I felt bad. The traffic was terrible. There was a girl walking along the cement barrier out in the summer heat, carrying an unhappy kitty. Normally I wouldn’t offer some random girl a ride, but I became determined to stop and do so anyway. Maybe my attempts would be futile. Maybe not. I tried anyway.

I saw her enter the 7-11 by the overpass. It was a good opportunity for me to stop. I parked with perfect timing, exited my car as she exited the convenience store. She had a small plastic cup of water so she could give the kitten a drink.

I told her that I saw her walking along the freeway overpass, with a small helpless pet in her hands. I offered her a ride. She graciously accepted. I took her to her home, which would have been a good two miles further for her to walk if I hadn’t picked her up.

She was nice. Apparently it was a kitten that she and her boyfriend rescued. During the drive, the kitten calmed down and appeared to be more at ease. As I dropped her off, I reminded her to take care of it, to feed it and water it. She was nice. I drove home feeling a little better.

I’m not writing well because I’m stressed. I have a lot of shit going on with work and family. I don’t give a shit. I didn’t give a shit about the girl either. But I wanted to make sure the kitten was in safe hands.

Languages and traditions gone forever. We really only see a tiny fraction of our history. We’re like a 50 year old man in a mental institution with amnesia, and can only remember the past week of our life.

There could have been a person who looked just like you, maybe just as smart as you, running around europe 150,000 years ago. Can’t help but wonder what their life was like.

Source

-Carl Sagan

I will not discount the fact that my emotional reactions are likely normal in such situations, and I will not discount that I probably have no real mental illnesses whatsoever. Frankly, despite AP Psychology, my knowledge of mental ailments is cloudy. The line between true bipolar disorder and regular mood changes escapes me. The worrying thing about my brief emotional shifts though is that they are actually quite extreme.

Technically there really isn’t anything for me to be depressed about. When I put my life in perspective, I am one of the most fortunate individuals in the world. I have everything I could ever need. I live extremely comfortably. I have a job. I have an education. I have a family who loves me. Even with these things, even with living much more nicely than a homeless Somalian teenager who must regularly scavenge for food, my emotional disposition tends to hit rock bottom at times.

Comparing your lifestyle to that of a third-world country’s is admittedly cliche… and to a greater extent, corny. I’m not claiming that as a first-world middle-class American citizen, I shouldn’t have any problems. Of course I have problems. Everybody has problems. Mine are particularly regarding my job (among other things). For example: Sometimes I’ll have a bad day at work. I’ll make a couple of mistakes. I’ll run into some impediments that that keep me from accomplishing what I need to accomplish, and the result is a very unproductive work day. I’ll feel bad about it – no, REALLY bad about it – and I’ll worry about what my boss thinks of me, what my coworkers think of me, I’ll even worry about job security. That’s how low I get.

Then, I’ll feel great, because my boss actually approached me and praised me for one thing or another. Everything is good again.

Then, as I’m driving home, I’ll wonder if I should buy gas or not, and I feel terrible again because I know I spend so much money on crap I don’t need. It sucks.

Then, at dinner, I’ll be eating a sandwich, and I’ll feel awesome. Because I’m eating a sandwich. A large, juicy, sandwich. A goddamn delicious sandwich.

And it just repeats itself.

I digress though. For my birthday, I was with my mom, my sister, and my brother-in-law. I was enjoying myself, at least, until a point where the mood shifted a bit: As I uncovered my newly-gifted book from its wrapping paper, I was met with an extremely cynical and disconcerting look from my sister. She immediately, quite forcefully exclaimed, “Seriously, Danny? Seriously?”

To which my mom added, “You know, the LDS church doesn’t speak out against evolution. Not at all.”

Across the table, my brother-in-law nodded in agreement. “Nope, they don’t.”

I hadn’t said anything this entire time. Rather, I was sitting there in disbelief, shocked, and slightly offended by this exchange that just occurred in front of me. It had only been a few seconds, and already my family appeared to be up in arms, speaking defensively about the church, and getting bothered by something that really shouldn’t have bothered them at all. Based on this, I can only assume they believed the book to be deceptive anti-Mormon fuel, granted for me to keep in my arsenal of evil, misguided, confused atheist literature. My family was aware of my negative feelings toward the church, so they felt compelled to immediately tell me how the LDS church really isn’t like that, and I’m looking in the wrong places to get information.

Except… it was merely a science book. And those weren’t my intentions at all.

It disturbs me to think that my family’s reactions were mostly because of me, and not just the book. Had it been someone else unwrapping the shiny, new, hardcover text, they would not have spoken out the same way. It pains me when people jump to conclusions like this. Also, the fact that you had to call me out on something because of your own poor reasoning has more to say about you and not me.

That was the first occurrence.

Later that night, one of my good friends stopped by to watch a movie. Dinner was winding down, and sitting in my bedroom were two of my unwrapped birthday presents, one of them being the unexpectedly-controversial Richard Dawkins book. My friend, an active member of the LDS church who was aware of my animosity toward religion, picked up the text. “Yeah, that’s the new book I got for my birthday,” I said. “It’s pretty cool. It’s kind of an all-in-one book that describes all of the current evidence we have for biological evolution and natural selection.”

He flipped through the pages, pausing to look at the few pictures that were there. Then he turned to a page, and while pointing to a diagram of an equine, he said in a snarky, defensive tone: “Uhh, yeah, this horse totally proves there’s no god.” He turned to another page. “Also, same with this turtle. Obviously evidence of there being no god.”

My jaw was through the floor. This time it had gotten worse. What a terrible, absolutely terrible display of blatant, immature, and petty defensiveness. For the record, my friend was usually a pretty reasonable guy. Unfortunately, however, he stooped down at times… and this was a whole new low. I told him, “You realize this book has absolutely nothing to do with proving or disproving god, don’t you? You realize this has nothing to do with spirituality either?”  To which he responded that I was right. At least he had the humility to stand corrected, and I respect him for that.

I don’t know. I think I need to be more diligent in questioning people who get up in arms about trivial things. Why do you feel the way you do? Why are you offended? I, personally, was offended twice that night because of how people reacted to my book. I think the book is a fine, informative, well-thought-out resource on a scientific subject. Apparently other people don’t. I would like to talk to people more often about why they feel a certain way, but I can’t, because my own emotions take too long to register, and later on I regret it for not seizing the opportunity to get closure. I spend too much time getting mixed up in my emotions.

It feels good to get this off my chest. I know it happened a long time ago, but it’s one of those things I just couldn’t get out of my head. It’s weird how people are.

How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? It’s actually a pretty obscure number, you’ve probably never heard of it.

How many software engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. It’s a hardware problem.

How many Rolling Stones fans does it take to screw in a light bulb? Wouldn’t happen, It could be completely burned out for decades and they wouldn’t notice.

How many members of a minority group does it take to screw in a light bulb? Enough to reinforce my negative opinions of them.

How many flies does it take to screw in a lighbulb? Only two, but how did they get in there?

How many PETA members does it take to change a lightbulb? None. PETA can’t change anything.

How many Dragonball Z characters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Just one, but it takes 4 episodes to do it.

How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb? THAT’S NOT FUNNY

How many Firefly fans does it take to change a light bulb? They wouldn’t. They’d rather spend a decade bitching about how it went out.

How many Freudian slips does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two – one to screw it in and one to hold the penis… LADDER.. I mean LADDER.

How many Surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Fish. One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools.

How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? None. The light bulb has to want to change.

How many members of group X does it take to screw in a lightbulb? N+1: 1 to change the bulb, and N to act in a manner stereotypical of group X.

How many sorority girls does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 37. One to screw it in and 36 to make t-shirts to commemorate the occasion.

How many Apple employees does it take to change a lightbulb? It’s not out, you’re just holding it wrong.

How many Magic: The Gathering players does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two. One to screw it in and the other to tell him how he could have done it two turns faster

How many existentialists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the light bulb itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin cosmos of nothingness.

How many Bush Administration officials does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb; it’s conditions are improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are delusional spin from the liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect. Why do you hate freedom?

How many historians does it take to change a light bulb? There is a great deal of debate on this issue. Up until the mid-20th century, the accepted answer was ‘one’: and this Whiggish narrative underpinned a number of works that celebrated electrification and the march of progress in light-bulb changing. Beginning in the 1960s, however, social historians increasingly rejected the ‘Great Man’ school and produced revisionist narratives that stressed the contributions of research assistants and custodial staff. This new consensus was challenged, in turn, by women’s historians, who criticized the social interpretation for marginalizing women, and who argued that light bulbs are actually changed by department secretaries. Since the 1980s, however, postmodernist scholars have deconstructed what they characterize as a repressive hegemonic discourse of light-bulb changing, with its implicit binary opposition between ‘light’ and ‘darkness,’ and its phallogocentric privileging of the bulb over the socket, which they see as colonialist, sexist, and racist. Finally, a new generation of neo-conservative historians have concluded that the light never needed changing in the first place, and have praised political leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for bringing back the old bulb. Clearly, much additional research remains to be done.

First off of the list: I unsubscribed from /r/pics. /r/pics happens to be the #1 most popular subreddit, even more than reddit.com, which is either a cause or result of it sucking. Either way, it sucks. Once in a while you’ll see a real gem, but otherwise it’s just a bunch of recycled shit and images that really aren’t that entertaining to be worth it. I’m better off without this stupid subreddit. See ya, pics.

Second to be removed from my subscriptions: /r/atheism. The atheism subreddit used to be a very thoughtful forum filled with intelligent people, and I learned a lot from it while coming to terms with my belief in rationality. While some intelligent discussions still exist within, it has mostly de-evolved into a massive atheist circlejerk. I got tired of seeing the same sensationalist, atheist, circlejerk headlines making it to my front page. I finally decided to unsubscribe, and in it’s place, I subscribed to both /r/skeptic and /r/freethought. By now the quality of my front page has shot up by 300%.

Third of all, I unsubscribed from /r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu. When rage comics originally developed as a meme on 4chan a few years ago, they were simple 4-panel illustrations with everyday anecdotes and pitfalls that everyone could relate to. It wasn’t until just in the past year when the subreddit dedicated to these comics decided to whore them out into these huge elaborate graphic novels detailing people’s life-stories, and it was then that they lost their charm. Also, as with any other popular subreddit, the almost total lack of intellectualism put me off. I finally said goodbye to /r/f7u12. Of course there are sometimes still a few gems in there, just as with /r/pics, but the bad outweighs the good. I don’t need to look there for humor anymore.

I think those are the three main ones. There might have been one or two others, but I can’t remember. I know I unsubscribed from /r/music, not because of quality, but simply because none of the articles interested me. Now I am subscribed to /r/electronicmusic and /r/trance which are both much more specific and relevant to my interests.

Awesome. Fire the guy who saved the entire company. Well, I guess now we can say goodbye to economical CPUs, and watch AMD’s prices skyrocket… plus the addition of shitty DRM if an Apple COO is taking over.

The company has been doing awesome with the last generation of chips. They seriously have no need to enter the ultra-portable market, but now firing Dirk is a tremendous mistake that will simply water down AMD’s resources to tablets and smarts while Intel is pummeling them with SB and Nvidia is back with a functional Fermi.

I had an interesting set-back though. When I specified that the problem was due to carrier damage, I was told that Newegg did not accept RMAs due to carrier damage and I would have to call customer service over the phone instead. With their offices closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, I had to wait until Sunday before I could make the phone call.

After clearly explaining to the customer service rep that it looked like carrier damage, she was swifted in issuing an RMA process for me. Which is funny, because the website clearly stated they don’t do RMAs for carrier damage, but I guess they do when you talk to support one-on-one. Whatever. I trust that customer support knows what they’re doing and I should probably have a new fan early next week.

I actually already have the exact same fan, which I ordered last spring, and it’s running in my computer right now. It’s a Startech 70mm “CPU replacement fan” that works perfectly if you want to keep your stock AMD heatsink but replace the crappy fan. This is one of my few complaints with AMD’s stock coolers. They work fine, but the fans always turn out to sound like shit. This is why I bought the Startech fan last spring, and it’s worked great, but I think I’ve played with it so much that it’s beginning to sound crappy now. It’s the loudest fan in my system and it produces noises that it shouldn’t. I’ve reinserted it about ten times and reapplied new linseed oil and stickers to the back of it about ten times as well, so it’s probably my fault. Once I get a new unadulterated fan I will simply swap it while refraining from doing anything else to it, and then put my current fan into my AM3-socket cooler computer downstairs which still uses the fan that came with the CPU.

Speaking of, I should probably sell that computer anyway, since it’s not getting any use and I could use the money.  Readers, if you need or you know anyone else who needs a new computer, let me know. You know who you are. All two of you.