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October 27, 2004

Productivity Breakthrough

Did you guys know that if you make your lunch the night before you need it, you have a lot more time to sleep in or check RSS feeds and email each morning? It is true. Sometimes this even helps you get the scoop on some hot news item before those Speed demons at Gizmodo and Engadget! It also results in a more stress-free morning. When you make your lunch ahead of time, you simply take it out of the refridgerator and go on your merry way. But when you didn’t make it ahead of time, you head for the door at 8:30 and realize that you haven’t made lunch yet, so you have to frantically slap some condiments and some sort of meat on a piece of bread, wrap it in saran wrap, and then throw it in a plastic grocery bag. Then you end up being 10 minutes late to work, feeling frazzled and guilty for being late. Which effects your work for the entire day!

The moral, make your lunch the night before!

October 23, 2004

My Free iPod

As a perk for being an editor at ForeverGeek, I got to put my referral link on our main Free iPods entry, which comes up in the top five when you search for Free iPods on Google. So obviously it got a lot of traffic and a lot of sign-ups through it.

After placing my order on 9/11/04, I received it yesterday on 10/22/04, so it does take a while to receive. But hey, it’s free so I’m not complaining.

If you are interested in getting your own free iPod, just go to FreeiPods.com and sign up for an account, complete one of the free offers (I recommend the Blockbuster one because it’s free and easy to cancel online), then get 5 friends to do the same thing. Once you do that you can place your order for the free iPod. You don’t even have to pay for shipping. The entry at Forever Geek has a lot more details, if you are interested.

Update… Now Gratis is offering free Photo iPods. You have to sign up 10 people, but the iPod Photo is worth $500 and has a 40gb hard drive, so it’s pretty a pretty sweet deal too. Sign up here

Here are some pictures of mine:

October 14, 2004

MT Disable Comments Automatically

I’ve just installed the CloseComments plugin for Movable Type on my blog. It will now automatically close comments on entries that haven’t been commented on in 15 days. I don’t get a lot of comments on this site, especially on older entries, so the vast majority of comments that I do get are comment spam from people trying to enlarge my organs or help me win millions at an online casino. It’s just not worth the hassle of trying to delete all of those comments every day, even with the help of the excellent MT Blacklist. So if you have something to say about an old entry, you can just email me ‘cause I’m not going to put up with all of this comment spam anymore.

October 13, 2004

Saved! Movie Review

I grew up in a strict seventh-day adventist family all of my life. My family on both sides had been adventists for a few generations, and my great-great grandpa even founded a large adventist college. My point in telling you that is so you’ll know how well I relate to this movie and the characters in it.

The story is of a few teenagers in a strict private christian school (I went to only private adventist schools, or home school), and their trials and tribulations of growing up and making mistakes. Like getting pregnant, finding out you’re gay, finding out you’re a hypocritical, judgmental bitch, etc. A lot of the characters are stereotypical, but it’s probably not something you see every day unless you frequent a church or private christian school. Regardless, I could totally relate to nearly every character in the movie, stereotypical or not, and could almost say “Yup, that’s Pastor Bob, or that person is just like Sandy”, etc.

The movie is funny throughout, but also brings up some good questions about organized religion, God, forgiveness, etc. It really does a good job at pointing out how silly and fake organized religion can be and how hypocritical people can be. Not to say that all religious people are that way, or that all religions are that way, but it just poses some interesting questions. It does a good job of showing that some people get so caught up in appearing “holy” to others and “doing the right thing” that they end up being so judgmental towards the “sinners” that they lose track of what religion is supposed to be about in the first place. Then you have the “rebels” that aren’t preachy, and they end up being the true christians in the end. That in itself is a stereotype, but hey, it’s still true some of the time, and not bad for a hollywood movie.

It brought back a lot of memories from my high school days, the school assemblies, bible classes, classmates, etc. I thought it was a great movie and pretty well written. It posed some questions without being too preachy, and had a few laughs for good measure.

Another good movie to check out if you have seen this one and liked it, is Dogma. It’s a Kevin Smith movie (Mallrats, Clerks, Chasing Amy) about religion, but with a whole lot more swearing. And demons. :)

Rating: 4/5

My first experience with Politics

I definitely never thought I’d write about politics on this site, but here goes…

I’ve never cared about politics before in my life, and for the most part I still don’t. But my friend Ryan persuaded me to be a little bit interested and to watch tonight’s political debate. It’s the first political debate I’ve ever watched, and pretty much the first time I’ve ever watched any president on TV for more than 1.7 seconds while I flipped through the channels desperately trying to find a channel that didn’t have the president on it. I learned more about politics today from Ryan than I did all through elementary or high school. Before today I didn’t know the difference between a republican and democrat, and still don’t for the most part. So congratulations to the private school system for that.

After getting over laughing at president Bush and his silly smirks and awkward pauses, I came to the conclusion that both of these candidates are absolutely full of shit. I had absolutely zero knowledge about politics or where the candidates stood going into this debate, and I can honestly say that I am not anymore knowledgeable at all after watching them debate for over an hour.

As Bob would bring up a question, I would be interested, thinking “Hm, good question, maybe their answer to this will actually help me to understand how they differ and which one I should vote for if I were to vote”. But then as soon as they opened their mouths I pretty much gave up hope. All they do is bash each other, give contradictory information and statistics, and pussyfoot around the question without giving a single real answer. How do people expect undecided voters, and especially young people to vote or care about this stuff when it is so hard to find any real information on the subject? I have a dwindling interest in it, but if I can’t learn anything by listening to the actual candidates speak, I have no idea where to go to actually get a straight answer on anything. I’ve been to Rock the Vote and other places like that, but they aren’t helpful either. Most of these sites, and the candidates themselves speak like they expect you to have a political science degree.

Maybe I’m just really stupid and didn’t pay attention in school for the few years that I was there. Or, maybe this stuff is just too plain confusing and political, and that’s why a huge percentage of America doesn’t even vote, for the same reason I have no interest in it.

If anyone happens to still read my site by accident and has a link to some simple information on the topic, I’d be glad to check it out. Maybe I should go back and read a 4th grade text book on the subject. I must have missed something while I was there.