Jan
27

Geek Badge

Recently I had an interesting encounter with another gamer. Without him knowing what I do for a living or really who I am, he decided to not just pull out his e-peen but try to talk about how awesome he is in real life. It was amusing to me that he though that a black belt, working for a technology company and making loads of money made him feel superior. What was interesting is that this same person was very against mixing his professional (real) life with WoW. A total WoW closet player.

I don’t talk about WoW here anymore since I split my talk of WoW to its own space. Today I bumped into a great blog where a writer actually split their blog and then joined them all up again. I don’t think I want to merge the WoW content back here, but I do think I need to talk about my geek badges a little more. (at least on this post.)

I keep my professional life off the blog for the most part. I don’t want to get fired for saying something about what happens at work. I have had dragons on my desk, but currently I am not displaying as much geek stuff… well, I am not displaying much at all really. I do think that I need to wear some more geek related clothing on casual days.

While my proudest geek badge of honor is being married to a woman that not only loves me but has been infected with my geekery. She plays WoW, made a page for her lock, has watched and loved anime, read manga and considers herself a geek now. She has her own google shirt!

But hey, this is about my geekdom so lets start.

Anime

The first geek hobbie I ever had before video games was anime. I have watched it for a long time and still indulge in a weekly watch of subbed Naruto as soon as it has been translated. You can now watch the current Naruto in Hulu. Shippuden is quite the story… and they are done with fillers and the story is moving along.

Harry Potter

I love that series, it really captured my imagination. I have read the books several more than once and think they are excellent. I love the world as well, I like the movies and would not mind visiting the theme part.

StarTrek>StarWars

I eventually picked sides and blame Mr Lucas for making the later movies horrible. I do want to watch Red Tails.

Computers

I know how to write code, I know how to build my own computer… I could go on, but I think most of you know how that one goes.

Fish Geek

I have not only kept fish before, I actually got into breeding them for a bit. I’ve had mostly cichlids but love the aquarium world. Mostly fresh water I think I will eventually work on some salt water… it just bothers me that you cannot get them to breed, it feels wrong to keep an animal captive that cannot “get it on.”

I don’t yet LARP… but have a friend that is constantly telling me I am missing out. I also never done the whole dressing up for anything yet, but I might do a renfest some day.

So what about you, do you wear your geek with pride?

Jan
25

Lying

I am the default person in the house to deal with telemarketers or customer service representatives. Working in conjunction with a third party collection agency gave me a glimpse at how some of those places work. People will say whatever they think it will get them a result, and in the end they end up lying.

We might not realize it, but every time we see someone else lie our trust for that person starts to diminish. What I never realized before reading this short essay by Sam Harris is that it goes well beyond that. It seems that from a psychological stand point, the person lying starts to get hostile towards the person that they lie to.

There is a saying we use back in Colombia “El ladron juzga por su condicion.” This can be losely translated without losing all its meaning to “A thief believes everyone else steals.”

People that routinely lie to themselves or others also think others are also liars. Furthermore, people that routinely lie start to dislike the people that they lie to,

In fact, suspicion often grown on both sides of a lie: Research indicates that liars trust those they deceive less than they otherwise might-and the more damaging their lies, the less they trus, or even like, their victims. It seems that in protecting their egos, and interpreting their own behavior as justified, liars ten to deprecate the people they lie to.

Sam Harris then cites the research “Deceiver’s Distrust: Denigration as a Consequence of Undiscovered Deception.”

I grew up with the notion that you should always tell the truth, but it was accentuated by the saying. “Traigame un herido, no un muerto.” That was a saying from my Grandfather, passed down to my Dad and then to me. Be honest about anything you face, if you “Bring me an injured person, don’t bring me a dead one.” That has always stayed in my head, not only to make sure that I ask for help before a problem escalates, but also to always tell the truth.

I trust people easily. I know this can be a bad thing. However, I always feel that the more you give to people the more you will get in return. People know I am blunt, trying to make that more about honesty than lack of tact. I have in recent years just told people I am not interested rather than just hanging up on them. I don’t like to lie or hypocrisy, but I think it shows more trough action than through words.

The more you build trust with people, the more powerful your words become. The consequences of what you say have a profound effect. The more you lose trust on someone, the less their words weight. I chose to see the positive in situations and people, and I have been accused by those that don’t know me of flattery. It could not be further from the truth, I honestly believe in the potential of those around me to succeed and be awesome. All my friends keep proving me right by just being amazing people, so it is not flattery if they really are that freaking cool.

The essay was an easy read, and it made me think a lot. It is good to make a commitment to yourself to always tell the truth… and also learn a little tact. There will always be someone asking you if their puppy is the cutest of them all.

Jan
24

I’m Bored!

Actually I am not at all, lol. I have lots of work ahead of me with the projects I am working on ranging from the very tedious to the very engaging and headache driving type of stuff. This has nothing to do with that or with the AWESOME (but too short) weekend Bea and I just spent in KC.

Deguia and I were just having a conversation this morning as he deals with some parenting stuff. One if his kids is bored! only a book and iPod to keep them entertained. After laughing at how old we are already I started to remember what entertained me in those preteen years.

I knew better than to tell my Mom I was bored because she was quick to find a shore around the house that would occupy my time. I did spend a lot of time outside playing soccer with balls for grass on pavement. I was also part of the first generations that grew up with video games, and while I thought the first one I owned was the Atari 2600 that I eventually (Mission Impossibled) broke. The first was actually a form of entertainment called “Game and Watch.”

Egg

I did not even know until today that it was actually just called Egg. It basically required that you catch eggs before the crack. This simple device kept me entertained for not just hours, but I think months! I think I even had to replace batteries on it more than once. If I remember correctly, I think it was gifted to someone eventually still in working condition.

Most kids today even real young ones are great at handling gadgets like the iPhone and iPads. It is almost second nature to them to handle those user interfaces. They also seem to be falling pray of the short attention spans and burst of entertainment. It seems like the kids of today are getting bored quite easily. To the point that I don’t think any of them would have the patience to watch Dragon Ball Z with fights between bad guys that used to last several episodes.

I wish I still had my Egg game to see if it would keep a kid entertained at all. I could talk about imagination and how entertainment now could be hurting it… but I do have a niece that is an avid reader and think she has an awesome imagination. This does make me thing about what kept me entertained.

So without having to date your childhood too much, what things used to keep you entertained? Do you remember any single toy that kept you entertained for a long time?

Jan
18

STOP SOPA

STOP SOPA - PIPA

Jan
18

Do we need faith?

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
-Khalil Gibran

Notice that I did not say “do we need religion?” before you get your panties all wadded up; but I might touch on that too. So before you go any further let me explain something about faith.

Many words have tons of meanings that can be defined and interpreted differently. Take for example a color, while it is something that can be defined and classified it is a lot more than that. Blue can be your favorite t-shirt, team, car. Words carry a lot of meaning and faith, like the word love is one of the heavy ones.

How necessary is faith though? Do we need it in our lives? Is it an innate thing or something we learn?

I respect and often times admire people of faith. Some of the happiest people are those with strong faith. Then there are those that make me want to give up on faith as an idea, see “Tim Tebow” sport antics and wanting to push his agenda for Christianity and God helping him score 316 touchdowns!

Our society is losing the sense of honor and heroes. We call lots of people’s heroes, but who do we really follow or put our faith into?

Celebrity culture is yet another form of worship that some even find a mental disease associated with compulsive behavior. Yet you look at the definition for it and in some ways believing in a Kardashian (no I am not looking up if that is the correct spelling) seems no different than believing in Jesus. Same infatuation with a fabricated thing.

Yet I love Christianity in so many ways, I still feel comforted by praying “our father.”

Faith helps people get through life. It gives them energy to keep going, it gives them that sense of companionship when we feel all alone. Some would not be able to get up every day without it. So is there something wrong with those that don’t have it all?

Do we always need someone or something to worship? is it just part of the human makeup?

This topic does have more questions than answer I am afraid. One of the most important lessons I have come across in life is that to really learn you have to question. If you have faith in something, it is ok to question it… if you don’t it might not be that strong after all.

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