Stylelife Challenge

    Thirty days of overcoming  social situations that normal people either take for granted or don't give a second thought to.  That's right.  All the things that sociable people consider easy I will be undertaking step by step during a thirty day process.  Will it work?  I hope so.  Otherwise I just wasted $20.

Building the Staircase

    A staircase with small and achievable steps, that is.  What I'm going to do is layout a guide for myself to follow.  Since so many areas of my life need improving it's hard to figure out where to start.  At this point I figure it doesn't matter where I start; just as long as I do, that will be fine.  So far here is a list of things I thought I might try out:

• Start going to a gym
• Go to a tanning salon
• Find good social places to meet people
• Work on social technique (or gaming)

I've been reading quite a bit about the seduction community.  I'm pretty certain some of their techniques can help me out in expanding my personality.

Transforming Myself

    Yeah, most of this post is going to seem a little cheesy, but which of my more serious posts aren't?  Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about my personality type and how everyone else reacts and responds to me.  So many aspects of my life are unhealthy and/or undeveloped enough for everyday normal life.  Even after two trips to the emergency room, I still haven't been able to make any significant long-term changes in my life.  Am I just lazy?  Yeah.  My only real motivation has been the act of searching for something to motivate me.  There are so many options out there and I keep researching every single one.  After a thorough investigation into every motivational topic I find, I rationalize how they might be useless or obsolete.  Basically what it all boils down to is that I am afraid of committing to any long-term endeavor; even if it is something that can better myself.

    I don't want to wait until I'm sent to the emergency room again for massive internal bleeding to do something about not only my health, but my way of living.  I need to transform myself.  Do I have the will power to do so?  I'm not sure, but I am seriously going to find out.

Out of Touch with Reality or Just Old Fashioned?

    Are my interests only common with a few select people in the world or have I just lost touch with the reality of today's society?  Maybe I ask myself too many questions, but this one seems to be a common one among my ponderous internal dialog.  Dressed in black topped with a nice Stetson fedora, I write this blog post.  Though fedoras are long out of style, as I sit here at Borders bookstore there are a couple of girls wearing fedoras as well.  It's nice to know I'm not the only one who likes a little style.  Now I know I'm not completely old fashioned, right?  I suppose if I lived in a bigger city I might see more people wearing them.  What's funny is that after living here in Pleasanton for four years now it is turning into another Oakdale for me.  That's a bit of an esoteric statement, but I know some friends that would understand once they read this.  It will have to remain esoteric for now since it would take too long to explain growing up in Oakdale.  When I moved here to Pleasanton/Dublin/Tri Valley/East Bay/Whatever-you-want-to-call-this-place, I loved it.  This is a place that has a lot more variety and things to do here.  Now, after four years this place has seemed to have shrunk down in my mind.  Maybe I should move to a bigger city.  San Francisco?  New York?  Ahh, who am I kidding.  I just need to get out more.  Will that integrate me more with society?  I damn well hope so.

Pushing the Norm

    No, I'm not talking about George Wendt.  You know, I've been thinking about how long I've been keeping a sort of running dialog both by writing them on paper and passing them through my brain.  When I do, I realize it's been running on twelve years now.  I first started jotting down my thoughts using a word processor on an old Atari 800 XL and saving them to disk (5 1/4" floppies, that's old school, man!).  Now, being the 21st century and all, I keep a somewhat censored side of my thoughts here on my blog.  Why?  Well, I guess mostly in part that it keeps me from going insane or worse, having a complete psychotic breakdown.  Ok, that's kind of extreme, right?  Well, maybe not.  I'm not sure.

    I'm just stuck in another rut, mainly.  Doing the same thing everyday gets to me after awhile.  Maybe I should take another week of vacation.  But what would I do?  I need to find a way to break out of my normal routine and do something new for a change.  Any suggestions?

I thought about doing the following...

• Taking a roadtrip and snapping some photos.
• Try a Zen meditation day trip over at Green Gulch
• Go try the Full Moon Feast at Three Stone Hearth in Berkeley
• Stroll through the embarcadero and pier 39 in San Francisco

Sounds fun, huh?

Singing Tesla Coil

Now this is cool!

Wow...but Depressing and Creepy

For some strange reason I find this video disturbs me quite a bit. Maybe it's just the time lapse aging thing that makes it creepy or the fact that he has the same facial expression in every photo. Very creepy.

8-bit Engineers

Engineering students from UCSC recreated the first level of Donkey Kong using nothing but 3x3 Post-It notes! That's dedication. Very cool!

Geraldo & Bill O'Reilly

This is a crazy heated debate over the issues of illegal immigration and drunk driving. What's funny is that both of their opinions are right on target. It's kind of a weird paradox.

The Automotive X Prize

    How cool is this?!  Around $10 million USD to any private organization that can build a marketable car that achieves 100 mpg.  Yes...marketable...meaning it has to be something that the public will want and can buy and use readily.  After a while you just get tired of seeing all these useless concept cars put out by all the big automotive companies.  Their concept cars are only a ploy to pull people in to their existing line of cars.  Another thing that gripes me about the automotive companies is that they milk the consumers on progress.  They only improve their efficiency if the government passes a law or there is a big consumer demand for "high" fuel efficient cars.  Even then it's not by much.  Even though this X prize is still being drafted, I hope that there is enough interest to make this competition a reality.  It definitely will push the envelope for the automotive industry and hopefully change things (for the better) for the consumer.  And maybe it will even help the environment a little, who knows.

Check it out!  The Automotive X Prize

John C. Dvorak: The Andy Rooney of Tech

    Back when I used to watch ZDTV (then later TechTV), I remember enjoying the bits of John's monologue on shows such as The Screen Savers.  That network has long since vanished, though a new show called Cranky Geeks has captured my attention full force.  Their episodes are fully viewable as well as downloadable on their website.  It's great that there is a show with a group discussion type format where they talk about modern news and technology in not only an informative way, but entertaining as well.  John C. Dvorak's cranky commentary often reminds me of Andy Rooney in his segments from 60 Minutes.  John may never be as cranky as Mr. Rooney, but then again Cranky Geeks hasn't been on the air for as long 60 Minutes.  Looks like he's off too a good start, though!

First Dive into Electronics

With school I don't have much time to experiment with my electronic equipment, but I had a little time a couple weeks ago to see what the effects of pulsed dc electricity had when it was traveling through copper wire wound around a toroidal ferrite core. I found that the properties of the square wave (from the pulse generator) changes at two points - where the pulse starts and ends. It seems as if there is a decreasing resonance being generated from the ferrite core. I'm wondering if this is what is known as hysteresis. I only had time to try out one frequency, so next time I fire up my equipment I'll try different frequencies. I also tried subjecting the ferrite core to a sawtooth wave, but it didn't seem to have any resonating effect. Once I complete my step up transformer I'd like to see what kind of waveform I get on the oscilloscope. The step up transformer will consist of a torodial ferrite core wound with 200 turns of 24 AWG magnet wire as the primary and 600 turns of 36 AWG magnet wire for the secondary.

Music

This is a group photo of the band I play in - 3 O'Clock Jump. We play mostly swing era tunes for dance gigs, but the rehearsals are where we actually play all the fun stuff such as some Buddy Rich tunes and Gordon Goodwin arrangements. This photo was taken at one of our steady gigs over at the Hayward senior center.

Electronics

A few weeks back I purchased some electrical test equipment off of ebay. I bought an old HP pulse generator and a tektronics oscilloscope. Both work really well, I'm happy to say. I'll be using these for a water electrolysis experiment using pulsed dc electricity. By summertime I should have everything I need to test my curiousity.

Finally...

    This post is a long time coming...a positive one!  For the most part, that is.  'Tis the new year, 2007.  What's funny is that we all hope it will be a good one for us.  In all reality, each progressing year rarely is.  I guess the positive side to the new year is the fact that we all set goals to accomplish throughout the year.  Some of them are realistic.  Some are not.  I sometimes wonder what the three most common new year's resolutions are that people set for themselves.  I'm assuming they are (for single people)...

• Getting in Shape
• Finding the love of their life
• Enriching their financial status

    I would assume that the people who have already achieved these things now set smaller; more humble goals.  I may be generalizing too much, but I'm assuming this applies to most people.  If not, then I guess I'm wrong.  Ohh well, right?

    In addition to setting goals, there are also psychological aspects to the turning of a new year.  For me, it is a kind of release of mental pressure.  I feel that all the problems I dragged through my brain throughout the year have been let go.  Why is this the case?  I don't know.  Does it really matter to me to ask why?  Not really.  I'm just glad it happens.  It's just one of the few things I take for granted.  In all reality, it's so insignificant that I always forget that new years has such a psychological effect.

    So what do I expect to accomplish this year?  What do I want to change?  Did I ever accomplish any of last year's goals?  Here's what I wanted to do last year but didn't...

• Play about 1,000 hours of online poker
• Turn my long term results from a losing player to a winning player
• Enter a major tournament ($1,000+ buy-in)
• And of course, the top three standard ones stated previously

    I ended up only playing about 220 hours.  That's pretty sad, because if I really applied myself, I could have achieved that many hours in about two months.  Instead, it took me twelve.  The second goal is a hard one.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to accomplish this one and now I have to give up online poker to concentrate more on school.  It would of been nice to turn a small profit from playing, but by analyzing my results it seems I just don't have the discipline.  Now my third goal is more of a pipe dream.  It'd be really nice, but in all reality I just can't afford it unless I won a lot of money online.  If you go to www.yeags.com I will have my results for the year of 2006 posted and write an analysis of what I've learned from my playing experiences.

    What accomplishments do I expect for this year?  I guess they are somewhat different this year now that poker has been put on the back burner.  Really, I should make a big effort to make my life more stable.  Once I've done that, everything else will fall in place more easily.  Just getting through junior college would be a big accomplishment for me.  I've forgotten how many times I've dropped or retaken the same courses over and over.  I think I'm doing better now that I have more of an idea of what I really want to study.  Music, even though it was fun at times, has been an overall disappointment during my time in school.  It took me three years to figure out I didn't want to make it a career.  Now I'm taking a shot at physics and I'm just going to stick with it.  At my point in life, I really don't have time to keep changing my academic studies.

    What else do I expect for this year?  Other than school, I'm not too sure now.  I can always work on the top three, I suppose.  As far as last years goals, the only thing changing would be my poker activity.  Besides the basics, everything else will just be up in the air this year.  I'll just have to live more by a kind of buddhist way of life or the "carpe diem" theme.  This year anything goes.