Month: January 2013

It’s important to travel to different places to experience different styles of life from different perspectives.  A lot of people spend all their time in one area or town or city and end up with a somewhat limited view of the world around them.  Sure, they can see things on TV, but it’s different to actually go experience them.  That’s not saying you have to go live in the desert or something, but just visiting other countries or cities can kind of shape your world views and understanding of people, and that’s always a good thing.

This is something that I want to start doing more of, too, by the way.  My traveling experience so far is pretty limited.  I’ve been to a few US and Canadian cities but have never left the continent.  I’m planning on changing that soon.  There are a lot of places I want to go, and I don’t want to keep putting it off because people tell me the things you put off you keep putting off and eventually never get around to them.  I want to go all over the world.  I want to visit Italy and ride on a gondola.  I want to visit France and go to Paris and visit the Louvre, and the Eiffel tower and have a picnic in the field and then go to a cafe just relax and revel in the fact that I’m in France.

I’d like to go to Asia and have sushi at a restaurant on a hidden away street in Japan and then see a Noh play or a sumo match.  I’d like to go to Indonesia and visit the beach and go shopping and learn Indonesian and book a hotel Bandung in the native language.  Btw, did you know Indonesia puts the adjective after the noun (like Spanish and Thai)?

And at every place I go, I just want to chill and talk to locals and share stories and experiences and learn more about the people and their perspectives on the world.  I’d like to move abroad if I find a place I like living enough.  I have a friend who did just that; he went traveling in Europe and ended up moving to Holland because he liked it so much.  That dude is so happy, he’s just like, yeah man, it’s great here.  Of course, he’s one of those people who are always happy anyway, but he’s probably happy because he follows what he wants to do and doesn’t really care what anyone else thinks.

I need to be more like that.

Seriously, I’ve been slacking off on my workouts for the last… I don’t even remember.  It’s absolutely amazing how when you stop doing something it soon becomes your habit to not do that thing anymore.  I’m not trying to sound like one of those people who always brags about how good of shape they used to be in or whatever, but I used to be in pretty good shape.  I used to exercise regularly.  I used to be decently strong.  I used to be able to run a few miles without stopping.  I could bench press my own body weight.  I mean, I wasn’t like a pro or anything, but I was in pretty good shape.

And then one day I just kinda stopped.  I probably had something to do, and I thought to myself “oh, it’s no big deal; I’ll just go to the gym tomorrow instead.”

And then tomorrow came and I didn’t go.

I’m not sure how it happened, either, because I was one of those people who got annoyed if they missed their workouts.  So I can’t believe I would’ve let myself start missing workouts like that.

But sure enough, I haven’t been to the gym in months, and while it annoys me on a large scale, I don’t have that “oh man I missed my workout!” feeling anymore.  It’s like I’m in the habit of not going anymore.  It’s kind of like how I’m in the habit of not cleaning my home office, and that’s why my desk is super messy.

So I’m basically not where I want to be, and not only do I have to get back in the game now, but I’m considering trying green coffee bean extract to try and give me a little boost to help me lose a little extra weight.  I’m not really one of those people who uses a lot of supplements, but a little help here and there might not be a bad idea.

I’m pretty sure once I get back into it, I’ll stay in the swing of things.  I don’t like the fact that I stopped working out and I don’t think I’ll let myself get back to this situation again.  I also want to see if I can find a workout partner.  I think I mentioned that before.  It might help on those days when I don’t have as much motivation as I would like.

Anyway, I need to go to bed now while it’s still a decent hour.  I don’t want to be dragging tomorrow.

Ever have your computer die on you?  I remember when it happened to me.  It was about two years ago, and I was surfing the net one evening when suddenly my computer shut off.  I thought we had lost power or something, but my TV was still on.  I tried pushing the power button to turn it back on, but nothing happened.  Suddenly, my heart kind of sank.  Did I just lose all my data?  I had been collecting songs and stuff on my computer for the last 8 years.  Did I seriously just lose all of them?

I had an external hard drive that I did backups on, but I didn’t do them very often.  In fact, I probably did one once every few months, and all of the songs and stuff that I had gotten in the last few months hadn’t been copied over yet.

And what about all the work I had saved on my computer?  I did have some work stuff on it, too, although my initial concern was my music.

Fortunately, it turned out that my hard drive was just fine and I didn’t lose any data.  My motherboard had died which is what caused the computer to shut off.  My computer was a good 5 or 6 years old at this point, so it’s not too out of the ordinary for something like this to happen.  Unfortunately, it was a proprietary motherboard for a computer that was no longer made, so my only option was to buy a new computer.

I was able to remove my old hard drive and connect it to my new computer with an adapter so I could copy over all my files and documents and everything, so I didn’t lose any data.  But I sure was freaked out.  It caused me to start having better backup habits.  I now have an external hard drive that I back up any time I get new files, and I also use cloud storage from Mozy to keep my important files online so I can access them from anywhere.  I seriously don’t want to take any chances with losing data again.  It’s fine if a computer dies.  I mean, you have to replace it which can be kind of expensive, but there’s a lot of data that can be priceless because it can’t be replaced.

It’s also possible for your hard drive to fail.  I got lucky in that it was my mobo that failed.  At least I didn’t lose any files.  I don’t know what I would’ve done if it was my hard drive that crashed.

This is one of the 2 months that I get paid 3 times and this past Friday was the first check. I usually wait until the last one to have fun with it but I actually needed some things this time so I ordered them today. Most of it was stuff for my new apartment. I bought some wire shelving that I plan on putting up in my 2nd bedroom. The room itself is pretty small so I am making it into an office. I am not going to put a bed or anything like that in there. I doubt I’ll have many people staying over anyways. I just moved to this city and don’t have a lot of friends. Right now it is basically just this girl I work with named Erin. She’s nice and all but right now we only have a coworker/friend relationship. I have thought about asking her to do something after work sometime but I’m going to wait until we are a little friendlier with each other before doing that. The last thing I want is for her to say no or even worse would be for her to say yes but awkwardly.

I also ordered a new entertainment center and am pretty excited about getting it. I’m not excited about putting it together but I’ll manage. I guess I could ask this guy that lives on my floor to help me if needed. We are both smokers and smoke outside and I’ve chatted with him a few times. He seems nice but is older and I can’t say I’m attracted to him at all so there will be no romance between us. He hasn’t flirted or anything with me so maybe he doesn’t think I’m too attractive either. I guess he could also have a girlfriend or wife that lives with him but I didn’t see a ring on his finger. My Dad doesn’t wear a wedding band though so that doesn’t mean much.

Anyways I am starting to ramble here so I’m going to wrap this up soon. I still have a couple hundred dollars to play around with so I’m going to do some more online shopping. I really wouldn’t mind a new phone but am still a month or so away from being eligible for an upgrade. I guess I can hold off until then although the phone I have now is really starting to tick me off. It keeps freezing and the only way to unfreeze it is to remove the battery.