out and hawk my shit to strangers, this is so unlike me.  But the important thing is, I'm having fun.  I got big dreams of a secondary income from selling shit to people on a regular basis.  I just have to find that balance of supply and demand.  What in my supply will people demand?

I Love College

Hey guys!  The NCAA tournament is finally here, which means I will increase my college basketball watching by about 457% in the next four days.  Then depending on how my picks did, my basketball watching will either continue to be high, or it will plummet back to it's regular level.  We shall see, I suppose.

Well, I have Ohio State winning the whole thing, which killed me because I arbitrarily hate Ohio State because I'm from Michigan.  But, you have to do what you have to do to win. And unlike in previous years where I had some real money on my bracket, these past few years I have only had them in contests on websites like ESPN and what not.  So, if my bracket ends up being REALLY accurate, I could win some serious dough.  Chances of it happening are extremely low, but it's not about winning.  It's about being right.  To say that I was very accurate means something, at least.  I mean, right?

So I'll be watching copious amounts of college basketball for the foreseeable future.  Good luck on your brackets, everybody!

Undercover Brother

From time to time, at your job, they hire someone new.  Now, in a lot of jobs that I've been at, they hire someone new and they have that new person "shadow" someone who has been there a while, as a way of passive, lazy training by supervisors and managers.  Like, "hey, why don't you train this new person.  I know it's my job, but why don't you do my job for me?"  Well, that happened recently.  By recently, I mean yesterday.  Anyway, they had this new guy at my job to learn what we do so he can fill in when we need someone to cover a shift whenever needed.

So naturally, they put him with me and my regular, everyday coworker, because, well, we know what's up, if you know what I mean.  Anyway, let me be clear.  I hate being shadowed.  I hate it so hard.  I'll do it, but I hate it.  The new guy is watching my every move, trying to learn how the job is done.  But here's the thing, I like to slack off whenever possible at my jobs.  I take a little time here take a little time there and eventually, its' time to go home for the day.  Well, when someone is learning the job, I have to do the job properly, which in my case, is really fucking boring.  So, I just basically didn't stop talking to him the whole time, and you know what?  It totally worked.  The time flew by anyway, just by talking his ear off about the job and the site.  This wasn't that bad this time, I'd have to say.

When I came around the corner at the job and saw a new guy sitting at the desk, the way the guy looked, I wondered if he was some sort of manager or something.  You know, just dropping by to see how we run things here at my site.  Well, he said he wasn't, but the way he looked, with that hair, and his advanced age, red flags went up immediately.  First thing I thought was "this is the CEO of the company I work for and this is a filming of the CBS reality show "Undercover Boss."  So, I played it as if it was, because it seemed likely.  The company I work for has thousands of employees all across america, and is considered "the largest" of it's type of industry.  It wouldn't surprise me if the CEO participated in a taping of the show.  So, I honestly played it as if this really was a taping of the show, and quite frankly, I hope it was.  I played myself as a knowledgeable young man with needs, who has a child on the way, and could use some help from a reality TV show.  So fingers crossed that I'll be on CBS soon enough.  Because this guy didn't look like a regular old me and you type guy.

Also, he was totally bating us to talk shit about the company all day.  Busted dude.  Busted.  I'm on to you.

Please Read This Post on the News, Eventually

Someday, when I do something newsworthy, whatever it is, the media is going to investigate my online presence and find things they can use to help understand what kind of person I was in society before I did whatever I did.  I think one of the first places they'll go to is this blog.  Yes, every time they have someone in the news that was previously an unknown, they hit the web and find whatever they can dig up on the person.  Like, when someone goes on a rampage at a school or on a congresswoman, or if someone rushes into a burning plane crash and saves 47 people from death, they find his or her online presence and broadcast it to the world.  I have to be prepared for that, just in case.  So I decided to write about what I want them to broadcast.  They have to pick one "eerie, ominous" post to share with people.  The "he wrote this?  Why weren't there more red flags?" post or the "Look what a wonderful person this blogger is!" post. Not that I'm planning on making the news for something good or bad or anything, but, you just never know, right?  So when I did something courageous or dastardly and it makes the national news, I want them to know this about me:

• I want everyone to know that I prefer NBC programming over anything on CBS or Fox.  ABC is pretty good, too. 
• I want them to know that I like democrats and I think Republicans lie.  
• I want them to know that I think that eating meat is wrong for so many reasons. 
• I also want to say the Nashville Predators are the best hockey team ever, and I hope they win the cup
• Let the people know that I like to eat cheese, but cheese makes me feel sluggish.
• If you could pass this along, collecting vinyl isn't all it's cracked up to be, no matter what that hipster at the show you met tries to convince you of otherwise.
• Board games are just as much fun as an adult as they were as a child, and people should really play them more often.
• Quitting smoking is not joke, people.  It's hard to do. 
• I want them to know that the 2010 Ford Focus is a quality-built American car.  
• I also want them to know that bullets are really easy to add to a blogger post.  Thanks, Google!

Yup, this is what I want them to read on the air.  When I need to be on the news, can someone please send this to WSMV?  They do a good job on the local news and they're an NBC affiliate, so that's a nice little tie-in.  Thanks!

Baby, I Got Your Money

I been designing products lately as a way to make me some money.  If I want people to buy my swag, I guess it would help if I actually wrote stuff here.  Web traffic equals cash money, right?

Yes, I got together with a team of marketers, and they all agreed that it's time to take this thing global.  It's sort of like in the movie, the Social Network, when the boys are conflicted as to when to start advertising on their page to make money.  I have that same conflict.

In all seriousness, I generate way less hits than the launch of facebook did.  I run a stupid blog.

Okay, so what I'm saying is go ahead and buy some of my products.  I get a hefty cut of stuff sold.  I get a higher percentage on some things. (like, the cheaper the product, the more percentage I am taking from it (keychain, bumpersticker))  Don't hesitate to put my sticker on your car.  Wear my t-shirt!  What the hell, right? It's fun!

See the fancy bar on the side of the page?  Click on that.  Thanks. ------>>>>>

I Miss OP Video

I'm about 99 percent sure that you cannot rent a video game in Nashville, Tennessee.  Do you realize how crazy that is?  I spent most of my life renting games, not buying them.  Buying games is like buying movies or books.  Once I'm done with it, I'm done with it.  No need for it to sit around my place.  These things have very little replay value to me.  That's why I like sports games, because it's sort of different every time.  There is no story that will end (mostly).

I explained before, but I can't find the post after looking for a minute, but I explained that the closure of movie rental places makes sense because of the proliferation of On-Demand, streaming content viewing.  This makes sense.  You don't have to go to the rental place to get a movie anymore.  So you just hit go on your thing, weather it's through your cable company or through any number of other services such as Hulu, Netflix or now, Amazon.

The unintended consequence of the closure of movie rental places is the disappearance of the video game rental. Video games are pretty expensive to buy, if you didn't know.  Most PlayStation 3 games are $60.  That's steep.  Wii games are typically cheaper, but can exceed the $50 range themselves.  I'll tell you, paying $6 on a five-day rental makes a lot more sense to me.  There is less commitment there.  Sure, eventually the money adds up, but it's not all at once.   Places like Play n' Trade and GameStop offer a way, if you're savvy, I suppose, where you can trade in games for new games.  I bet if you traded in a great game, got good money for it, bought a new game, traded that one in again, got money for it, bought a new game, traded it in, and so on and so forth, it would accomplish the same thing as renting games at Blockbuster, but you have to buy the initial game, and then progressively lose money until you're out completely.  Either way, you'll lose money, whether it's to Blockbuster or GameStop.   All I'm saying is that this play and then trade business model is going to take some getting used to for me.  I don't know if I'll ever be into that.

You cannot rent a video game in Nashville anymore because the very last Blockbuster video store in town closed sometime in the recent past.  I just noticed it the other day.  I mean, it's not like I ever went into that Blockbuster anyway, but still, it was an option.  There may be other rental places in other outlying areas, but I don't think there's any left here IN town.

You can't stream a huge video game.  Not yet, at least.  Someday, sure.  But not yet.  In the mean time, we'll all have to trade in our games for new ones if we want something on the affordable side.  Yet even though I just said I don't like leaving games with no replay value around the house, there's this collector inside me that says "Don't ever let these go.  They have value that can't be measured with a dollar amount."  That's why it will take time for me to get used to the trade-in business model.  But sometimes, you just have to let it go.

What's On TV? Anything Good?

Back in late 2000 and into 2001, I would spend a large portion of my life in front of a TV screen watching music videos.  What makes that era so significant was that was when I started hanging out with what would eventually be my wife and the mother of my child.  We forged a friendship and eventually a romantic relationship watching music videos.  Honestly, I remember that we watched videos together, but it didn't really sink in that that's how we started being friends, like, hanging out every single day, until very recently.  I am where I am because of music videos, really.

So about two months ago, I rescanned for channels with my fancy digital TV and my fancy digital antenna.  I rifled through the channels to see if there was anything new to watch (new channels are being added all the time, or so they say) and landed on channel 30.2.  The bottom of the screen said this channel was called "theCOOLTV."  I noticed rather quickly that this was a channel that played music videos.  Excited, I was.  Now, we already had two or three channels that played music videos here, but they played Christian music or country music videos on those channels.  This channel was playing videos from modern and classic artists of "traditional" tastes.  What I mean to say is they were playing everything from Michael Jackson, Journey, The Police and Aerosmith to Fall Out Boy, Cage the Elephant, Lupe Fiasco and even Toad the Wet Sprocket for cryin' out loud.  I was really surprised to see this type of channel available to people with over-the-air antennas like me.  Surprised, but happy.  You see, I described before in one of my "music" posts how the decline of the music industry coincided with the decline in airplay of music videos.  Now, is the CoolTV the answer to that problem?  No.  But nonetheless, it's pretty badass that the channel exists.  Now, I have my TV on that channel most of the time.  It's wonderful.  My wife and I, sittin' around the house watching music videos.  Just like old times.

I saw the video for Everlong by the Foo Fighters yesterday.  Would I have watched that amazing video or heard that amazing song yesterday without theCoolTV?  No, I wouldn't have.  I could watch that video anytime I want, thanks to the internet, but I wouldn't choose to.  But the fact that this station played it, I saw it, and I'm glad I did.  Shit like that makes me happy.

My Chevy Took a Shit

I watched the movie Escanaba in da Moonlight last night, and I would have to say I wasn't too terribly disappointed, as others have told me I would be.  I guess going into it knowing it's kind of weird in the first place, I was prepared for some strange things to happen in the B-movie.  Boy am I glad I was prepared.  I can't imagine the people that saw it when it first came out, or what they must have thought of Jeff Daniels' movie.  For those of you readers that have never been to the U.P., it's a special kind of place, and when something happens, like a movie about it or takes place in it, people get pretty excited about it. Like, everyone up there owns a copy of Anatomy of a Murder.  Seriously, everyone.  Now that I live in Nashville, there is that same feeling here as well, it just happens more often.  Like, if a local gets national attention, the local media covers it.  Well anyway, I'm sure you could understand peoples disappointment when a movie finally gets made about the U.P., with a real Hollywood actor, and it kind of sucks.

I didn't think it sucked all that bad.  I guess I see where some people would complain, like, the aliens and what not, but all in all, the movie captured that huntin' camp vibe without being Jeff Daniels just acting out a Da Yoopers song.  As we watched, my lovely wife pointed out that it had a feel of a play, and not so much a movie.  When she pointed that out, I realized that too, the scene changes were very infrequent.  At one point, they stayed on the same scene for a good five minutes, going on and on about the oldest one to never bag a buck.  I'd have to totally agree that this looked distinctly like a play adapted for the screen.

But there were some funny parts to it.  The plot was pretty good, the comedy parts were pretty good.  The only parts that were losing me were the parts that weren't meant to be funny.  All in all, going into it with bottomed out expectations, I couldn't be let down, and I wasn't.  I liked it, actually.  Three out of five stars for me.

The Game of Real Life

I always tried to explain my life choices up to now by referencing the board game Life.  At the beginning of the game, you chose to go to the right and start college, get loans, and have a chance at a better career and a better salary, or you can go left, skip college, and start your career straight off.  Now, I've won the game of Life numerous times by skipping college and starting my career.  I figured I'd apply that same logic to real life.  Skip college and try to win Real Life that way.   Well this morning, it donned on me, that I need more money, in general.  Not like, a stressed out thing, but more of a "I would like financial freedom now, thank you."  The first thing I though of was to get a better job.  Great idea, if only I had the work experience or perhaps the college degree most good jobs require to have.  So, I decided in about a span of four minutes that I'm going to take classes and get a degree so I can have more money.

Yep, that simple.  No big moment or anything, no pomp and circumstance.  Just gonna do it.  Gonna get me some loans and perhaps some government grants and go get me an education so someone will hire me to do work and pay me handsomely.  My main motivation?  The Nashville Predators.

Some out there would say "Shouldn't your main motivation be to provide for your family and your (soon to be born) daughter?"  To them, I would say "OBVIOUSLY, dill weed."  I mean yeah, that's what I need to do, but I can sort of do that now anyway.  It's not like I'm a bum on the street or anything.

Maybe I drank too much coffee and started thinking too quickly or something, but I just feel like right now, this moment, is the time.  Why the hell not?  My lovely wife works at a higher learning institution, and I can go there for a reduced rate or something, and I'll have to look into that as an option.  If not, there are other options I can explore for sure.  I just feel like I should go to more hockey games and I need more money to do that.  So what I'll get a degree in, I don't know just yet, but it'll have to be something I find remotely interesting, I suppose.  I'll figure out the logistics of it soon enough.  But something has to change, I think.  Yup, I'm gonna make something out of myself.  I just hit that "That's it" moment.  I'm putting this down here to make it official.  There's no backing down now.

So in the board game Life, you have to choose to go to college right away, and if you don't do it at the beginning, you don't get to go back and do that part over again.  But I think somewhere in the game you can land on a spot where you can get a degree and draw a new career and also draw a new salary.  So I think on my last spin here in the game of Real Life, I just landed on that spot.  Not to mention that I landed on that baby girl spot on the board as well, and will soon add a little pink person to my game piece.  That was always my favorite part of the game of Life, anyway.

I Watched A Movie

I tell you what, I really enjoyed the movie The Social Network.  Not because I thought it was groundbreaking or innovative in film making or anything.  I didn't think the actors were exceptionally amazing, even though they were quite good.  No, it was more of a feeling of, the events of this movie happened just a couple years ago.  Do I believe that Mark Zuckerberg acts that way or talks that way?  No, not really.  I believe it was a movie.  But the fact that Facebook was invented in early 2004, that just sort of blows my mind.  I mean, I could know that fact without watching the movie, but when you watch a movie based on a true story, it usually happened in the long, long ago.  Like a World War II movie or a movie about Vietnam.  I don't know why I went straight to war movies, but you get my drift, right?  It just amazes me that something that was invented seven fucking years ago is such a part of everyones lives now.  It's like, a TV, or a refrigerator.  Nearly everyone is affected by Facebook in some way, shape or form.  Keyword: Nearly.  But you know what I mean.  It's like the Telephone then text messages and then Facebook.  Amazing to me.  Facebook is great because we all are connected by it now. It's probably the most convenient way to communicate quickly with acquaintances.

Well, it must have been a really good movie because I keep thinking about it.  That happens when I watch movies I really like.  It sticks with me in my brain.  Like the movie Seven.  Man, that movie is still in my thoughts after all this time.  In fact, the day I finally watched Seven, that was early 2004, right about the time Facebook was invented.  That wasn't that long ago, folks.  It really wasn't.

I don't know, I just have a totally different prospective when I go to Facebook now.  I just think about the movie.  It doesn't cause me to visit the site more or less than before, it just makes me think about the movie.

I liked it a lot.  You probably would too if you watched it.