Does the universe exist?

In case you've always wondered... Does the universe exist? The answer may surprise you.

I'm a fan of single-use domains like this one. There are a few more and I don't recall if I've mentioned this before.

• collection of jan aman, le duchamp .com by rafaël rozendaal, 2008
• EVERY DAY I'M
• Koalas to the Max dot Com
• GRANDPANOCLOTHES
• Blue Ball Machine
• www.purple.com

I know I've mentioned other sites by rafaël rozendaal, but there are a few completely unrelated goofy sites that are done just because they can.

Found via The Useless Web.

Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

The post title is alluding to a quote by William Shakespeare. You've probably heard it before.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Another one I thought about using was by Mark Twain.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

An asteroid indeed. I'm not sure where I'm going with this one for the moment. But I just have this feeling lately that I've been posting a lot of little things here and there but not making much besides a bunch of pointless noise.

I'm not feeling low about the quality of what I've been writing. I feel like I haven't been writing enough, and what I have been posting is akin to the usefulness of static. Signal-to-noise ratio?

This isn't even the real problem. It's a matter of a thousand noisy ideas in my head. I'm reading a lot of stuff all over the place and absorbing a huge amount. It goes through my mental filter and I'm very inspired to write about it all. But that's the rub of it, I can't write about it ALL. At times, I've been very good at this, but right now it's all important to me and I can't prioritize. So here is a list of stuff I'm thinking about right now in completely undetermined order.

• Sammy is great. He learned to start climbing the gate into the kitchen this week. He's only a few inches off the floor, but still.. That's not good as there's no way he can get really high without falling forward over the gate OR just knocking the whole thing over. He is much more active than any of our other kids.
• I'm very excited about some job news that ... I'm sitting on at the moment. I can't post too many details other than to say that I had TWO very good interviews at the same company and I've very excited about this likely opportunity.
• Been working on two things at the same time for music. That's right, MUSIC!
  • I'm going to be recording a Trombone solo on a song for a local band my friends and I all knew back in high school. I've been practicing along to a CD for what I'll need to play over and it's going to be hard but a lot of fun.
  • At church, we are working on some special music for youth Sunday (October 31^st) and I've been in charge of this a bit with myself and two boys who play Trumpet and Reese on recorder, and anyone else we can get together.
  It feels like forever since I did anything of substance musically, so this is really refreshing for me.
• Wait, my oldest daughter has a blog now? How did that happen? (Ask me if you want to be added to her subscribers. I'd link to it, but it's set to private.) Next, she'll want Twitter. At least she stopped asking for MySpace.
• My online portfolio is coming along. Visit ArcoJedi.com. I've got more text to write and some images to add and the home page will be done. Even with the possible job news I mentioned above, this doesn't change the need for this site.
• I mentioned here that I was going to run a Dungeons & Dragons adventure for my daughters and their friend. Well the first session went well and if I can manage to keep their attention, we will keep going. The feedback I got was that there needs to be more fighting and less talking. That can be arranged.
• I finished reading the Lord of the Rings books to my girls. Olivia has been in love with these stories since I started reading The Hobbit back last year. Reese is much more into the Rick Riordan stuff. We are still reading from the Percy Jackson series (out of order) and also some R. A. Salvatore. I try and read to them every night.

Each one of these things could be a huge blog post on their own if I had an infinite amount of time for them. Derek Brink is a buddy whose blog I read somewhat regularly. He's a good writer and musician. He also does these "random" blog posts that contain not just one thread or theme but a bunch of short bulleted ideas that he wants to post, but that don't get a full post on their own (for a variety of reasons that probably includes time alloted).

That's good enough for him and he pulls it off well, but I've always shied away from that for my own stuff. To me, if something is worth posting, I want to write a lot about it. Being concise is not one of my stronger skills. So I end up posting the 'short' stuff in microblogging; Facebook and/or Twitter, but that again makes it feel more like noise than stuff I'd file as "Important"...

But I thought this post was better than nothing.

Dream Big

Are You Dreaming Big?

This isn't an idle question. Think about it carefully. All things considered, you might believe that you are happy or content in your life right now. And if I asked you if you are living well enough, you'd probably shrug and say "eh". Perhaps you'd even claim a decent happiness.

But are you living your dreams?

I'm not ignoring the fact that the world is as it is and the current economy would make just about anyone feel cynical. I'm not unaware of how things work. But I'd tell you all those terrible things are blown out of proportion. Life is tough. Life is hard. It all means nothing when compared to the unleashed potential of the human spirit. You may think you are doing good, but it's possible you are letting these worries, concerns and "what-ifs" keep you from doing your best. You artificially inflate these road blocks to the point where they affect your behavior, weigh you down and keep you from DREAMING like a child.

Renowned author Stephen Covey said it well in his 7 Habits... and other books that much too often we sacrifice what would be best for our life for what is simply good. Here's a quote from First Things First.

Decisions are easier when it's a question of "good" or "bad." We can easily see how some ways we could spend our time are wasteful, mind-numbing, even destructive. But for most of us, the issue is not between the "good" and the "bad," but between the "good" and the "best." So often, the enemy of the best is the good.

I haven't always been a fan of self-help / life-management books, but Covey is recognized as the industry leader here. His stuff is genius. So, again, let's stop and think about the question. Are you letting the "good enough" in your life prevent you from reaching your "best"? Are you REACHING?

Failure Should Not Be a Roadblock Either

Some of us no longer reach for our big dreams because we've failed at some point in the past. We strive for what we want, but only carefully and tentatively. We got our hand slapped last time, so this time we won't reach for the big jar of cookies on the high shelf but settle for the crackers on the counter. Eventually we stop looking at or even acknowledging those cookies as if they were a fool's errand.

But failure is it's very own important and valuable teacher. We can learn lessons from it and grow. Failure should a guiding force towards a larger and more important goal. If you let failure discourage you from trying, you are piling on the ultimate failure.

Watch Batman if you don't believe me. Why do we fall?

It's true in all things in life, including both the personal and business world. Read this post for entrepreneurs about how All Your Previous Failures Prepare You for Future Success.

In fact many times when you are dreaming big, the more detractors you will have and the more people tell you "no," the closer you are probably to ultimate success. In other words, the more people telling you "no" now, the more people will say "yes" in the long term. Most people say "no" or "you can't do it" because they are afraid to try themselves and would rather see you fail than try themselves. I know that sounds arrogant, but it is true in many cases.

Still not convinced that right now is the time to be dreaming big, bigger than you've ever hoped for? At least for business, studies have shown that during times of trouble, the companies that continue to promote and expand their marketing for the long haul will outlast and outshine the companies that reacted more cautiously to the climate. I think buried here is a larger lesson about life.

Still following me? Your last and final stop should be the following article called How to Build a Castle in the Air on LateralAction.com. You should read the whole thing, but here's a snippet.

You know that dream you've had, at the back of your mind, forever?

The one you've been promising yourself you'll get round to - one-day.

It's not going to happen.

Why not? Because dreams don't happen. Accidents happen. World events happen. Things just happen to happen to you. But not dreams. Dreams need someone to make them happen.

And nobody cares about your dream. Nobody needs it. No-one will lose any sleep if it never comes to pass.

Except you.

So unless you are doing something - today - to make it happen, it's not coming true.

I rest my case. So how about it? Are you ready to fail big but keep going? If you should happen to fall, are you ready to not only pick yourself up, but stand up really tall? Are you ready to stop settling for the crackers (good) and reach for the cookie (best)? Are YOU ready to do that something for your big dreams today?

I know I am. Let's go!

Internet FAIL!

So my home internet has been down. It was intermittent there for a few days. At first, I couldn't use any browsers (Firefox 3, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer 7) but email (Thunderbird) and instant message (Pidgin) worked. I'd reboot and it would start working again. Then the whole thing failed. The AT&T representative named "Norm" (from India?) was surprisingly helpful the first time I called. We went through a number of steps and tests, removed the router from the setup and suddenly it started working again. He tried to help me with the router too, which I didn't expect, but his documentation on my router was out of date and we couldn't really get very far. Still, I was impressed that the guy helped me as much as he did. He was pretty helpful, but I just didn't believe that it was the real issue. I put the router aside for the moment planning to revisit the issue later.

I thought that it was fixed, but it was still acting up. Days later, it quit again entirely. I should have known that this wasn't really the issue. It feels like two separate issues. One is that the browsers are all locking up in the middle of loading a page. I could surf for a while and load page after page. Then one more link and the new page just spins and spins and never loads.

So on my next call, I spoke with "Andy" (again, I doubt that was the name his parents gave him). He was helpful, but he got to a point where he decided on what the issue was a little too quickly for my taste. He told me simply that my router might be broken or ready to quit and suggested they send me a new one. He'd have to extend my service for another year if I wanted a free modem. But it was either that or buy my own. Or cancel. So I told him to send one. I'm hoping it works and works permanently.

If you are reading this, then it's now back up! Or at least, it was up long enough for me to publish this. Wish me luck.

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Oh and hey, let's try something new: Technorati Tags: internet, at+t, technology.

Best Movies Seen in 2007

I've seen only three of these, all of which I recommend -

• 300
• Happy Feet
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

UnSpun by Amazon: Best Movies Seen in 2007

Downside of Flickr, a Roadblock

Another quick thing I wanted to mention was a speed bump I ran into while using Flickr that they don't tell you about and I didn't see coming. I've raved about the photo sharing site for a short while now and I've even gotten a few friends and family on the site. Flickr seemed cool to me for many reasons, including their interface and the fact that they don't limit the number of pictures you can upload, only the amount of pictures (in bandwidth) you can upload per month. Although with my new camera, I'd been running up against this limit a bit more often, all I had to do was wait until a new month began and I could start uploading again.

At the beginning of this month, I was uploading a new batch of photos. For practicality, I was trying to figure out mentally if I would ever actually keep up with the full barrage of new photos we are taking and just coming to grips with the fact that I'd have to limit myself to sharing only the gems and not so much junk when ...SCREEEEECH! Uh oh. It turns out that there is another limit to this free service that they don't tell you about. You can still continue uploading, but after 200 photos the oldest pictures do not show up in your photostream. This means that only 200 of my photos will be visible or available through the navigation. For the rest older than the newest 200, if someone has bookmarked or linked directly to the page with that image they can still view it, but otherwise it can't be found in the search or my list of photos --even by me.

Ugh. That sucks. I looked at this a little deeper and realized that I have a paid @sbcglobal.net account (through my DSL) and these can be used to get a PRO Flickr account. That email address is essentially a paid Yahoo account included with my DSL and Yahoo owns Flickr. But the problem with that appears to be that I can't flip a switch and easily migrate all 200+ photos in my current account. I have to manually change things, and this is a lot of work.

What I Think About Immigration

Can I say something brief and quick? The whole point of the uproar about immigration is that legal citizens and visitors of this country do not want to continue to allow illegal aliens coming to our country and living off the grid and getting all the benefits of living here without any of the responsibilities. Too many people are doing that already and we need to put a stop to new ones coming in.

No matter what side of the debate you are on, if you think that the immigration issue has anything to do with racism you are looking at it the wrong way. If there were droves of Canadians sneaking across the border, I'd want to erect a fence to our North as well. In fact, while we are strengthening our resolve and getting around to enforcing laws already in place by creating a fence to our South, why don't we create one to the North as well. Yeah, you know, just in case (...dang Canadians).

I Want YOU to Comment

No seriously, I really do want you to comment. If you are viewing this page, stop what you are doing for just a second and comment. Whether you know me personally, family or coworker, or if you don't know me and came here from a link or search engine, just let me know very quickly.

I keep track of my stats. I know how many visitors I'm getting and where they are coming for the most part. But I really want to hear from some of these visitors. So take a moment and just say hi.

How Do You Leave a Comment?

Leaving a comment is very simple and easy on my site. I use Blogger software to create almost all of my blogs. First, in most cases you have to be on an individual post's page to create a comment. Look for a link in the footer of the post labeled with the time or the number of comments. Then look for text link named Post a Comment. This will take you to a screen on Blogger.com where you can enter your text comment (and even add some formatting or a link if you want). There are three ways of identifying yourself on the comments page.

• Your Blogger Username (preferred)
• Other (Name & Web Page URL)
• Anonymous

I can control which of these options (if any) is allowed and I might change them later. But rest assured that you can use Anonymous if you want for the foreseeable future. But if you have a Blogger username or if you have your own website, I'd really like you to post it. Keep in mind that I moderate comments, so they may not show up right away.

So, post a comment on this post below. Just test it out if you have nothing else to say. Alternatively, you can find a post you like (or dislike) and add a comment to it right now.

Thanks!

OneDayBlogSilence.com

Today's Lunch

There are a variety of things written about on any random blog. Just spin the random blog wheel if you don't believe me. The topics vary from the very important to the mundane. I usually write about what's important to me, but that might not be that important to anyone else. The point is that I write for myself and all the clichés about whether anyone else cares apply.

But right now, I'm gonna spend a post talking about something completely mundane, even to me. I want to post pictures of what I had for lunch today at the Chinese buffet.

Photo from Popug.com User Jer86gn^*

Photo from Popug.com User Jer86gn^*

Aren't you impressed with my presentation? The first plate there inspired the need to photograph these morsels. Note the way that the chilled shrimp are arranged so nicely on my plate? Yeah, that was completely random. I grabbed the first shrimp and threw it on my plate and then after grabbing a second one, I noted how completely symmetrical they were right next to each other. It looked like a commercial. So I wondered (aloud, and in earshot of strangers) if I could get the third one to line up the same way and without another thought I put a third one on my plate. My coworker, Jeremy G., was impressed enough (and goofy enough) that he decided to snap a shot with his camera phone at my urging. Minutes later, he did the same thing with my bowl of ice cream. Little did I know that moments after he snapped the pictures that they would automatically be sent to a website and shared with unknown strangers across the internet. These folks could post comments and these would be sent back instantly to Jeremy's phone via text message. Apparently, someone watching the pictures even complained to Jeremy, I'd guess because they were getting hungry. It all happened so smoothly and quickly and seemed almost normal.

And I guess the interesting part of this uninteresting story is the technological angle, weak as it is. I mean, I do find it interesting how the communication on the web is so tightly woven in everyday life. Something so small and so revolutionary and yet stupid at the same time is happening every day. Cameras, phones, ice cream, web sites, online world wide communities and chinese food all consumed in one lunch hour.

Lisa's and my new cell phones that we got each other for Christmas do take digital pictures, but I've not really used it much. Perhaps it's time that I started. I do post the occasional photo on my Flickr page from my digital camera, and I could do that from my cell phone.

Note: I do want to apologize ahead of time because the Popug.com website mentioned above is rife with pop-up ads and other flashy annoyances. Thankfully, I just blocked them all one at a time in Firefox, and it's not a problem.

Which Is Your Favorite Star Wars Movie?

Pick which is your favorite Star Wars movie:

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi

Please view the Poll Results when you are finished.

Random Blog Blog Blogger Blogs

I think it is entirely possible that the blogosphere is entirely too big already (like the internet itself) and according to the experts at Technorati.com, there is a new blog born every second. But are these blogs worth anything? What are they about really? If you host your blog with Blogspot, as I am doing, then you are probably familiar with the 'blogthis' search bar at the top of the page that is (supposed to be) there as part of your terms of service with Blogger. There is a button that anyone can click that takes them from the blog they are on to a random blog somewhere else. There are template tricks that prevent this bar from appearing, but assuming it is there, a reader can simply 'channel-surf' from one blog to the next if they feel like it, but I don't see a reason at this time to do so. Here are the random results I got just now, and a short description of what I found there.

yu's whimsicals and idiocies

A personal blog from Singapore, talking about love, a trip to Sydney (Australia) complete with pictures of fireworks and collages, a tagboard, and a post-dated post from April 1st, in 2000 (before Blogger was around).
in life, not everything is predictable, just as not everything is unpredictable too. life is full of uncertainties, u'll never know when it'll be taken away from u. live everyday in the present; u won't regret. yesterday is past, tomorrow is too far. time is never too late. it's all 'bout treasuring that counts.
This blog currently appears to be having a problem caused by Blogger's recent changes with posting images causing the body or content to not line up properly with the side navigation. Go to Blogger's Help Page to fix this.

Collard Patch

A heavily Adwords supported site, about recipes, links to other blogs.
The Collard Patch is a friendly place where you are welcome to visit as long as you don't step on the collards. Please share your recollections, recipes, and musings.
The writer has ...a variety of interests, which are reflected in publishing and writing. I love Internet marketing, writing cookbooks and novels, nursing, and caring for a dog. Most of all, I love hearing what other people think.

passing thoughts

Blog by Viji from Bangalore in India, with quotes, pictures, political humor

welcome morning

An incoherent (in english) blog by a poster in Indonesia, with one post with a record 9+ font color changes in one paragraph.

anne beaver thomsen

consumed with the thoughts of a handsome and smart philosopher and the greatness of nutella
Bridal showers, golf lessons and sarcasm: my life is just so exciting i can hardly stand it.

Corrupted Mind

I SPAM U is in the URL, but this guy (Sathya Sankaran) was apparently ruined by Education. I was born Brilliant. Education ruined me...

faforcoding

Though this blogger is from Thailand and I don't know the language, I can tell from the few minimal posts here that this is a developer, with links to MSDN and some example code with Public Function IsRightDigit(ByVal tmpCitizenID As String) As Boolean

From a Room in Roppongi

Another blogger from the far east, this time Tokyo, Japan. A mom's blog, with pictures of her children and family, a flickr board and random links. It would also appear that she took part in the MIT blogger survey -- just like me!

pieces of memories

Here is the first blog with a very custom template, with cutesy icons, Japanese, cartoons, tagboards and stuff in scrollable iframes. I don't think it is in english. Of course, I couldn't go a full ten rolls of the random blog wheel without getting one that had purposely or accidentally removed the blogger navbar at the top -- forcing me to start over again.

Detrás de mi ventana...

And our last entry here is a blog in Spanish, Mi propio espacio para divagar sobre lo que yo quiera...

I'm so very surprised that I didn't land on a SPAM-BLOG. They are getting numerous lately and despite the fact that in order to post entries, Blogger makes you jump through hoops, so many of them appear to be posted by some sort of automated process. Anyway, despite the above descriptions, some of these blogs are junk and some are not, even if none of them are Spam-blogs.

Don't like these blogs that I found? Discover your own golden nuggets in a random BlogSpot Blog.

Renaissance Fair

Lisa and I went to the one here in St. Louis this last spring and that was fun. My favorite moment: two men in Spaniard costumes holding up signs that read "Arguments for $1". They were yelling and hawking their wares. I asked as we passed them if we could haggle over the price, and they said "SURE, but that'll be $1."

Finally :: Revenge of the Sith

I see it!