Growing up Alongside the Internet Part 2

When I got to college, the internet was in full swing. I was amazed when I first sat down in the computer lab and was introduced to broadband internet browsing. I was amazed to not have to wait 30 seconds to a minute to load a basic webpage. All my classes had some form of email or web based resources needed for them. By that time you had to pass basic computer literacy classes just to make it through school. Nothing was turned in unless typed and printed on Microsoft Word. Florida State University had campus-wide wireless internet. I spent hours in the middle of a beautiful field out under the blue sky surfing the internet while I studied.

I spent a scholarship check on a very good laptop when I moved on campus. This is when I really started enjoying technology. I became less afraid of technology and began embracing it. I had a desire to learn and changed my minor to IT. My IT classes became my favorite classes in school. I worked night staff security in the dorms, staying up all night and sleeping all day. Chatrooms, online video games, blogs, and social networking sites became the substitute for my social life.

When I left college I immediately got a job where I used technology every single day to manage the distribution of over 2 million hunting and fishing regulations for the State of Florida. After that I got a job as a site administrator for a blog site. My very livelihood and sustenance hinges on the technology that grew up along with me. We are like brothers, who didn't get along well at first but learned to be best friends.

Growing up Alongside the Internet Part 1

I grew up alongside technology. When I was born, personal computers were just starting to appear. As I started my education, some of the first affordable computers started being used. In my third grade classroom, my teacher had the wondrous and groundbreaking technology of the early internet. He would browse lists of text using text based commands, then start a download of a picture. After leaving it on all day long, we would end up with a very low quality photo which was probably about 50kb in size. We were all amazed.

As I went on through middle school, Windows started to become more and more prevalent. I finally got my dream computer with Windows 95 running towards the end of middle school. At that time the internet was up and running, but still very young. It was full of spam, and you couldn't search anything safely without wading through piles of garbage. Once you gave anyone your email, you might as well give up on the account because it would soon be full of spam. Hackers were rampant and viruses were devastating. Computers were glitchy and extremely difficult to manage. I started out thinking I must be terrible with computers, until I realized it was the computers that had the problems.

By the time I got to high school, the web was much more manageable. Most schools and libraries had a computer lab and you could accomplish much more online. The internet was still VERY slow, but it worked. I actually took a computer programming class in late high school and learned to make better use of the technology at my disposal.

To be continued...

Tallahassee, Florida

In case you didn't already know, I live in Tallahassee, Florida. I know most people always dream of leaving home and can't wait to branch out into other places, but I love my home. It's a medium sized town. It has enough people and things to do to keep everyone busy and happy. It's not big enough to be a congested concrete jungle with too many people.

The climate here is mild and relatively warm year round. It can hit the high 90's in summer, but it's very rare to see a freeze. Just last week I was out swimming in late October. The world around me is green and beautiful. Much of Tallahassee is covered in, or at least lined with trees. Even the downtown area is decorated with plants. All year round you can see things blooming. Even in the dead of winter, you can see green all over. When spring comes, the streets are lined with blossoms and flowers of every color. Sometimes you can see entire forests or fields of white, pink, or purple.

Finally a Warm Day!

I have been going to the pool nearly every day for the past couple of weeks. Each time I dip my foot in, I shudder at the thought of getting into such freezing water, and jump in the hot-tub instead. I realize it is late October, and most of the world never gets as warm as it is right now. Still, I miss the warmth of summer and I really have been missing the swimming.

Today was a refreshing break from the cool, rainy weather. It felt like spring again, and the skies were a perfect blue. After a nice, long bike ride, I finally got to get that cool swim I have been craving. Then the sun went behind the trees and I had to run back inside because it got so much colder. I hope this weather lasts.

Tropical Chicken and Rice

Sunday I decided to make up a new recipe as I'm prone to do. I just kind of throw things together that look like they should taste good and they usually end up amazing. It didn't turn out perfect the first try, but it turned out pretty well.

The night before I prepped the marinade for the chicken. I mixed mango juice, pineapple juice, a whole fresh squeezed lemon, a splash of white cooking wine, and a variety of spices. It tasted great just by itself. Then I cleaned all the fat and tendons off the chicken and put it in the pot with the marinade. I let it sit there overnight to absorb the flavor.

The next day I started cooking some rice and spiced up the water before I started it. I cooked the chicken in the marinade while the rice was cooking. When the chicken was done, I pulled it out and cut it into small pieces. Then I poured out the rice water and replaced it with the marinade juice so it would absorb into the rice. Then I put in some sliced pineapple, coconut shavings, cheese, and the chicken. After adding a lot of spices to offset the sweetness of the other ingredients it was done.

It tastes delicious, but isn't quite as zesty as I'd like. I think next time I'll raise the concentration of the lemon juice and let it marinade for a couple days so it really gets a kick to that chicken.

Dog Attack

The path I take for my bike ride takes me through a park near my house. It's one of the biggest parks in town and has some beautiful bike trails running through it. I have only been there once but I had a great time exploring parts of it. The path winds through deep woods and over quiet streams, and everything is still deep green, even in October.

As I rode by the dog run, I heard some yelling and ferocious barking. I saw a Doberman Pincer viciously attacking another dog. Both owners were pulling at them to separate them but to no avail. I immediately rode over to jump the fence and intervene. I spent enough time trying to catch and subdue an unruly 140lb chocolate lab that I knew I could handle this. I planned to run over, pick up the big dog and toss it over the fence. I know how to grab a dog so it can't reach me to bite me and didn't think it would be a problem. The owners were just going about it the wrong way. You can't hope to restrain a dog by holding them. You have to pick them up where their legs don't touch the ground. On their back in your arms they are helpless.

I found out there was another much bigger problem with my hopes of helping out. I hadn't been riding a bike for years and my legs were not used to the mile or so I had ridden already. They felt like jello by the time I got to the fence and wouldn't give me the usual thrust to jump a fence in a single hop like I usually can. I was looking for the entrance when the noise died down and the dogs calmed down. No one was hurt so I hopped back on my bike and went back on my way.

My First Bike Ride

Today I took my first ride on my new bike. It turned out to be a good workout since I had to haul it across my house and down three flights of stairs. I haven't had a good bike ride in years and I really missed it. As soon as I hopped back on I just took off and flew about a mile before I started getting tired. I had never realized how beautiful the path around my apartment complex is. It's like a jungle in parts, and I even found a tiny banana tree growing off the side of the path. I tend to forget the beauty of the world around me when I spend all my days working inside an office. I sometimes miss the days when I was an innocent kid running around through the forests around my house.

Tasting the Texture

This is a very random and probably useless observation, but I reserve the right to make such points in my blog. After all, it's tiring when you have to be serious and profound all the time. Besides, this blog is all about the randomness of life and thoughts.

So today I was eating some celery with peanut butter on it, which is delicious. I also grabbed a banana with peanut butter on it, which is also delicious. So naturally all three should taste good together right?

IT WAS REALLY WEIRD

The flavors were great and actually tasted good, but I couldn't get over the texture. The banana was soft and mushy. The peanut butter was sticky and pasty. The celery was tough and crunchy. In the end, I felt like I was eating a hard, fibrous banana. Somehow my subconscious just couldn't justify what I was eating and I still don't know what to make of it.

A Free Bike

Last weekend I was headed out the door to take my best friend to Olive Garden for dinner. On the way out, my neighbor caught me and asked if I could take a look at her computer. It was a brand new computer and the keyboard wasn't working. I figured out pretty quickly that one of the pins had been bent and was now crushed at the bottom of the plug. I grabbed my pliers and bent the pin back in and got the keyboard working. My neighbor was so happy about it she offered to let me use her bike since she recently got a new one. I was thrilled. I used to love riding my bike all the time and it's so much nicer riding around the neighborhood than it is in the gym. I'm going to have a lot of fun with it. It really pays to extend acts of kindness to strangers. Sometimes you even get repaid with things.

Addicted to Blogging

I knew once I started I just wouldn't stop. I now have 5 blogs and I'm posting like a madman in all of them. Strangely enough I am really enjoying it. It's actually a lot of fun to sort of revisit the parts of learning that I actually liked. I spent so much of my life cramming knowledge down my throat that I didn't stop to chew and realize I actually liked it when taken in reasonable portions. Now I'm re-discovering these joys all over again.

Stagnant

The other night I unplugged the filter in the fish tank in my room because it was making strange noises. Without the constantly flowing filtration, the water quickly grew stagnant. This morning as I walked by, it was actually starting to smell bad. I had to drop everything and change the water, then get the filter going again. It was a lot of work but I knew the fish would all die if I didn't do it.

It really reminded me how quickly life in general can go downhill if you don't constantly stay on top of it. I spent almost all weekend cleaning the house and taking care of little things that just needed to be done. I never realized how much work has to be done just to keep up with life. But if you fall behind, your whole life starts to stagnate and slip into a rut. I have to keep reminding myself of this each time I go to work out when I feel too tired to move. I know if I let myself slip, I won't ever have the energy to do anything. My work is draining enough as it is, so I have to do everything I can to keep the momentum.

Overwhelmed

Have you ever had just too much on your plate? It seems like in my life everything tends to gang up on me at once, until it just gets overwhelming. I can juggle so much at once, but sometimes it just takes one last thing to throw into the mix and it just becomes too much. I know everything will be ok and I'm not losing it. I'm just spent. I just don't have energy for anything else. I'm just shutting down for the day and shutting everyone and everything out. I'm rebooting, and tomorrow everything will be back to normal. I'll pick everything back up and keep going as if nothing ever happened.

Blog Hit Stats

About 10 days ago I installed some hit tracking applications on all my main blogs. These little apps can be seen at the bottom of the sidebar on every blog I own. They keep track of how many people visit my site, and how many pages they read each day. The totals have somewhat blown me away. These stats have been active almost exactly 10 days. Just 10 days. Here's the totals so far:

Ripples in the tide: Visits: 1171, Page Views: 1533

Aqua Marine Discovery: Visits: 597, Page Views: 857

Shards of Consciousness: Visits: 306, Page Views: 317

Naruto Anime Episodes: Visits: 324, Page Views: 365

The really exciting thing about all this is I haven't even started with optimizing these blogs. I haven't been actively promoting them online and didn't plan to until I got about 100 pages written for each. I can't wait to see what the next month holds.

Dents in a Car

Yesterday was a heck of a day. One of the things that just really set it off right was when I was pulling out of the office driveway to go to lunch. There were lots of guys doing construction next door and they all parked in our parking lot, until there was barely room for us. In all the congestion, the lawn maintenance guys backed their trailer right into my car. It left a dent a few inches long in the back door. It's not the worst in the world, but it's still there.

I was really surprised to see how honest the yard guy was. I was on my way out and would not have even looked at that side until it was too late. I wouldn't have even known there was a dent in my car or where it came from. But he waved me down and stopped me to tell me about it. When I looked at it, he offered me his business card and told me to call him about taking care of it. Now I just need to figure out what to do with it. I want to reward him for his honesty but I don't really like having a huge dent in my car. I also don't like the idea of paying for someone else's mistake. I guess I'll keep thinking about it and figure it out in time.