A little over a year ago I wrote a post about being addicted to change. That post is consistently one of my most popular and receives the most emphatic comments. But what’s interesting to me isn’t that a lot of people identify with what I said, but that over half of those people seem to want to squash their need for a dynamic lifestyle. 

by toastycakes

Our society breeds conformity and stability. Public education is designed to ensure that everyone is marshaled to the same pace as everyone else and everyone meets the same established milestones of knowledge at the same time. Deviation from the norm is met with reprimands or ostracization from the group. And don’t think that this changes as you get older, you just get better at coloring inside the lines and fooling yourself into thinking that you’re doing it because you want to. 

by atibens

University may allow you to pick a field of interest rather than having one forced upon you by the government in public school, but then you’re held to even stricter definitions of what is acceptable for that narrower slice of society. The enforced mediocrity of one institutional holding pen is replaced with the enforced elitism of another.

by directorebeccer

The corporate and professional working world may claim to do looking for new ideas and paradigm shifts and blue-sky solutioneering, but socially speaking it’s often about as conservative as it’s possible to get outside of a theocratic state. There are expectations about your behavior and lifestyle, both at and outside of work, that you have to meet in order to escape criticism. 

by inju

The fact that I’ve dated three women in the last year seems to make me a ladies man in this environment. Using a ceramic plate instead of tupperware, and washing and reusing my plastic forks gets me comments and side glances. And even suggesting that you might want to go to school just to learn is met with looks of incredulity and confusion, as if I had suggested just setting $7000 in cash on fire. And I’m a single white male under 30, I don’t even have to factor in the well documented sexism and racism that’s rampant in corporate culture.

And that assumes that I have the sort of job that the rest of society attributes some level of respect to. If I quit my job as an aerospace software developer to become  a waiter because I like people, well…. try explaining that move to about 95% of the human population. Everyone knows that your total worth is equivalent to your high score in pin-ball machine of life, so to them, choosing to make less money is like choosing to fail. It doesn’t matter if you are more happy with less money and responsibility, your score is lower, so you lose.

by radcliffe_photos

So really, given all of this I probably shouldn’t be surprised that people are ashamed of their addiction to change. In this sort of society you can’t even wear pink if you’re a guy without getting comments, let alone desire something as mind-blowing as wanting to experience a new city every 12 months.

I mean if you don’t have a steady job what are you going to do without a company gym membership and dental plan? Just run outside and brush your teeth consistently? That’s crazy. You need some soul-destroying stability in your life. 

by Ouij

I find that functioning in society is sort of like walking in tightly packed crowd of people all moving in the in same direction. If the direction or speed you want to move at is even a little different you’ll suddenly find yourself coming up against resistance. It probably won’t be violent, it might just be passive or occasionally verbal, but it’s there. The thing is resistance doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong, it just means you’re doing something different.

If you’re going to dance in a crowd you might step on some people’s toes, and some people might think you’re crazy, but that doesn’t mean you should stop dancing.

by Stuck in Customs

The Canadian telecommunications industry is essentially a oligopoly, group of corporations in collusion that strive to maintain consistent profit margins by cooperatively screwing the consumer from as many angles as possible. There are piles of evidence for this. Telus and Bell (the only two CDMA carriers in the country) insistuted fees for incoming text messages at exactly the same time. So now they get to charge twice for the same tiny packet of data. The equivalent of charging you to mail a letter, then charging the recipient to pick it up.

In a healthy competitive environment Rogers would have seen this as an opportunity to differentiate their service by not implementing the same pricing structure. That way they could take customers away from Bell and Telus. However, that didn’t happen. Rogers knows that they stand to make more profit by implementing the same fees than they would by engaging in a price war, so starting in July, they will. This is price fixing. It may not be conspiratorial or organized, but it’s still price fixing.

This adds to the already ridiculous idea that we are paying extra for text messaging to begin with. They are not charging for this service because it costs them money. It doesn’t. In fact it’s built so deeply into the cellular system that it actually costs them more money to monitor it and bill you than it would to just let you have it for free. When you pay a premium for an unlimited messaging service you are essentially subsidsizing the cost of tracking and billing other customers per message. At 20 cents per message you are paying $1300 per MB for that data, and because they bill twice for every message, they get $2600 per MB. This is price gauging at an unbelievable level.

And text messaging is just one facet of a hugely complicated prcing structure thats designed specifically to prevent you from directly comparing competitors and get you to pay the largest possible amount for the littlest possible service. They fracture the service into as many small pieces as possible and charge ridiculous prices for them individually in order to make the bundles look cheaper by comparison. 

They charge separately for call display, text messaging, email, voice, long distance and internet even though it’s all similar data all travelling over the same network. (And charging for long distance is just lying, as if it costs more $0.35 a minute more to send data to Waterloo than it does to send data to Mississauga.) It would be as if when you purchased an internet connection you had to pay for a certain number of IM’s per month, extra for accessing sites from the US, extra for watching video, extra for uploading files, and extra for using Skype. There would be protests in the streets if that was attempted, but it’s tolerated on cellular service because we’ve been beaten by them for so long that we don’t think to call the police anymore.

But changes are coming. There is no technical reason that you even need a voice plan or call display or voicemail or text messaging at this point. All you need is a smartphone, a data plan, Skype, and Google Talk. You could get about 1000 minutes of Skype on a 500MB data plan. But oh right, I almost forgot, you also need the cellular service providers to allow Skype on their network, and allow you to install it on the phone that you own. And that won’t happen without a huge increase in competition or a government intervention.

The Canadian telecommunications industry is essentially a oligopoly, group of corporations in collusion that strive to maintain consistent profit margins by cooperatively screwing the consumer from as many angles as possible. There are piles of evidence for this. Telus and Bell (the only two CDMA carriers in the country) insistuted fees for incoming text messages at exactly the same time. So now they get to charge twice for the same tiny packet of data. The equivalent of charging you to mail a letter, then charging the recipient to pick it up.

by dulcie

In a healthy competitive environment Rogers would have seen this as an opportunity to differentiate their service by not implementing the same pricing structure. That way they could take customers away from Bell and Telus. However, that didn’t happen. Rogers knows that they stand to make more profit by implementing the same fees than they would by engaging in a price war, so starting in July, they will. This is price fixing. It may not be conspiratorial or organized, but it’s still price fixing.

by sashafatcat

This adds to the already ridiculous idea that we are paying extra for text messaging to begin with. They are not charging for this service because it costs them money. It doesn’t. In fact it’s built so deeply into the cellular system that it actually costs them more money to monitor it and bill you than it would to just let you have it for free. When you pay a premium for an unlimited messaging service you are essentially subsidsizing the cost of tracking and billing other customers per message. And at 20 cents per message you are paying $1300 per MB for that data, and because they bill twice for every message, they get $2600 per MB of what is essentially pure profit. 

by aresauburn™

And text messaging is just one facet of a hugely complicated prcing structure thats designed specifically to prevent you from directly comparing competitors and get you to pay the largest possible amount for the littlest possible service. They fracture the service into as many small pieces as possible and charge ridiculous prices for them individually in order to make the bundles look cheaper by comparison. 

They charge separately for call display, text messaging, email, voice, long distance and internet even though it’s all similar data all travelling over the same network. (And charging for long distance is just lying, as if it costs more $0.35 a minute more to send data to Waterloo than it does to send data to Mississauga.) It would be as if when you purchased an internet connection you had to pay for a certain number of IM’s per month, extra for accessing sites from the US, extra for watching video, extra for uploading files, and extra for using Skype. There would be protests in the streets if that was attempted, but it’s tolerated on cellular service because we’ve been beaten by them for so long that we don’t think to call the police anymore.

by malthe

But changes are coming. There is no technical reason that you even need a voice plan or call display or voicemail or text messaging at this point. All you need is a smartphone, a data plan, Skype, and Google Talk. You could get about 1000 minutes of Skype on a 500MB data plan. But oh right, I almost forgot, you also need the cellular service providers to allow Skype on their network, and allow you to install it on the phone that you own. And that won’t happen without a huge increase in competition or a government intervention.

by acroll

The CRTC has opened up an online forum for the next month to get the public’s input on net neutrality and the protocol-discrimination policies of large ISP’s in Canada like Rogers and Bell.

by SMN

I strongly encourage everyone to go take a look at these comments to get an idea of how the internet is being manipulated by the corporations in this country. Vote for the comments you agree with and add your own comments if at all possible. 

While I seriously doubt that the CRTC will actually read every comment on this site, if we are able to deluge them with enough input they will be unable to ignore it, and will be forced to realize that no internet user thinks that protocol-discrimination or traffic shaping based on content type are acceptable ways of dealing with network congestion.

We should be entitled to use the connection that we paid for in whatever manner we’d like within the law, and no ISP should be permitted to determine what content we are and are not allowed to produce or consume online. 

Like many people, I have difficulty doing any sort of creative writing in a deliberate fashion. If I’m not able to immediately put my fingers on a keyboard at the moment inspiration strikes, the passion will miss me and the moment will pass. 

In an attempt to get around this I got a notebook to write down ideas in the hopes that I’d then be able to recall this inspiration at a more convenient time and place. But it doesn’t work that way. 

by gr33nt4u (more behind than ever!)

In the moment I will get excited. Ideas and words will rush through me, everything seems brilliant, important, and essential. I jot something down and then go about my business. I get home, look in the notebook and see “yell out stupid shit”. No word of a lie. That’s in there. And I’m not sure what it means.

So rather than being this repository of my genius, it’s a record of my dementia. It’s a written analogy of the situation where pot smokers record their conversations thinking they’re profound in the moment, and then realizing afterward that maybe their thoughts on the subjectivity of existence are not that novel. In fact I seem to remember that topic already being covered by someone else a little while ago.

by @BB

And even in the event that the thought was recorded accurately and actually seems to have some sort of substance to it, I find it hard to rekindle the enthusiasm I may have had not but 2 hours before. It just doesn’t seem important anymore, not worth the effort.

If I try to force the issue, insist to myself that it’s crucial this thought be shared with the world, I only get something garbled and lacking passion. I get the facts but not the feeling. Suddenly what I wanted to be an impassioned rant on the public’s perception of their security in a modern world becomes this dry recitation of the capabilities RFID technology. And no one get excited about RFID technology.

by bre pettis

But enough introspection already. The point of all of this is that I’m beginning to see that the mark of a successful writer is someone who not only writes when they feel it, but also when they don’t. 

So what keeps me from writing? That’s one area where I think almost everyone is the same. It’s a combination of procrastination and a fear of inadequacy that feed back on one another. I don’t write because I’m tired, then because I haven’t written in awhile I don’t write because I feel I’ve lost my audience and don’t have anything worth saying.

Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine refers to negative voice in his head as the little hater that fuels the feedback cycle of laziness to self-doubt to more laziness. My little hater makes it difficult to justify my own voice when it seems that there are so many genius’s out there doing what I already do, but better.

by ɹǝɟɹnsןןıɥ sɐxǝʇ — WW Tribe Wanderer

And that’s the where a new kind of thinking is needed. In her TED talk Elizabeth Gilbert refers to genius not as any specific special kind of person, but as something that could potentially happen to anyone who is already engaged in a creative process. This is a critical distinction. 

If you believe genius is an inherent quality then you may decline to create something because you fear you are not the genius that others may be. But if you force yourself to think of genius as a condition, as something that happens to someone who is dedicated, then there is no barrier to entry and the only way you’ll succeed is by frequently putting yourself in a position where that genius can find you and act through you.

To paraphrase her, if you show up for your part of the job often enough, sooner or later the genius will show up too.

by Nicholas Gray

Dating is a weird and wholly unnatural sort of situation. Online dating even more so. I think Seinfeld had a bit where he compared dating to a job interview, except that if it goes well you both take your pants off at the end.

by spudgunner

Up until very recently I wouldn’t really say I had ever dated. For the most part I’d just sort of meet someone and a relationship would somehow just organically grow out of it. No special fertilizers or grow lamps required. While I have met two of my previous girlfriends through Lavalife, in both cases they were the first people I went out with and in both cases the first date turned into a relationship in short order.

This is why my current situation is new to me. For the first time in my life I’m actually going on dates in the stereotypical sort of way, and it’s a completely novel experience.

by enggul

It starts with the online application process. You read the job description and provide your resume along with a cover letter that you try to tailor to the qualities they are looking for. You want to seem pleasant, eager and qualified, and not desperate for any position you can get. Too much or too little of anything is bad at this point.

Which is why my first instinct at this stage is already incorrect. I want to essentially write the person a long winded and grandiloquent blog-post-like response extolling my knowledge of some factual minutiae that they included in their description.

And it’s sentences like that that prevent women from sleeping with me.

I think that an appropriate response to “I like Woody Allen movies” is a half-assed doctoral thesis on the subject, made up of some random facts and some random made-up facts. Instead of, you know, just saying I liked Annie Hall.

by chesswithdeath

At this point I’ve discovered that the key to getting over the first hurdle is just sending a quick message that I don’t think about and is no longer than about four sentences. No one wants to read through a dissertation length message from someone you don’t know.

And this isn’t dishonest or hiding my true personality. In fact I’ve come across it naturally. I’ve gotten to the point now where I can’t be bothered to put in that much effort when my experience tells me that there is probably only a 20% chance they’ll acknowledge you.

by nattu

Then the actual date. That thing where two strangers meet in a public location to figure out if they want to meet again in another public location.

Aside from the rare cases where the other person is clearly just conducting an interrogation to find your faults, this is generally where I begin to enjoy the process.

I like meeting new people and exploring their personalities. Having discussions where you have no idea what the other persons perspective will be. You come across these conversational surprises, points of view or opinions you hadn’t considered before. It may be going well, it may be going horribly, but it’s all intellectual gravy to me.

by iambigred

And that’s where the next hurdle comes up. I often become so immersed in discovering this person that I forget that this is supposed to be a romantic experience for some people. Overt flirting may become a secondary concern compared to figuring out why someone thinks the way they do.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m frequently a very flirty person, but I don’t feel the need to steer the conversation exclusively in that direction. For me, psychologically sparing is also flirting, and intellectually respecting someone is essential to me finding them sexually attractive. A good debate is foreplay in my opinion.

by Steve Wampler

So online dating doesn’t seem to mesh terribly well with my personality. And maybe that’s the case with most people.

So why do it? Why not go to AGO or take a cooking class and talk to girls?

Aside from the fact that those two options are kind of creepy, I do the online dating thing because it’s a relatively easy way to meet a lot of interesting people that you otherwise would not come across. At least in these situations you know that the person is single, the person is at least somewhat interested in talking to you, and everyone involved is aware that this is a date.

So I’ll keep trying it out. I’ll keep talking the way I talk and acting the way I act and hopefully at some point it’ll click. But in the mean time regardless of whether or not I actually end up with any of these people, I still enjoy figuring out what makes them tick, as well as what that means for me and what I’m looking for.

This round of dating started off with me looking for someone. But the more people I meet, the more I find out things about myself that are of greater interest and value than if I had hooked up right away. And that may just be me rationalizing my current position, but even if it’s an unintended consequence, it’s still true.

by kxlly

by static416

Bad failure handling.

It would be trivially easy to add a little bit of code to the BIOS that would allow the monitor to at least show a photo of some kind in the event of a disk boot failure.

Although I must say that I’d rather look at this than be inundated with an obnoxously loud Pizza Pizza ad.

by static416

I like drinking by myself occasionally and I’m made fun of for it frequently. It’s not like I go home and get completely destroyed, I just have a couple beer once every couple weeks.

I guess that some people see it as odd because they see alcohol entirely as a social lubricant, and don’t really know why you’d drink a beer without the social part. They associate drinking with people.

It’s kind of funny that drinking a little by yourself is seen as more alcoholic than getting plastered in order to have fun with other people.

Also, I bought beer, but I took pictures of the wine because it’s classier.

by static416

I’m posting this for two reasons. The first is that I know that she will not like this photo, so I’m doing it out of spite. The second is that this is essentially the only photo I took today and I’m determined not to get behind again.

I added some vignetting to make it artistic.

by static416

I had to take the bus too and from work for all of last week. I also had to work 10 hour days. So that’s two hours there, 10 hours of work, and two hours back. That didn’t leave much time for photography, so for the purposes of this daily photo experiment I’m going to continue on as if the last week did not occur.

Last night I had my first university class in about 4 years. Holy shit am I ever excited. I am going to kick so much ass. It’s practically unbelievable how much ass I’m going to kick. A lot. Of ass. Kicked. By me.

by The Infatuated

The subjects are technology in the World Wars and the Cold War. As well as the development and effects of television, computers,  the internet, and genetic technologies. That’s basically my entire personality right there. I got a little aroused just writing those down. I could almost teach this course. The only things I’d add that aren’t explicitly included are technologies relating to sexuality or the effects of copyright, though I imagine those will be covered somewhere.

by emdot

The essay that makes up 30% of the mark is supposed to be centered around a controversial subject, with both popular and academic sources taken from both sides. The subjects available cover things such as information privacy (personal, public, genetic), reproductive rights, energy production (hydrocarbon-based, nuclear, hydrogen), internet and copyright, net neutrality, and many others.

We’re supposed to do 7-8 pages. I could probably write 10 pages tonight on almost any of those subjects. Not 10 good pages, but 10 pages none the less. My challenge is going to be limiting my essay to only the best sources, and trying to keep my arguments as concise as possible. And my spelling and grammar, which could use some work, I had to spell check controversial.

by vial3tt3r

So yeah. I’m pretty stoked for this class. Arrogance aside, I’m sure that once I get into it the class will be challenging and I’ll learn a lot. The professor seems eager to make the students lives as easy as possible without losing any academic credibility in the process. I’m going to request that I write my essay on the effects of technology on sexuality. I’ll have to get more specific than that, but I don’t expect it to be a problem.

There will definitely be a great number of posts on in the coming weeks/months as I progress through the course. Academic discussions always make me intellectually randy and my surplus opinions will have to go somewhere.

by {christy_b}