The most inspirational song ever

I am not like a huge PJ fan, but I just find this song really inspirational.

By the pain I see in others

We debated for a while about whether it was alright to tell my parents about our engagement with my dad sick in the hospital and everything being so crazy. In the end we chose to tell them and it was the right decision. I think it made everybody happy, and gave everyone something nice to focus on for a change. The first thing my dad said was 'I want grandkids', and he made us promise that we name his first grandson 'Jerome'. My mom was delighted as well, clearly she loves weddings, especially those of her sons.

We went out to eat at Elephant and Castle the night we told my parents, I kept holding K.'s hand to look at her ring. My brothers are my best men. They've been talking about taking me to Thailand for my bachelor party, which is cool as hell, except I'm not too crazy about Thai women. I mean they're ok but Vegas sounds better.

Right now K. and her mom are obsessing over where to hold the reception, where the ceremony's gonna be, what the date will be. Of course I'm shutting down like a turtle in his shell, I don't want to think about anything right now - wedding plans, Christmas shopping, New Years Eve, my financial situation, my car's electrical system breaking down - I don't want to deal with any of that until we find out what's going on with my dad. He is in really bad shape. L. calls me from the hospital daily with reports of his pacemaker going off in the middle of the night. They have to fix him asap. I worry about him constantly, but I choose to spend my days at work instead of taking 2 weeks of vacation to spend at the hospital with him like my brothers did - I feel guilty but this is better for me, I can focus on something else for 8 hours a day so I don't go crazy thinking about it.

The good news is he's passed all his tests necessary to get a transplant except teeth and eyes, which seem like formalities. And he is type AB, so he is a 'universal recipient'. The bad news is his heart is really weak and he needs a new heart asap. It's been kind of a crazy time, I'm extremely happy with K., but there's this thing with my dad that is always at the back of my mind.

I've been playing K. a lot of Christmas songs on guitar. Her favorites are 'O Holy Night' and 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' - she also makes me do this Rascal Flatts Christmas song. Work is going really well - they're moving me to a better office which is cool I guess. I've really been throwing myself into it, which I should've been doing all along.

Tonight I'm going to the hospital to give my mom her birthday gift. It looks like my dad will be spending the holidays at the hospital. I may have to cancel or cut short my trip to Michigan to visit K.'s folks. I still have a few presents to buy too.

Xmas Rhapsody

http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2006/12/a_very_special_.html

Really goofy xmas song I found.

Is this the Yuletide?
It's such a mystery
Will I be denied
Or will there be gifts for me?

Come down the stairs
Look under the tree and see...

Repeating yesterday

My dad's back in the hospital again, he has excessive fluid in his lungs due to an enlarged heart, the same stuff. I guess they have to adjust the blood thinner medications that he's on so that he can be comfortable at home. They are not strong enough and he winds up staying up all night coughing. When I stopped by the house last Thursday, he looked like he hadn't slept in a week. They are able to put him on much stronger medication at the hospital - but they have to do it intravenously. I really hope they finish giving him all the tests he needs to qualify for a heart transplant.

It's weird how calm my family is, it's like they're used to all of this now. They are probably like me though - privately my dad being in the hospital is in the back of my mind all the time, I always feel this turbulence underlying everything I do.

JCB called, he agreed to go with us to Duffy's for New Years Eve. I asked J. and P. but they're unsure if they're going at this point. We're supposed to be going with C. and B., each of whom are bringing a bunch of girls - which should be exciting for JCB and J. We went out to Louie's with C. on Saturday - that girl's a trip - we had a good time drinking and watching drunk people sing karaoke. I did a really bad rendition of Dangerzone by Kenny Loggins. On Sunday we drove out to Carol Stream so K. could try on a bridesmaid dress and visit with her college friend who is getting married in the summer. I had to hang out at the bar with the college friend's fiance. I shouldn't have gone, I should've stayed home and did some work or went to visit my dad in the hospital.

Still waiting for the ring to arrive, I'm hoping it will be nice so we can tell our parents. My parents seem to really like K. - maybe the news will make them happy. I also keep thinking about the looks in the fiance's face when his bride-to-be kept talking about her wedding - it was like 'the thousand yard stare' that vets used to talk about. :P

I'm Engaged

I ordered a diamond engagement ring for K. last night. When it arrives in a few days I will get down on one knee and ask her to marry me, although we are pretty much already engaged since she was the one who picked out the ring online. It's just like me to order something like this off of eBay. They really do have some nice vintage rings from reputable sellers. We plan to announce our engagement to our parents over the holidays. K. wants to start planning for a wedding next year. I told her I want it to be sometime in February, like my parents.

Despite the big news on the girlfriend front, other areas of my life are still really unsettled. I need to really take some strong action, I can't live like this. The most difficult thing is that a lot of my problems seems out of my control. I can't help that my dad almost died last month and is in need of a heart transplant, or the fact that we had to stay with him in the emergency room while he had a series of operations.

Last night I went over to my parent's house and move some furniture from their old office. Dad's looking really tired nowadays - he's not sleeping a lot due to his nose bleeding so much from all the blood thinners and making him sneeze at night. He's got bandages on his nose to stop the bleeding that look rather alarming. My mom has become pretty fatalistic - every time I stop by the house she mentions how I will have to take care of Seymour when my dad is gone. He's not fucking gone yet. J. and I sat around and messed around with his new studio gear. I watched the season 3 finale of Lost with my mom and dad. Everything is water under the bridge at this point between us, I just sort of want to enjoy whatever time we have left with each other on this planet, and I want my dad to know how much I love him. The old resentments and insecurities regarding my relationship with my parents seems so unimportant now. I just want my dad to get better.

K. nagged at me the other day because it seemed like all I wanted to do was play guitar and not think about anything. We had agreed to sit down and go through Dave Ramsey's budgeting worksheets, but I didn't want to do anything on Saturday by lay around the house and eat and watch movies. God I'm getting fat. It's cold out so it's harder for me to get to the gym again too. I had to explain to K. how I'm just so overwhelmed: the engagement, moving in together only a week ago, my dad getting sick, missing work due to having to take care of my dad, feeling behind at work, frustrations with my job in general, family obligations, the impending holiday season, financial responsibilities compounded by the holidays and the engagement ring, gaining weight, just everything.

We stayed up pretty late last night, K. heped me sort out at least a couple of those issues, she's such an incredible person, I'm really lucky. What's great about finding the person you want to spend the rest of your life with is that it grealy simplifies things - all you have to worry about is taking care of that person, nothing else really matters. Negative people, career troubles, self doubt, money issues, politics. You just have to deal with it, because the most important thing is that other person and making sure you're doing everything you can to make sure they're ok. Today it's back to work again, and back to my new campaign of working a lot of overtime and trying to get ahead on the job. I'm also starting a one month campaign to lose as much weight before Christmas.

On the brink of the road and the damned

Back at work, I'm glad last week is over. I'm really out of it - I spent yesterday just catching up on emails. I'm really glad Jer and Paul are here, it's like coming back to a second family. I realized I'm happier at work than spending time with my family, that's kind of sad. K. is still moving in. We've tried 3 times now to make her a copy of the house key. I've decided to make a couple of changes in my life - one thing I'm doing is switch my priorities around a little. After work on weekday nights I have to do certain things: work out, meditate, practice guitar, and study programming or work overtime about 2 hours, and do a little financial research and planning. I'm going to practice guitar last now - so if I am studying and it is really late and I don't get to practice guitar, then so be it - I don't get to practice guitar. I might not get to practice so much, but at least I'll get the most important things done. I have a hunch that I'll wind up staying up late or practicing a lot on the weekend to make up for the practice missed during the week. I've set up my own domain name too, and a wordpress blog. I'm going to be working a lot on this new site and the software I plan to post on it. I'm also taking Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, I've always been a fan of his podcast - this is a 13 week total money makeover. It teaches a lot of useful information, if you can get past the religious propaganda. One piece of information that stuck in my mind from week 1 was that it takes 15 to 17 years for a typical millionaire to accumulate his net worth.

Can the next generation change the world?

We've been coming to the hospital every day for a week now. We had some scares, but my dad's looking a lot better. They had him hooked up to a lot of machines that cleared out all the fluid in his lungs, and reduced some of the swelling in his chest. His overall prognosis, however, is pretty bad. They did an angiogram on Monday, followed up with a whole bunch of tests - mri, ekg, ct scan, etc. - all to see whether or not it will be feasible to do bypass surgery or a transplant. It looks like he's going to have a transplant. He's having a defibrulator put in right now, after the operation we'll bring him home. He'll have to change his diet and have a nurse with him for a few months, he's going to have to go back to the hospital for checkups.

Here’s a Quick Way to STOP Negative Thoughts

Are you carrying around some junk? You know, those hurtful and disastrous things that you may have been told by someone during the course of your life. It was supposed to be taken with a grain of salt or simply ignored but most of the times we take that criticism and wear it like a hat of shame!

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Only fools are enslaved by time and space

I had a dream last week where I knew that a bomb was going to drop on my house - a big fat cartoonish bomb falling straight down on my house. And I was moving everything out of the way. I forgot what happened next, but I woke up thinking something's gonna happen, I just didn't know what. When I got a call from J. I knew what it was going to be before I spoke to him - my dad had to go to the hospital for heart related problems. They wanted to do an angiogram on him, but there were complications due to his diabetes medicine, so they had him on various treatments over the weekend to prepare him for an angiogram this morning. I spent the weekend at Northwestern Memorial downtown sitting at my dad's bedside with my mom, M., and my brothers. K. would drop me off and go back to my place to do her homework. I'd come home at night, we'd watch Lost then fall asleep.

Today I got up early, J. and my mom picked me up to go to the hospital to be there when my dad had his angiogram. They told us that the angiogram would tell us what they should do next: 1. best case scenario, an angioplasty, 2. second best scenario, bypass surgery 3. worst case scenario, they fit him with a pacemaker and fibrulator and send him home and put him on the list for heart transplant surgery.

We just got the results - he has to have triple bypass. I guess it could be worse. My mom's pretty much freaking out. My brothers and dad are surprisingly upbeat, I am too I guess. I feel numb, I told John during my therapy session on Saturday that I just want them to do whatever they're going to do so we can bring him home. Then we'll make him eat well and force him to exercise, and I'll come home more often so we can play golf and he can get his walking in. I feel like everything in my life has been put on hold until I they finish with the surgery. This is the worst time for something like this to happen to someone in my family, I guess it's always the worst time for something like this to happen.

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Everything's going to change. Have a cluckety cluck cluck day, Hugo.

This is very sudden, but it's good news. I've mentioned here how I was talking to my girl about eventually moving in with me - we could save money in rent and really start saving for our plan of getting rich through buying commercial properties. We thought that we would have to wait til May when her lease is over, but she talked to a lawyer from a tenant's rights group, and he told her that she can break her lease and move in next month. So we're moving her in slowly and she will be fully moved in by the end of the month. This is a big step. As soon as I found out I called my mom to tell her - but I chickened out and wound up just talking to my mom for a half an hour. I wonder what she'll say.

It doesn't matter who we were. It only matters who we are.

We went out with K's friend L. from da UP at House of Sushi and Noodles on Friday, then dinner with P. and R. and J. from work at Bob Chinn's on Saturday with a side trip to Ikea, then another painting and Home Depot excursion on Sunday. I didn't get any studying done over the weekend. Things are moving fast, it never feels like there's any time to do things. Maybe if I didn't have a girlfriend I'd feel like I have more free time, but that's probably not what would happen - if I didn't have a girlfriend I'd be going out all the time looking for a girlfriend, spending all kinds of money. Things would be about the same except I'd be drinking more, spending more money on bullshit things like going out and I wouldn't have cool stuff to show for it like a newly renovated apartment. I'd be depressed more often, I'd have more existential angst, my family would continue to wonder when the hell I'm going to settle down. Then again, maybe I'd be dating multiple women. Nah, I doubt it. My pal JCB is dating two girls right now - but I wouldn't want to have gone through all the bullshit he went through this summer in order to finally find himself in the situation of dating two girls at once.

No, I don't regret a thing, my girl makes my life better and I'm a better man for having been with her. Things are just busy - all the time I'd have left over to get some of my extra projects done we spend moving her in to my apartment and doing home renovation crap like painting and moving furniture. The apartment looks awesome now by the way - I just don't like a couple of the little monkey shaped figurines that K. brought over. I'm so glad painting's done, she promised me that it would only take a couple days and it took a month almost.

What else. I applied for my own domain name, I'm still sort of setting it all up - I have to change ISP's in order to host it at my house since RCN is blocking all kinds of ports. Weightwatchers is going ok - I can't believe I'm in weightwatchers now. I'm not exactly overweight, I am just frustrated because I can't seem to lose these last 10 lbs despite how much I work out. We've also decided the plans for the holidays - Thanksgiving we will be in Chicago, we will be in da UP on Christmas Day. This will be my first Christmas away from home ever. I don't know how I feel about this - I don't mind being away from the usually Christmas stuff at home, although I'll miss my family. On the other hand - I am sort of ambivalent about spending Christmas in da UP with people I don't know. At least K. will be there, as always the holidays will come too soon.

Apple planning iPhone SDK for February!

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Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize

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Laughing or Dying?

I'm loving the new MacBook Pro. I thought my old PowerBook was powerful, but this thing just screams. I'm now able to watch episodes of Lost online, while playing guitar through my firewire interface and Guitar Rig 2. Simply incredible. We have some site licenses for vmware fusion coming in at work too, can't wait for that. One other cool thing is that work is buying me a Blackberry 8080 with unlimited internet. That would come in handy for this upcoming trip to Michigan this weekend, I don't know if I'll get it by then. The apartment looks great after spending all weekend painting. It's various shades of brown and blue, sounds weird but it looks nice. Work is good, I have the day off next Monday and I'm really starting to get a lot of good work done. I started doing some finances stuff yesterday, you really only have to spend about an hour a day max on that stuff aside from research. Can't believe I have to go away this weekend, I could use the time to get some stuff done. But I already agreed to this trip like two months ago. I'm kinda nervous about it - K's mom supposedly is planning a huge party with all their relatives where they can show me off. Kind of flattering, but all in all I'd rather be at home watching baseball and playing guitar. K. also made me join weight watchers last week, we have to go every Sunday morning now. It's 40 bucks a month and I don't eat as much now (although I eat surprisingly well for being on weight watchers). Also, finally got around to taking my Ibanez S470 into Guitar Center for repairs, can't wait to get that thing back.

tried to set environment variable `LC_PAPER' to `C', but it is forbidden by

Had to work over the weekend, it's been a really annoying couple of days of busy work. Was also really lazy about working out, dieting, and all the little financial projects that I have been putting off. As I told my therapist last weekend, I'm done with the little mental vacation I went on after I found out I got an A in my business class. Have been really busy this morning so far, have to do a new weekly plan today. K. inexplicably decided to start painting my kitchen this weekend. I don't know what to think - it's a little annoying that there's paint and supplies all over the place and all my cabinets have been taken off their hinges. On the other hand, she's willing to pay for the supplies and do all the work, which I'm personally too lazy and unmotivated to do myself. Lazy weekend in general. Great time at the Sonata Arctica concert w P. and J., laid around the rest of the weekend with K., watching Lost season 1. One other thing - therapist tells me that I seem ambivalent about taking steps to move forward with the next stage of my career. An interesting observation, since I'm supposedly obsessed with moving on from my current job.

After I nearly choked to death on camera

I had a fun time last night with K. and K. and B. at dinner. I also met J., the guy who K. is in love with and also another K., a german girl who's staying with my K. for the week while on vacation. We celebrated J's birthday at Piece in Wicker Park, I invited JCB but he had to work. Me and K. still want to set him up with H. Hehe - so many initials.:P Last weekend was pretty interesting - I've been feeling pretty run down lately. So many concerts and social events, also I've been working a lot (but ironically, I haven't been working very efficiently). Saturday we went to Indiana to see another one of JCB's UFC tournaments. F. and his wife showed up. We went to Hooters beforehand. H. and K's bro and everyone else we told wanted to go to the next tournament - I've never told JCB that I find them generally boring except for the main event or when someone gets seriously hurt. K. seemed to like it. She's been going crazy with finals and such. What else. Guitar is coming along very slowly. I have started using Petrucci's Rock Discipline to try to build up my chops. Learning these metal songs with the crazy speed picking in the solos is going to be very difficult if I don't clean up my technique. I've also spent way too much this month, starting from the beginning of the month. I blame all these social events. Whenever I go out to a concert at a large venue, or a baseball game, I always spend a lot of money on beers and food. I spent like 100 bucks at the Rush concert. I haven't done much studying for my Java certifications. I'm going to go easy on myself this week, as a reward for finishing my business class. Then it's back to work.

Miasma

Last night, K. told me she had to go in for another cat scan today. She said, 'if anything happens to me, I have to get your sperm, so that when I get better I can have your babies.' Babies are so important to women. What could I say but, 'ok'?

Bears FtW

I got an A in my business class! I'm going to probably continue with an accounting or stats class. I also told JCB that I was going to look into a real estate class for us to take this fall. There's also the SCJP certification. I should probably sit down and prioritize all of the things I want to do this year. I'm going to the Hideout festival with J. and D. tonight - Bloc party is playing. We're leaving work early tonight - I dunno about 5 hours of indie rock concerts, I may have to drink profusely. I've been celebrating lately - I haven't done much other than work a lot and hang around the house, watch Lost episodes in bed with K., play guitar, do some home improvements. Tomorrow should be fun too - going to see Rush at the Tinley Park ampitheater with J. and P. and K. and R., carpooling with J. there. Life is good, life is fun and busy, I'm happy. I have to remind myself sometimes to appreciate what I have.

The last day of summer

A really lazy weekend where me and K. didn't do much more than hang out around the house, walk around the neighborhood, and go out to eat. On Sunday we drove up to Milwaukee to see the Brewer's game with Lane and Natalie, but that was pretty much the extent of our social interaction, oh yeah JCB called a few times. K. has been obsessed with redecorating my house - she has some interesting ideas about painting and rearranging some of the furniture. We went to Home Depot twice this weekend to buy stuff to redo the lighting and light switches at my house. I feel bloated and tired. I skipped working out in the morning again this morning so I could get to work early and leave early for this dentist appointment. I'm doing my weekly review right now, I haven't done much studying for my certification, it's ok I guess, I've been studying a lot lately and it was a holiday weekend. No shorts today for the first time in months - no shorts after Labor Day. Summer's over. K. even goes back to work today. This was a really good summer, a lot of good things happened, that Washington DC trip was so awesome, I'm always going to remember that.

Moonlapse Vertigo

I woke up at 5am today, kissed K. and drove to the gym from K's house, then worked out and did yoga before work. I'm at work an hour early today. Feels good to have extra time to get caught up. Life feels busy, healthy, and balanced - not as balanced as I'd like it to be but it's not bad, I should've spent a little more time this month with my financial stuff but I was so caught up with my business class. I'm thinking that I was blessed with a superior intellect, youthful good looks, and health - but my downfall has always been a tendency towards melancholy, depression, and laziness.

So I take it a day at a time, a week at a time - if I work overtime on a consistent basis, it is pretty much inevitable that I will do well in my career. That thought keeps me satisfied and focused despite the fact that I'm dissatisfied about many aspects of my job. I always remind myself that the past does not determine the future and that we are living with the repercussions of past karma, and that your current situation is not indicative of who you are right now.

My birthday was last weekend. I got some underwear, a gift certificate to Bloomingdales, and a designer tea set. I took K. over to my parents for lunch. I think my parents liked her, I could tell it made J. a little uncomfortable. A year ago I was going out all the time, and my life was totally out of control. I was surrounded by negative people. I can feel that the environment at work is changing again, now that certain people are leaving. It's weird how I almost hated certain people but now that they're gone I kind of miss them.

All I'm trying to do is help you understand that The Name of The Rose is merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory.

That exam was ridiculous, the prof pulled a 5 year old exam out of his archives. At least 45 percent of the exam weren't part of my study notes. The programming examples were in C++, not Java. I complained about the exam but I guess there's not much I can do. I shmoozed him a little before I left. I'm really glad that class is over though. I'm excited about being able to spend more time on my personal projects and getting ahead at work. Last night I crashed the minute my head hit the pillow, K. kept nudging me going 'hey let's do it!', but I wouldn't wake up according to her. Oh yeah I bought a new guitar on eBay btw - I sold my Jackson and bought an Ibanez S470. Can't wait til it arrives in the mail. My boss also tells me I'm getting a new Macbook Pro, I should be rocking when that arrives in the mail in a couple weeks.

I don't know why I'm including this dialogue from Trainspotting, probably the recurrent thoughts of mortality that keep running through my head.

Sick Boy: It's certainly a phenomenon in all walks of life.
Renton: What do you mean?
Sick Boy: Well, at one time, you've got it... and then you lose it... and it's gone forever. All walks of life: George Best, for example. Had it, lost it. Or David Bowie, or Lou Reed...
Renton: Some of his solo stuff's not bad.
Sick Boy: No, it's not bad, but it's not great either. And in your heart you kind of know that although it sounds all right, it's actually just... shite.
Renton: So who else?
Sick Boy: Charlie Nicholas, David Niven, Malcolm McLaren, Elvis Presley...
Renton: OK, OK, so what's the point you're trying to make?
Sick Boy: All I'm trying to do is help you understand that The Name of The Rose is merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory.
Renton: What about The Untouchables?
Sick Boy: I don't rate that at all.
Renton: Despite the Academy Award?
Sick Boy: That means fuck all. It's a sympathy vote.
Renton: Right. So we all get old and then we can't hack it anymore. Is that it?
Sick Boy: Yeah.
Renton: That's your theory?
Sick Boy: Yeah. Beautifully fucking illustrated.

Talking to myself as usual

Almost time for my final for my business class.

You are doing good, despite many things in your life that still need work I'm proud of how hard you have been working lately. Keep this up and it is inevitable that you will have a successful, happy, life. You spent a lot of time studying for os, that is as it should be. Make sure that when it is over that you keepthis level of energy up and channel it into other career and financial projects.

Girl with big tits doing Tenacious D

this video is addictive for some reason.

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The wolf is loose

K.'s gone for 2 weeks. I've been preoccupying myself with cramming for the final exam and paper for this business class I'm taking over the summer. It's weird how I go back to my slob ways once my girlfriend's gone - the house is pretty messy at this point. I sit around and play guitar when I'm not studying. I went out with JCB one night last week - my first night back at Wicker Park in a long time. The place seemed pretty dead. I took JCB to the karaoke place K. took me to. He loved it, we just entertained ourselves fucking around with all the drunk people there. I'm back to my correct weight again after gaining so much weight in DC. Work is busy, but things are changing - certain people are leaving, I'll have to take on more responsibility. I'm actually looking forward to it. When this class is over, I plan to really devote myself to being excellent at my job. That's the way to live. Anyone who puts in between 50-60 hrs a week of solid work is sure to get ahead, it's just a given.

Meditation

I've been noticing how focused my meditation/yoga sessions have become lately. My thoughts don't wander very much compared to how they used to. What helps is focusing on reciting an affirmation to myself X number of times or focusing on some type of visualization - usually the affirmations lead to a visualization. Daily yoga has also done wonders for my back.

A simpler way to save: The 60% solution

A really good article about budgeting from http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/LearnToBudget/ASimplerWayToSaveThe60Solution.aspx

A simpler way to save: The 60% solution
Twenty years of complicated budget calculations have led me to this one simple conclusion: By limiting all essential spending to 60% of total income, savings will soar.

By Richard Jenkins
How many of you have tried budgeting and think it's a waste of time? Come on, let's see those hands.
OK, that's just about everybody.
I've kept a budget of one kind or another, first on paper and then with the help of various software programs, for about 20 years -- despite a strong suspicion that I was wasting my time. The illusion of control, I argued to myself, was better than none at all.
My approach to budgeting was to carefully track my spending during the month and to adjust my budget targets up and down in each category, so that my total expenses never exceeded my income.
Useful? Sometimes.
Anal-compulsive? Probably.
After two decades of this, though, I started to wonder if there isn't an easier, more effective way to budget. I realized that the hardest part about keeping a budget is getting useful information from it. There's too much detail and not enough bottom line. My answer is "the 60% solution," a faster and easier way to structure your budget without having to account for every penny.
What you're trying to do with a budget is to prevent overspending, which ultimately leads to piling up debt. Contrary to the way most people budget, however, it rarely matters what you're overspending on -- dining out, entertainment, clothes. Who cares? It's still debt, right?
Looking at my own spending history, I realized that it wasn't the little luxuries here and there that got me in trouble. It was the large, irregular expenses, like vacations, major repairs and the holidays that did all the damage. To avoid overspending, I had to do a better job of planning for those.
And then there were the really big expenses: buying a car, putting a down payment on a new home or putting a new roof on an old home -- all of which can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. They also can often be postponed, sometimes for years, which theoretically should give me a chance to save for them.
Understand your committed expenses
As I looked back over the past 20 years of budgeting, I saw that there were a few years when my wife and I believed we were fairly on top of things, even with a much lower income than we have today. How did we manage?
The key was a drop in our fixed monthly expenses. It was a period when declining interest rates had lowered our adjustable-rate mortgage payment to about 15% of our household income. That left us with some extra money each month to set aside in a savings account for those irregular expenses.
We later moved to a bigger house with a much bigger mortgage payment, higher maintenance costs and utility bills, and obscene property taxes. The monthly mortgage payment was only 20% of our gross income, far lower than the 33% that most lenders will allow, but, suddenly, we were struggling again.
Even after refinancing our mortgage at a lower rate, we were still often running out of cash before the end of the month. I realized that other fixed expenses had crept upward over the years. As my children, Natalie, now 17, and Jackson, 14, have gotten older, they need things like music lessons and sports equipment that can add several hundred dollars a month to our basic expenses. They're also outgrowing clothes faster than we can buy them.
The slow but steady growth in our monthly spending commitments was putting a squeeze on our budget. I call these "committed" expenses rather than "fixed" or "non-discretionary" expenses, because things like music lessons are neither fixed in amount nor absolute necessities, but rather are commitments my wife and I have made to provide for our children.
The 60% solution emerges
After analyzing our spending patterns over the past couple of years using our Microsoft Money data file, I determined that we needed to keep our committed expenses at or below 60% of our gross income to come out ahead at the end of the month.
Committed expenses:
Basic food and clothing needs.
Essential household expenses.
Insurance premiums.
Charitable contributions.
All of our bills -- even such non-essentials as our satellite TV service.
ALL of our taxes.
I'm not saying that 60% is a magic number. It's a workable goal for my family, and it's a nice round number. But your number might well be a bit higher or lower. At any rate, it's a good place to start.
Then I divided up the remaining 40% into four chunks of 10% each, listed here in order of priority:
Retirement savings: consisting entirely of my 401(k) contribution, which is subtracted automatically from my paycheck.
Long-term savings: also automatically deducted from my pay to buy Microsoft stock at a discount as part of an unusual stock-purchase program. The relative lack of liquidity (i.e. the difficulty of turning these shares into cash) makes it harder to spend this money without some planning and a series of deliberate steps. In a real emergency, though, I could sell and have the cash wired into my bank account within three days, so this is also our emergency fund.
Short-term savings for irregular expenses: which are direct-deposited from my paycheck into a credit union savings account. Money in this account can be easily transferred into our checking account, as needed, via the Web. Over the course of a year, I expect to use all of this money to pay for vacations, repairs, new appliances, holiday gifts and other irregular but more or less predictable expenses.
Fun money: which we can spend on anything we like during the month, so long as the total doesn't exceed 10% of my income.
You may have noticed that only 70% of my paycheck is used for everyday expenses. Since we never see the other 30%, my wife and I generally don't miss it.
We don't really need to track our expenses, because our checking account balance is generally equal to the amount of money we can spend. That's the way a lot of people do it, but they don't first make provision for savings.
The key is keeping a lid on those committed expenses. You can categorize them if you want, but it isn't really necessary. In fact, you could make a budget with just three categories: committed expenses, fun money and irregular expenses, and that's just what I've done with the budget in Money 2005. (I can't really give up my anal-compulsive ways completely, so I've also created a set of subcategories to track the committed expenses, partly because that also allows me to export parts of my spending data to a tax program at the end of the year.)
Now, at this point you may be saying, "Well, la-dee-dah for you, but there's no way I can get my committed expenses down to 60% of my income."
How to get your spending down
For a lot of people, part of the difficulty in reducing committed expenses comes from the need to make big monthly credit card payments. If you're carrying a substantial amount of non-mortgage debt, I'd suggest using the 20% that would otherwise go to retirement and long-term saving to aggressively pay down your debt -- but only after you cut up those cards.
Every dollar in interest that you don't pay is just like getting a guaranteed, risk- and tax-free return on your money equal to the interest rate on the debt. When your debts are paid off -- and it won't take long using 20% of your gross income -- immediately redirect that money into savings.
Now, let's take the really hard case: Even excluding debt payments, reducing your committed expenses to 60% still seems like an impossible goal. If that describes your situation, the odds are good that you're facing one of the following problems:
You have a more expensive home than you can afford.
You've committed to car or boat payments that are larger than you can afford.
Your children are in a private school that you can't really afford.
There's just a big, ugly gap between your income and your lifestyle.
If it's one of the first three, you can undo the damage by slowly unwinding the commitments you've made and choosing something less appealing but ultimately more appropriate
If the problem is having champagne tastes on a beer budget, you'll need to take a long, hard look at where the money is going and why. Take the "Savvy Spending Quiz" on MSN Money to see if perhaps you're using money and things to fill a void in your life. Often, the steps needed to fill that void have little to do with money.
The real secret to building a budget that really works isn't tracking what you spend, any more than counting calories is the secret to losing weight. The key is creating a sustainable structure for your finances, one that balances spending and income and that leaves enough room to handle the unexpected.

A Capitol Fourth 2007 | PBS

Day 3 in DC w my girl. We've been having a lot of fun. mainly just walking around and going out to eat. We had awesome peanut butter banana and honey smoothies this morning at this japanese place. We ate at this place called J Paul's in Georgetown tonight. I found some video of the fireworks display from the 4th on youtube.

Two heats born to run, who'll be the lonely one?

I stayed up pretty late July 2 to get ready for my sort of midterm exam on July 3, I cut out of work during the day to drive to Northwestern and take it at my prof's office. When I got home I cleaned the house and packed, me and my girl set the alarm for 4am. We took a cab to O'hare at 5am to catch a 6:30 flight. Thank god this one wasn't delayed. We got our bags at Ronald Reagan and took the metro to the hotel. We got lost a little bit on the way. After we got situated we walked to where the parade was going to be, around 17th and Constitution. We finally set up at the most primo spot in all of DC - right on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. We struck up a conversation with a family that was visiting from California/Pennsylvania. There was a thunderstorm in the middle of the day that forced everyone inside the memorial. Me and my girl were the most prepared out of the people there - we had a picnic blanket, food to last the whole day, a lot of water, bug spray, and sunscreen. They let off fireworks over the Reflecting Pool, with the Capitol and the Washington Memorial in the background. It was really awesome. There were some that were shaped like smiley faces and hearts and stars. Afterwards we walked home, we figured we walked about 7 miles the entire day. I took a shower and fell asleep while we watched The Secret on my laptop.

I remember we were walking from monument to monument, Vietnam, Korean, WWII, my girl said 'if the world doesn't end, someday this entire field will be memorials'.

Dream of Jenna Fischer

My girl woke up and told me that she had a weird dream last night. She dreamed she was hanging out alone at my place and found a door in my living room that led to a secret room in my apartment, which was like a really nice dining room with a fancy table and a bar ('it was like MTV Cribs', she said). She said this room led to another living room with cathedral ceilings and expensive furnituve (but, curiously, still no wide screen tv), and then she found a balcony that looked out over the city. And then there was a little pug dog that tried to follow her around from room to room. Then she said she found a water slide leading down from the balcony, and the ceiling in the secret living room opened up and there was sunlight everywhere, and she took a glass elevator down to the lobby in my building, which was a lot nicer than it usually is, and decorated like Water Tower Place. She wandered around this new and better version of my building and encountered Jenna Fischer from the Office, and that pretty chick from Gray's Anatomy. Both were pregnant. They looked at her and said, 'we have blood, you have to be pregnant to have old blood.'

'Someday, baby' I told her, wrapping my arms around her. 'Someday we'll have Jenna Fischer.'

Mutha 'Fo Fathers

Do you wake up on your own, and wonder where you are?

I've been eating a lot at this conference, it seems like every time we leave for a break there are all these gourmet sandwiches and deserts laid out for us, which I can't resist. For dinner the other night we had filet mignon and salmon, last night I went with of people from my cohort group to this restaurant downtown, which was pretty swank. I've gotten up every morning at 5:30 and went for a 3 mile run around the downtown area of Portland, and lifted weights. The weight room here kind of sucks, but I did as much as I could. My prof wants to meet on July 5th, but my girl has already bought plane tickets and reserved a hotel room for July 4th - 9th. I'm not sure how this is going to work out. Maybe I can't meet with him. I'm a little behind on my work, I should have stayed in last night and done my homework instead of going out on the town. I figured it's my last night in Portland, I may never be back here. I love to travel, I really need to do more of this. Really looking forward to a 6 day trip to DC with my girlfriend next week, that should be really fun. Sick of these nerds here.

And now I'm going to pack up my laptop, walk out of this room, scam some more food, go up to my room, grab my bags, check out of the hotel, catch the shuttle to the airport, remind my girl to pick me up, catch my plan, listen to my audiobook on the plane ride home, catch a ride home with my girl, and maybe do some studying tonight. Goodbye Portland, it was fun and educational.

Will work for attributes

Day 3 in Portland, second day of the conference. Yesterday was very long, I almost fell asleep during one big presenter's speech - and I didn't have my girl around to kick me under the table. I'm learning a lot about some upcoming legislation and the implementation process, we're not really going into the nitty gritty technical details, which is what I wanted to see, especially clustering scenarios. I asked one of the gurus yesterday about these issues, and he couldn't help me. They are serving some really good food - last night I sat around and bullshitted with a couple of guys from Indiana and Michigan as we ate filet mignon and salmon. There was a nice indian lady from Ohio and a couple of nice guys from Texas. My girl was texting me throughout the day with her new idea to take a vacation next week in Washington DC. Seeing most of the historical sights would be free and it's cheap to fly there this time of year. I'm game, it sounds fun, only thing is I have to finish up all the questions for my class before my Prof. goes away on July 10, so that I can take my final mid-August. At the rate I'm going I have to study about 3 hours a day until the trip, I should email him today. Fell asleep last night, exhausted. I only got about 4 hours of sleep the last 3 days. I went jogging around downtown Portland this morning, beautiful city. It's like a smaller, wild west version of San Francisco, a lot less ghetto than Chicago. Today is gonna be long, I have to do a lot of reading tonight if I really want to go on this trip to DC.

Do you remember when we used to dance? An incidence arose from circumstance

I have not done any studying the past 2 days, I have a status report to turn in for work too. I spent Saturday getting drunk with my girl and her family. We hung around her house drinking wine and beer, then had a big dinner at the Olive Garden. Her mom and dad and college aged brother drove into town to see her triathlon. They are very nice, down to earth working class people, very easy to talk to. They are just like my girl, constantly cracking jokes and looking for opportunities to crack jokes, especially her dad and brother. I can see that she gets her sweet side from her mom. They sent me on an errand to buy baloons for the triathlon, then we went to bed early - we had to get up at 3:30 in order to make it to the triathlon course by 5 o'clock, when they start taking their practice swims and getting their numbers and such. I was very impressed by my girl - the triathlon was gruelling - 1/2 mile swim in a cold lake, a 15 mile bike ride, and then a 5 mile run. I can't even do a 5 mile run, let alone any of the other stuff. And this is a girl who just 15 months ago had cancer. Me and her bro and dad sat around watching the racers go by and cracking jokes. One running joke was that they should add a full contact kick boxing to the triathlon, to even the field a little. JCB was conveniently busy when he found out it was at 6 in the morning. After the tri, me and the girl said goodbye to her family, had breakfast at the Golden Angel pancake house, then we slept for the rest of the day. I really liked her family - I felt bad that mine were relatively standoffish around her. I am really liking my girl a lot these days - sometimes I let my mind wander and I have these crazy thoughts about settling down with her and trying to make a go of it. Doing something like moving to California together, build a new life, accumulate a lot of wealth together. She doesn't even particularly like California, and she's not as materialistic as I am. Anyways, I got up around 6, packed my bags, we had dinner, then she drove me to the airport, as I had to make my 11 o'clock flight to Portland, where I am going to be attending a conference this week.

My flight was delayed, but I got in around 3 am. So here I am in Portland, sitting in a conference room, eating cinnamon buns and drinking coffee, waiting for the speakers to begin their presentations. This morning I went for a little walk around downtown Portland. It seems like a small town, a really clean and friendly place to live, despite there being some bums around. It's nice not having to go to work today, I won't miss some of the assholes I work with. Been stressed out about money and this class I'm taking lately. I have some organizing, planning and work to do when I get a chance later on tonight. If I do not pay attention to my work and finances for a few days I start getting anxious. I'm reading 'The Millionaire Next Door' right now - or, listening to it on audiobook, it's really inspiring. I think my whole deal with my finances is that I am motivated to simultaneously live the status conscious consumer lifestyle, and also maximize my net worth as quickly as possible, you can't really do those two things at the same time.

Meet the Fuckers

It went pretty well, as far as I know. I was surprised. Everybody was nice to my girl. She was really nervous, which is uncharacteristic of her. I think she was intimidated by my in law's house. My brothers were the same around her, goofing off and whatnot. My mom and dad were surprisingly standoffish. I don't think they knew how to handle me bringing girls around. One hopeful sign is that my bro's wife and my girl seemed to get along, and my bro's mother in law was really nice to her as well. How can you not like my girl, she just has a naturally sweet and pleasant personality. Maybe this will lead to me becoming closer to other people in my family eventually. I was certainly glad that my girl was there to keep me company and distract some attention from me, I never feel comfortable at those types of family get togethers. We'll see, I may hear about it from my mom and dad later on, they are just unscrupulous enough to bad talk one of their son's girlfriends to his face.

After the brunch thing for my dad, me and my girl took a long walk down by the beach and watched the sun go down, came home took a shower together, got it on, then lay in bed watching Grindhouse on my laptop until we fell asleep.

Meet the Fockers

So my girl keeps giving me a lot of shit that I never take her to meet my parents (despite the fact that I've asked her to a couple of times), am I ashamed of her and what not, which is just ridiculous. Typical girl stuff, my therapist says that she is ready to 'take it to the next tier'. I told him I liked the tier that we were on. Next week I'm supposed to go out to dinner with her parents and her brother when they come to town for the triathlon. So I asked her to go with me to meet my parents, brothers, sister in law and inlaws today when we go have lunch to celebrate Father's Day. I called my dad to let him know, I think this is all just entertaining to him.

Last night my girl got pissed at me. I took her to see a show at Second City. They sat me and my girl in the front row right by the stage. I don't know what happened to me, I think it's that I haven't been sleeping that much lately with all the crap I have to do, but I kept falling asleep. She kept kicking my leg to wake me up, towards the end of the night she was pretty angry with me. Imagine those Second City performers with this guy in the front row who keeps falling asleep with his mouth hanging open. Maybe they thought I was retarded or something.

Anyways, everything will be different between me and my girl, and between me and my family, in about 3 hours. I will undoubtedly have a lot of things to write about next week.

I'm Slowly Turning Into You

Some randoms, I don't have a lot of time to write these days, I'm really busy with this business class and other stuff, I'm not feeling conflicted about anything, I'm pretty happy most of the time. Every once in a while - about once a month or so - I experience a mini anxiety attack that lasts for about 10 seconds where I kind of zone out and become paralyzed about stuff that's out of my control like terrorism, the US political system, our society's dependence on fossil fuels, the possibility of nuclear war, overpopulation. These attacks fade out fairly quickly, I just find it curious that they happen at all. I don't think this is normal.

But most of the times, life is busy but generally happy. I've been learning to play golf lately, I go hit golf balls at the driving range with my dad and mom every once in a while. It's a surprisingly complex game. Relations with my family are better than they have been, probably worse than they should be, but overall friendly. I make an effort to see my immediate family every week or so. My cousin Mike - the father of my godson - is having a birthday party soon, which I don't plan on attending. Mike is kind of a jackass sometimes but he's a good guy - the reason I'm not attending is because I don't really feel like hanging out with the whole crew of people on that side of the family like my cousins's friends that I don't know who are generally annoying.

My girl has been sleeping over all the time, or else I sleep over at her house, which I don't like to do because I have a longer commute. When she stays at my house I feel like I have to have a lot of food in the fridge and a really clean house, so it's more work for me when she stays over but that's fine. We are really using the new bed :) it's a pretty sturdy bed, which is good because we broke my old bed. Oh yeah - my neighbors hate us. They bang on the walls and we have to keep the sex noises down at night, which sucks. I tried turning the radio up last night but sexxing to rap music on B96 got really annoying so we turned it off. Most of the time we cook for each other, we sit on the couch and watch CNN, we play guitar or I record her singing her songs on Garageband, we already have a pretty decent sounding song recorded. On the weekends we go walking around the city sometimes.

I took her to meet JCB and his friends over memorial day. JCB btw is with this new girl who is a manipulative AW. She is really turning him into an AFC. Sometimes he calls me with 'why hasn't she called me/what did she mean when she said this', it's really disconcerting to hear him talk this way. I tell him to dump her. What kind of girl will tell you shit like 'JCB, go buy me a t shirt at bluesfest.' 'JCB, go buy me a Tiffany's necklace', 'JCB go buy me a toothbrush'. She really has him whupped, he's always like, 'screw this, I don't need this bullshit', then he takes her back. It's like he's forgotten his training. I want to hook him up with my girl's friend. I told him that we should go to one of his ultimate fighting matches together, as it seems my girl's friend is into that kind of crap.

I'm probably going to be running a 5K in July.

http://www.chicagoevents.com/event.cfm?eid=100

My girl tells me I'm ready, I've been going running with her a lot. I don't feel like I'm fit enough for it, we'll see. What else. I've been seeing a bunch of concerts, I have Ozzfest tix, and I'm supposed to see Poison/Ratt/White Lion in July. I'm going to Second City this weekend. I've basically been going out a lot but not on sarging related excursions. I've been doing a lot of work for this class I'm taking, it's taking up most of my free time. My finances are really shaping up lately. I have everything finally organized, even my house is in good shape lately. We've done so many renovations on it, when my parents came over the other week they were so surprised at how nice it looked. The next thing I'm gonna do is some electrical work, changing lighting fixtures and whatnot. I can't wait til this class is done at the end of the summer, I'll have more time to focus on this certification and planning my next career move. Life will be a little more simple then, hopefully, and I'll be able to do more of my personal programming stuff, although I'm doing a lot of good stuff at work lately. Some weird shit with people I work with, I'm starting to think that you can never get away from the office politics bullshit. Even if I sold everything and moved to Alaska to be a salmon fisherman, there'd be some dude on the next iceberg that would be doing shit to annoy me.

Big ups to all my playas. Hope you are having fun out in the clubs this summer.

How to be charming

from http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Charming

Charm is the art of having an attractive personality. This characteristic can only be achieved over a period of time. While everyone is born with differing amounts of natural charm, much can be acquired and honed through practice and patience. As with dancing, the more you practice, the better you will become. Effort and careful attention to the needs and desires of others will ensure that charm becomes a permanent part of your character.
Steps

1. Improve your posture. Good posture will give the impression of self confidence (even if you don't feel that way on the inside). While walking, it is always important to maintain a relaxed yet definitive upright posture- spine long, shoulders back. Practicing in front of a mirror is great, also you could ask a friend or family member to help you adjust your stance. This may feel awkward or overpowering to you when you first practice it, but keep trying.
2.
Relax the muscles in your face to the point where you have a natural, pleasant expression permanently engraved there. For some people, it helps to dwell on something or someone that makes them happy.
3. Make a connection. When your eyes come in contact with another person's, nod and smile subtly with a subdued joy shining forth. Don't worry about the other person's reaction and don't overdo it.
4. Remember people's names when you meet them for the first time. This takes an enormous amount of effort for most people. Repeat the person's name when stating your name to that person will help you to remember it better. For example: "Hi Jack, I'm Wendy." Follow through with small talk and repeat the person's name. Repeat it once more when you say goodbye. It's not just about helping you to remember that person. The more you say a person's name, the more that person will feel that you like them and the greater the chance they'll warm up to you.
5. Be interested in people. If you meet a new acquaintance, for example a coworker, a classmate, a friend of a friend, etc. find out about their immediate family and interests. Be sure to ask after the names of family members and remember them. Also ask after their particular interests in life. These two topics will ensure much better small talk than just harping on about school or work. Most people don't like to think about those things at social occasions unless they have to. Even if it is about networking, you should understand fully the worth of taking a break from talking shop. It is important to refrain from talking up about yourself. Be purely interested and impressed by the person with whom you are speaking.
6. Orient topics toward the audience. This means taking into account topics that interest those around you, even if you are not so keen on them. If you are in a sporty crowd, talk about last night's game or the meteoric rise of a new team. If you are amongst a group of hobbyists, draw out their hobbies and make remarks related to fishing, knitting, mountain climbing, movies, etc. Nobody expects you to be an expert. It is your level of interest and willingness to engage in topics that makes you an interesting person to be around. Exercise an open mind. Let others do the explaining. If someone mistakenly thinks you know more about the topic, be genuine and simply say that your knowledge is limited but that you are hoping to learn more about it.
7. Praise others instead of gossiping. If you are talking with someone or you are talking in a group of people, and up pops the subject of another person in a positive or negative way, be the one to mention something you like about that person. Hearsay is the most powerful tool in gaining charm because it is always viewed as 100% sincere. It has the added benefit of creating trust in you - "Oh, s/he never has a bad word to say about anyone." They know they and their reputation are safe with you.
8. Be honest. A lie is something you say for which there is some direct evidence somewhere out there that contradicts it. If you tell Mary that you like Jane and Billy that you don't like Jane, Mary and Billy will talk and your reputation will be ruined. No one will believe a word you say.
9. Issue compliments generously, especially to raise others' self esteem. Try to pick out something that you appreciate in any situation and verbally express that appreciation. If you like something or someone, find a creative way to say it and say it immediately. If you wait too long, it may be viewed as insincere and badly timed, especially if others have beaten you to it. If you notice that someone is putting a lot of effort into something, compliment it, even if you feel that there is room for improvement. If you notice that someone has changed something about themselves (haircut, manner of dress) notice it, and point out something you like about it. If you are asked directly, be charming and deflect the question with a very general compliment.
10. Be gracious in accepting compliments. Get out of the habit of assuming that the compliment is being given without genuine intent. Even when someone makes a compliment out of contempt, there is always a germ of jealous truth hiding in their own heart. Be effusive in accepting the compliment. Go beyond a mere "thank you" and enjoin this with "I'm really glad you like it" or "It is so incredibly kind of you to have noticed." These are "compliments in return." Avoid backhanding a compliment. There is nothing worse to a person complimenting than to receive the response "Oh well I wish I was as ______ as you/that situation." That is tantamount to saying, "No, I am not what you are saying I am, and your judgment is wrong."
11. Control your tone of voice. The tone of your voice is crucial. Most people feel insecure somewhere inside and have an inability to accept praise. For this very reason, when you praise, do it subtly and glibly. When you say, "you look nice today" it should be in the exact same tone that you would use to say "it's a nice day." Any variation from your normal tone will arouse suspicion about your sincerity. And since you will be trying hard to be a breezy, caring, happy personality, your eagerness will come across in both simple and complimentary talk. Practice giving compliments into a recorder and play it back. Does it sound sincere? Whether your praise is true or not, it must sound sincere! Practice until you get it right.


Tips

* Always remain relaxed. You want to please other people but you do not worry about what they are thinking. If you do, it will be written all over your face and you will be perceived as a doormat or a people-pleaser - a person with a desperate need for others to like them. And remember, what people are thinking is rarely about you. It is generally about themselves and their to-do lists.
* The degree of charm that you possess depends on the creativity of your praise. Say something that is not immediately obvious and say it in a poetic way. It's good to have some premeditated compliments and phrases but the most charming people are able to invent them on the spot. This way, you can be sure that you are not repeating it.
* Every so often you will have no choice but to express an opinion that few others hold (to adhere to the honesty policy). You must do it in a humorous way. Humor is the teaspoon of sugar that helps the medicine go down.
* Empathy is at the core of charm. If you can't tell what makes people happy or unhappy, you have no way to assess whether you are saying the right or wrong thing.


Warnings

* Never argue. Remember if half of the people who hear your argument agree and half disagree, you have failed at being charming. What you say must be pleasing to 100% of the people who will hear it, whether they hear it directly from you or not.
o Be that as it may, remember that arguing is not the same as disagreeing. Feel free to express your opinion, but don't attempt to dominate the person with whom you are chatting.
* Never laugh at your own jokes. That smacks of poor taste. The joke ought to stand alone. You can smile generously. And don't worry if no one else laughs at your jokes. Sometimes people just don't hear or understand a joke. It is as embarrassing for them to miss the punchline, and to have to own up to it, as it is for the person giving the joke seeking to wind up a jovial response.
* Never over-explain anything. To do this is to belabor a point. Unfortunately, it simply confirms a lack of self-esteem in that you do not trust that others have understood your point. In addition, it displays arrogance in that it demonstrates a feeling on your behalf that your listeners cannot think for themselves. People will listen to you when you cut out unnecessary explanations and force them to be active listeners. Trust that your listeners can put two and two together.
* Many people mistake arrogance for charm. In fact, arrogance is anti-charm. Charmers live to please others. Arrogant people live to please themselves. Arrogance only attracts insecure people while charm attracts everyone.

RAMPAGE JACKSON - AWESOME UFC VID

This is the guy that beat Lidell over the weekend to win the UFC title. JCB has got me into this shite lately.

10 simple ways to save yourself from messing up your life

some cool advice from http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/10-simple-ways-to-save-yourself-from-messing-up-your-life.html

10 simple ways to save yourself from messing up your life

1. Stop taking so much notice of how you feel. How you feel is how you feel. It’ll pass soon. What you’re thinking is what you’re thinking. It’ll go too. Tell yourself that whatever you feel, you feel; whatever you think, you think. Since you can’t stop yourself thinking, or prevent emotions from arising in your mind, it makes no sense to be proud or ashamed of either. You didn’t cause them. Only your actions are directly under your control. They’re the only proper cause of pleasure or shame.
2. Let go of worrying. It often makes things worse. The more you think about something bad, the more likely it is to happen. When you’re hair-trigger primed to notice the first sign of trouble, you’ll surely find something close enough to convince yourself it’s come.
3. Ease up on the internal life commentary. If you want to be happy, stop telling yourself you’re miserable. People are always telling themselves how they feel, what they’re thinking, what others feel about them, what this or that event really means. Most of it’s imagination. The rest is equal parts lies and misunderstandings. You have only the most limited understanding of what others feel about you. Usually they’re no better informed on the subject; and they care about it far less than you do. You have no way of knowing what this or that event really means. Whatever you tell yourself will be make-believe.
4. Take no notice of your inner critic. Judging yourself is pointless. Judging others is half-witted. Whatever you achieve, someone else will always do better. However bad you are, others are worse. Since you can tell neither what’s best nor what’s worst, how can you place yourself correctly between them? Judging others is foolish since you cannot know all the facts, cannot create a reliable or objective scale, have no means of knowing whether your criteria match anyone else’s, and cannot have more than a limited and extremely partial view of the other person. Who cares about your opinion anyway?
5. Give up on feeling guilty. Guilt changes nothing. It may make you feel you’re accepting responsibility, but it can’t produce anything new in your life. If you feel guilty about something you’ve done, either do something to put it right or accept you screwed up and try not to do so again. Then let it go. If you’re feeling guilty about what someone else did, see a psychiatrist. That’s insane.
6. Stop being concerned what the rest of the world says about you. Nasty people can’t make you mad. Nice people can’t make you happy. Events or people are simply events or people. They can’t make you anything. You have to do that for yourself. Whatever emotions arise in you as a result of external events, they’re powerless until you pick them up and decide to act on them. Besides, most people are far too busy thinking about themselves (and worry what you are are thinking and saying about them) to be concerned about you.
7. Stop keeping score. Numbers are just numbers. They don’t have mystical powers. Because something is expressed as a number, a ratio or any other numerical pattern doesn’t mean it’s true. Plenty of lovingly calculated business indicators are irrelevant, gibberish, nonsensical, or just plain wrong. If you don’t understand it, or it’s telling you something bizarre, ignore it. There’s nothing scientific about relying on false data. Nor anything useful about charting your life by numbers that were silly in the first place.
8. Don’t be concerned that your life and career aren’t working out the way you planned. The closer you stick to any plan, the quicker you’ll go wrong. The world changes constantly. However carefully you analyzed the situation when you made the plan, if it’s more than a few days old, things will already be different. After a month, they’ll be very different. After a year, virtually nothing will be the same as it was when you started. Planning is only useful as a discipline to force people to think carefully about what they know and what they don’t. Once you start, throw the plan away and keep your eyes on reality.
9. Don’t let others use you to avoid being responsible for their own decisions. To hold yourself responsible for someone else’s success and happiness demeans them and proves you’ve lost the plot. It’s their life. They have to live it. You can’t do it for them; nor can you stop them from messing it up if they’re determined to do so. The job of a supervisor is to help and supervise. Only control-freaks and some others with a less serious mental disability fail to understand this.
10. Don’t worry about about your personality. You don’t really have one. Personality, like ego, is a concept invented by your mind. It doesn’t exist in the real world. Personality is a word for the general impression that you give through your words and actions. If your personality isn’t likeable today, don’t worry. You can always change it, so long as you allow yourself to do so. What fixes someone’s personality in one place is a determined effort on their part—usually through continually telling themselves they’re this or that kind of person and acting on what they say. If you don’t like the way you are, make yourself different. You’re the only person who’s standing in your way.

Payback is a Bitch

My ex girlfriend of 5 years, who I broke up with in January 2006, tends to callme periodically just to fuck with my head. She does stuff like tell me about this douchebag she started dating immediately after breaking up with me. Man I hate that guy, imagine my satisfaction when he turned out to be a violent psychopath who punched a hole in the wall while they were arguing. The past couple of months I could tell by the things she said that she was feeling the situation out to see if I would take her back. Of course I would never do that, although I still talk to her because of all the years we spent together, even though she's a stupid bitch. Last Friday she called me to tell me she broke up with the violent douchebag boyfriend and is single again. I responded by telling her about this new girlfriend of mine, how we have been hanging out all of the time and sleeping with each other. I swear to God she sounded like she was going to cry, then she hung up with 'I have to go.' Last Friday night, while driving back from Evanston, she called again while I was driving around with my girl. I took the call and I could tell she was stoned as hell, as my ex has become a huge stoner after we broke up. I started giving her a lot of shit and fucking with her headabout how I'm with my girl and we are so happy - then I start jokingly asking her if she can send me weed. Then I hang up on her rather dramatically and absurdly - 'I can't talk right now, I have to go to church'. I don't feel bad about this. If you knew all the shit I've been through with this girl, you'd know shedeserves everything that's happening right now, and I know she is freaking out because now I have someone and her security blanket is gone.

Weekend was fun. My girl asked me to help out with this school play of hers, which was mainly an excuse to show me off to her girlfriends, who are also grade school teachers that she works with. It was cute. We went to Ikea on Saturday to buy a new bed, surprisingly it fit into the girlfriend's car. We had to drive all the way home on I90 with no rearview mirror. Then it took a couple of hours to put it together. We were exhausted, but at least we didn't sit in trafficfor 3 hours like last time. Sunday we laid in bed all day watching 30 Rock on the computer, or sitting around playing guitar. It's pretty cool dating someonehwo knows how to play. I cooked her dinner, I'm not sure if she liked it or not. I made grilled salmon and vegetables, I'm also getting really good at makingfruit smoothies. This week I have to really get started with this independent study class I'm taking at Northwestern over the summer. Fucked up billing situation at VW too that I have to deal with.

50 Ways To Increase Your Productivity

In keeping with the idea that this blog should be about personal development as well as meeting women, here are 50 ways to increase your productivity and add hours to your day.
Pretty good list from http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/50-ways-to-increase-your-productivity.html
1. Take a break. You can’t always be working at optimum productivity. Instead, you should shoot for working in short bursts at your most productive times.

2. Set a timer for each of your tasks.

3. Eliminate all distractions. This includes the phone, email notifications, and having multiple web browsers open on the desktop.

4. Distractions should be avoided, but sometimes a bit of music in the background can help you focus. Of course, it doesn’t need to be heavy rock music, but a bit of Beethoven may do you some good.

5. Love what you do. Enjoying what you do is the ultimate way to increase your productivity.

6. Complete your most dreaded tasks first thing in the morning. Whichever activity you are dreading the most is probably the one you need to complete first thing in the morning.

7. Use JDarkRoom. This application allows you to write more efficiently by removing all distractions. You’re given an entirely blank page on which to type. This way, you’re not distracted by the web, e-mail, or IM. When you’re done, you can save your work as a text file.

8. Just start. Often times, starting is the hardest part. Once you get going, you will quickly get into a rhythm that could last for hours.

9. Everyone has a certain time of the day in which they are more productive than others. For me, it’s the morning. Find out when your prime time is for productivity and optimize your work schedule accordingly.
Notebook

10. Keep a notebook and pen on hand at all times. This way, you can write down your thoughts, to-dos, and ideas at any time. The key is to get everything out of your head and onto paper. This way, your subconscious mind won’t be reminding you about it every other second.

11. Write a blog to chronicle your own personal development and achievements. This keeps you accountable and always working towards self improvement and personal growth.

12. Plan out all of your meals a week ahead and make your grocery list accordingly. This will save you quite a bit of time and money.

13. Step away from the computer. The Internet has become one of the number one distractions. To increase your productivity, try to do as much of your work offline as possible. I do this a lot with my writing and have found it to be very beneficial to simply unplug.

14. Write out a to-list each day. I like to plan my day the night before. This way, I can get started on my most important tasks as soon as I wake up.

15. As you go throughout your day, repeatedly ask yourself, “Am I currently making the best possible use of my time?” This one simple question can be an excellent boost to your productivity.

16. Get plenty of sleep. When you work online, sleep can become a long lost memory. However, it’s important to get plenty of sleep so that your working hours can be as productive as possible.

17. Exercise. Research has shown that midday exercise boosts productivity and morale in the workplace. Take a short walk at lunch to maximize your productivity.

18. Organize your office. The piles of paper around your desk can be a huge barrier on your productivity. Optimize your time by organizing your office, setting up a system, and dumping the junk.

19. Outsource as much as possible. Here are just a few of the companies that will help you outsource your everyday tasks:

* GetFriday
* eLance
* Guru.com
* ScriptLancle

20. Use a Tivo or DVR to cut an hour-long television show down to just 40 minutes.


21. Turn off the TV. The average American watches more than 4 hours of television every day. Over a 65-year life, that’s 9 years glued to the tube. Turn off the TV and you are sure to get
more out of life.

22. Listen to educational audio books while you’re driving to work, cleaning the house, exercising, or cooking dinner. Audio learning has the power to add hours to your day. Not to mention, your cranium is sure to thank you for it.

23. Auto pay your bills. This will save you time and eliminate late fees and increased interest rates.

24. Read David Allen’s best-selling book Getting Things Done. This is one of the most important productivity books you will ever read.

25. Focus on result-oriented activities. Pareto’s law states that 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs. This means that 20% of our actions result in 80% of the results. We must find the 20% that is creating the 80% of our desired outcomes and focus solely on those
activities.

26. Take shorter showers. This one may sound silly but it’s actually something I struggle with. I spend up to 30 minutes in the shower. Think of the time I could save simply by speeding up a bit.

27. Tell other people about your goals and you will instantly be held accountable.

28. Learn to say “No”. We can’t do everything and therefore we must learn when to say no in order to save our sanity.

29. Go on an information diet. Most of the world lives on information overload. We must eliminate mindless Internet surfing. Stop reading three different newspapers a day and checking your RSS feeds multiple times a day. Otherwise, you’ll never get anything done. The key is to limit yourself only to information that you can immediately take action on.

30. Find a mentor. By modeling after those who have already achieved success, you will save yourself a lot of time and energy.
Calendar

31. Write your most important tasks and to-dos on a calendar.

32. Set some exciting goals. Without worthy goals, you will never be motivated to get things done.

33. Learn keyboard shortcuts and create keyboard shortcuts with AutoHotKey.

34. Get up early before anyone else. Nothing beats a quiet house.

35. Don’t multitask. Research has shown that multitasking is not productive. For optimum productivity, focus on one thing at a time.

36. Reward yourself for finishing a big task.

37. Shop online whenever possible to avoid going to the store.

38. Batch similar tasks like blog writing, phone calls, email, and errands into a single batch. You will save time by completing similar tasks in one session.

39. Speed up your Internet with a broadband connection. This is the number one Internet time-saver. If you must use dial-up, then you can use accelerators like Propel and SlipStream to double or even triple your speed.

40. Start a polyphasic sleep schedule.

41. Improve your typing speed to save time.

42. Get rid of time wasters. This includes Instant Messenger, video games, Flickr, checking your stats 10 times a day, television, and extraneous Internet surfing.

43. Protect yourself from unnecessary phone time with caller ID.

44. Work from home and avoid the daily commute.

45. Many employers now offer direct deposit. If yours does, then be sure and take advantage of it and save yourself from a number of trips to the bank.

46. Prioritize your tasks ahead of time. By listing your tasks in order of importance, you can make sure that you finish all of your most important tasks during the day.

47. When your reading a book, just read the parts that you need and skip the rest.

48. Cook your meals in bulk so that you will have plenty of leftovers. Avoid having to cook everyday.

49. Learn to speed read.

50. Use Windows hibernation feature to avoid the slowdown of exiting and restarting Windows.

Brainstorming Ideas for Tech Startups/Programming Projects

I'll update this as I get ideas. Most of my ideas are either stupid or taken, one of these days I'll come up with a good one. Leave me a comment if you want to add an idea to this list, and I'll gladly take your idea.

-real estate portal, youtube like service that provides video tours of houses
-digg.com for porn
-user submitted reviews of profiles on dating sites, like dontdatehimgirl, except for both sexes
-iTunes or Adium plugin to display currently playing LastFM song on Adium

MEOWARCHY: Demon Cats

This actually has some personal significance and is not just some random video, it's pretty funny too. probably the best cat video I've seen.

Thoughts on balance, time, self control, ego, happiness, and death

Random thoughts about balance, time, self control, ego, happiness, and death:

1. I have this thing called asperger's syndrome. It's one of the things that I go to therapy for. One of the characteristics of people with aspergers is that they tend to get obsessed easily with certain things. For this reason, my therapist keeps pushing the importance of maintaining balance in my life. For instance, I got completely obsessed in 2001-2003 with becoming a great programmer. I was reading 2 huge books a week, staying up all hours of the night hacking away. I got really good, really fast, but in the end there was a price to be paid for this single minded obsession - other areas of my life began to suffer. I didn't pay attention to my body and got fat. My relationship with my then-girlfriend suffered and we wound up breaking up eventually.

Another example of this: Last year me and Effect became obsessed with sarging. We would go out and sarge the clubs a minimum of about 4 times a week, usually more. This went on for about six months. What happened? There were immediate benefits - I became more confident in social situations than I ever have in my life, in fact I consider this period of intense sarging the thing that helped me get over my social anxiety disorder. These days, I seem to be a lot more relaxed, confident, and comfortable around other people. I had a fun time and met a few girls too. What was the price? My job suffered, I wasn't able to focus as much as I should have because I was up all night at the bars, my finances were suffering because of neglect. There is also the random, free floating anxiety that pervades your mood due to the fact that you know your life is out of control.

Up until a month or so ago, I gave a fair amount of lip service to my therapist regarding the idea of balance - but in the back of my mind I would always think, 'yeah, but a single minded obsession is the way that great things are done in this world, like I bet people like Albert Einstein were obsessed or else they never would have achieved what they did'. And then, I don't know why it took thinking about guitar playing to hammer this point home, but I realized that my therapist was right and that, my inability to maintain balance was one of the big reasons behind my not being able to get to where I wanted to be by this point in my life in career, finances, guitar playing, exercise, etc.

This is the thought that really brought the importance of balance home: there have been times in my life when I practiced guitar 8 hours a day, I would improve at an impressive rate and friends would comment on how much better I've gotten in a short amount of time. Inevitably I would wind up focusing so much on getting better at guitar playing that other things in my life suffer - school, work, finances, my body, relationships, etc. And then an emergency in school or something would force me to spend less time practicing guitar. Sooner or later, my guitar playing takes a back burner while I put out these fires that happen while I spent so much time playing guitar. My practice time decreases and then I am only practicing once in a while. Over the course of time - what happened? My skills deteriorated, and I have improved less over the course of an extended period of time, than I would have if I would have only maintained a respectable and steady practice schedule of 2 hours a day. In the end the single minded obsession did not pay off.

Now I think, these people who have achieved great things that I admire so much - Einstein, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, whoever - I used to think 'I bet these guys have a razor sharp focus on what it is that they are passionate about', but now I think, 'yeah but I think they also have some way of maintaining some type of balance or they wouldn't have been able to maintain balance so long that they were able to manifest these types of results'.

2. The idea of balance is closely tied to self control. I was reading some blog entries on resilient's blog that had to do with the fact that the mark of a man is that he is in complete control of himself, and is able to focus his attention on things that he should be doing in order to realize his goals. For a while there, I was really rocking and rolling - I was doing good at work, taking care of my financial situation, doing my personal programming projects after work, on track to be totally cut by summer, in regular contact with my family, doing a lot of home renovations, and practicing guitar again on a regular basis and improving steadily. These are the types of activities that will get me where I want to be in the 7 areas of my life that are most important to me: career, finances, relationships, physical and psychological health, guitar, and home.

And then I got sidetracked - I got sick for a week with a virus (that I got from kissing my gf, or staying up all night with my gf) - then I spent about a month doing nothing but hanging out with my girl, neglecting my various projects, doing only the bare minimum at work. For a while I didn't care because I was enjoying all the free hooch. But inevitably my attention turns again to all of the emergency situations and things that are starting to get fucked up in my life. I am starting to focus on myself again, but for a while there I was less of a man. Even though I was getting laid and had this girl who wants to be my gf, inside I knew that I was less of a man because I lacked self control.

3. I once asked my gf, 'It seems like society's definition of happiness is very closely tied to the concept of romantic love - can a person ever be truly happy without finding love?' She said, 'yes it is possible, but not for me'.

When I look back on the past 4 weeks, and think back on all my past relationships in general, I would have to conclude that the concepts of romantic love and relationships, and personal happiness, are mutually exclusive. When I was in the midst of our first couple of weeks of sleeping over every night and having sex all the time - was I truly happy? The answer would have to be no. The only thing that improved about my life was that I was getting laid and, at least temporarily, did not have to worry about how I was going to get laid or my irrational fear of dying alone. Everything else suffered because I was so caught up in this new relationship. I even posted a few blog entries on here about how I was insecure about this new relationship.

4. Which brings me to where I'm at right now. As I told my therapist last week, I have to get myself together and find a way to balance all the various projects and responsibilities I have going on in my life, with spending time with this new person who seems to want to do it all day long. It's weird. I think I was at the point there where I was extremely focused, and could not be distracted from my goals. Not by self doubt, not by friends who just want to have a good time, not by my responsibilities to my family. I knew how to turn my attention to what I knew to be important to me and everything else be damned. So fate throws me a curve ball of this girl, because he knows the only thing that could distract me from the number one priority in my life, which is my own survival and self improvement, was sex, lots of sex. I have to get it together again, I have done so much in 2007, it would be a shame to ruin a really good year.

One time I asked gf, 'do you think I have it in me to be a great man?', she said, 'yes'. Then I asked her, 'if that's the case, then why haven't I already?'. She told me that everyone has to find their own way and sometimes your destiny unfolds according to its own schedule. Then she asked me why I am so obsessed with 'Getting Things Done', time, maintaining focus, the concept of balance. I told her because there is not enough time to do all the things I want to do in life, because I feel like I've wasted too much time already. She is someone who understands the ephemerality of life, due to her own experiences, I think this is one of the things about me that she empathizes with. I'm lucky that she is not someone who will not whine about me not spending time with her, as she is a really busy person, and with grad school and her triathalon training, arguably has more on her plate than I have. I know she would not appreciate a guy who cannot take care of himself or has no drive or ambition.

I know you very well now let me tell you that I caught you, my dear, my dear ...

Oh yeah I forgot to mention, my girl is on the pill and we're now having sex without a condom. She just surprised me one day when I was driving her to the pharmacy to pick up her allergy medicine. We were at the drive thru and she said, 'oh yeah I'm also picking up the pill'. This makes me slightly nervous, I didn't ask her to go on the pill. It did bug me that I had to wear a rubber, but I was only complaining about it. I didn't mean for her to go on the pill. It just seems a lot more serious now that she's doing this, the sex is way better though. Another example of how this situation is gradually spiralling out of control, and I don't take any measures to stop it because I'm a bonehead and I'm enjoying myself too much.

I also forgot to mention I did about 10 approaches last week at 720. Me and JCB told ourselves we would hang in the set at least 5 minutes, even if we have nothing to say we will just stand there. No numbers or anything. Tough night. It was entertaining in some respects though. The place is really loud so after a while I would just say the stupidest shit cos they couldn't hear me anyways. JCB asked me to distract an UG so he could hit on her hot friend. Some other weird shit happened that night, we didn't get to see chicks fighting or anything. JCB is in a really bad state lately, it sounds like he has a few prospects waiting in the wings from the last time I talked to him, so maybe he'll snap out of it. Anyway, the trick to 720 is you have to get there early - and you have to make all your moves before 11 because at that time it is so loud and crowded you can't really sarge.

291 approaches

Astronaut Jones: The Creature From Porpula

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You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do as You're Told)

3 weeks later and I'm still with my new girlfriend. It is sort of official now, too. She basically told me the other day that I can't date anyone else without telling her first. I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I feel like I've sort of been forced into this position. Was there a way I could have responded to her subtle coercion so that I wouldn't have had to agree to basically not date anyone without telling her first? Afterwards, I looked this up on the various seduction sites but I couldn't find a good response. Most of the seduction knowledge on the internet tends to dry up once you enter the area of ltr's. I probably would tell her anyways if I was planning on sleeping with someone else, it's only fair, you'd have to be a serious asshole to expose her to disease like this. I wasn't going to tell her no, also, I'm having too much fun.

Ironic that I'm simultaneously having a shitload of fun and also am more stressed out than I have been in a long time. A couple of weeks ago I got really sick and I'm only now starting to feel 100 percent better again. I had a consistent fever, headaches, sore throat. Turns out I caught a viral infection - probably from the new girl. The inside of my mouth became all swollen and sore. I couldn't brush my teeth or eat anything other than vitamin water and yogurt without excrutiating pain for almost two weeks. I would often come home on the days I wasn't hanging with my girl, and fall asleep immediately and not wake up until the next morning.

The sex is good. Very good. I feel like Ron Jeremy. I think it's time for me to snap out of this daze I've been in though. All I've been thinking of is sex and hanging out with my new girl. My work is still alright, it's not spectacular though, and I'm just getting adjusted again after calling in sick for a week. My finance research has been neglected. I lost my iPod somewhere - maybe her house, maybe my mom's house - and my gym card. I've been sick anyways, and combined with my lost gym card, I haven't worked out very much in two weeks. Guitar practice has gone to hell - again. I hate that more than anything. My personal projects have also gone to shit.

Time to get my crap together. I can't keep sleeping over at her house every night. Nothing gets done, I have to work on my life. I really hate feeling out of balance like this, I also don't think my girl would want to date some dude who can't even handle his own shit. The past couple of days have been productive. Tomorrow I promised JCB I'd hit the clubs with him, the gf and her friends may meet up with us, which should be interesting. Saturday I've decided to try to combine girlfriend time with being productive, and have her come over and help me hang some bookshelves and do some homework together.

Tyler Durden on ejecting early & state control

Revelations for me, probably other guys thought of this..

To my mind, this is really important ****.

OK I'm lying in bed with insomnia, and I'm realizing something.


I hope this makes sense cause I'm not thinking straight, but it seems to make sense right now in my head..

QUESTION: Have you ever ran a sarge, gotten a good initial reaction, and ejected before it could go bad? Why do we do this? Are we so wanting to stay in the good mood that we established by getting a decent initial reaction from the chick, that we'd sacrifice a possible lay just to take the SURE THING that we'll stay in a good mood? Are we really like that? ANSWER: I think that psychologically, we all cope by building a self-image for ourselves.

Teenagers will turn goth, or prep, or find cliques, or get really into a pro sports team, or get really into a certain type of music, or get involved with drugs.

We did this stuff because we struggled to find our own IDENTITY.

As we get older, we find our own identity and its typically more sophisticated than when we were younger, but its still how we GET BY psychologically (so I suppose its no better, but just further developed.. still, it gives us the illusion of superiority, which is really good enough anyway, but I'm digressing)

NOBODY likes to think of themselves as "bad with women", because we NEED to feel desirable as a FUNDAMENTAL part of our self-identity.

To feel undesirable sexually would imply MANY MANY BAD THINGS about ourselves, including bad genetics, bad personality, bad social intelligence, and many BAD BAD THINGS.

This is why when you tell guys about ***, they freak out and get all pissy. Because to imply that they would need HELP with their desirability is to imply MANY bad things about them.

That's why guys who you can be cool to talk about practically ANYTHING with (perfectly cool guys when it comes to ANY other topic than ***) can't take it when you say "hey man check out ***"

***NOW KEY HERE is that the main problem with STATE CONTROL is that when we approach a woman, our fear is MASSIVELY ILLOGICAL.

In fact, fear is built to prevent us from being HURT. But IRONICALLY our FEAR of approaching women actually HURTS US, while ACTUALLY approaching HELPS US.

But yet, we feel fear.

THE REASON THAT WE FEEL FEAR IS THAT IT IS OUR WAY OF PSYCHOLOGICALLY PREVENTING OURSELVES FROM HAVING A SELF-IMAGE CRASH.

Our ego can't stand the punishment.

We have a self-image that we've developed, and it sure doesn't include being a guy who women SNUB.


Same reason that guys on here who don't really sarge but still have been on *** for a while and have good knowledge will get all pissy at the guys who really sarge. They've developed a SELF IMAGE that they are good with women, which they FOSTER and NURTURE through this internet chat board by spreading good KNOWLEDGE, despite their own lack of EXPERIENCE. So when guys question them or post something that contrasts their theoretical knowledge, they get all pissed off and grumpy and whiny, because what they are reading is DISTURBING the internet-based system that makes them feel good with women, and therefore about themselves.

**But back to the main point, IMO a big key to state-control is RECOGNITION of fact that our fear is based on the threat to our SELF IMAGE (or ego).

Then, in RECOGNITION of this phenomenon, we have to RE-ASSESS our self-image NOT to include our desirability to women.

Why?

Because we realize that practically NO guys, even GOODLOOKING, are actually able to pickup random women on a consistent basis, in the way that we're learning to do here.

And in recognition of this REALITY about the world, we can ACCEPT that practically NOBODY is good with women, and FREE OURSELVES to do mass approaches and learn the skillset.

We have to see things AS THEY ARE, and therefore FREE OURSELVES of the threat to our self-image, since we understand that there is no CORRELATION between our self-image and any particular sarge.

In fact, our self-image should even become BRUISED when we chicken-out from approaches, because *THAT* is the real thing to be ashamed of, given that there is so little correlation between our desirability and our actual ability to pickup new random women, given the current social context of women being empowered. Having fear implies that we are STUPID, because we aren't able to make the LINK between REALITY and how it doesn't ACTUALLY correspond to our self-image in the way that we seem to NEED to delude ourselves into thinking it does (in desperate attempt to preserve our emotional well-being).

And in this RE-ASSESSMENT of our self-image, we can realize that fear of playing pickup is INSTANTLY dealt with..

We can even apply this to MANY areas of our lives, and at least make the EFFORT to recognize the MANY areas that we DELUDE ourselves, and to try to gain SELF-KNOWLEDGE that will bring us closer to equilibrium in our environments and the world that we've been thrown into.

The more that we acknowledge where we've deluded ourselves for the sole sake of preserving a FALSE self-image, the more we can IMPROVE ourselves in the REAL WORLD, and not just IN OUR HEADS.

Why do this? Because on a subconscious level we KNOW that we're lying to ourselves, and it comes through in the form of DEPRESSION.

So by aspiring and genuinely attempting to RECOGNIZE this and to gain SELF KNOWLEDGE, we begin to PURGE ourselves of this BULL****, and begin to EMIT AN AURA that people will want to be around.

Notice how some people just rub you the wrong way, but you can't explain why? Notice there are some guys that EVERYONE just wants to be around?

THESE GUYS are the ones who have come closer to this equilibrium with the REAL WORLD and the one that they perceive in THEIR MINDS.

And these kind of guys have potential to be AMAZING PUAs, because they have ultimate state-control.

They are ultimately comfortable with THEMSELVES, and it comes through with women.

So yeah, all that stuff.


-TD

P.S. SIDENOTE:

This is just like in CLUBS.

Go into a club, and its so DISORIENTING. Music, people, dance, drinks.

But go into that SAME club during the daytime, and then right as they turn on the music and lights, and it looks STUPID. It's just the ILLUSION that ****s us up.

So when you're in a club, try to be like Neo in "The Matrix", and see the club as nothing more than a ROOM with annoyingly loud music and annoying lights and people acting stupid and silly. Then the intimidation factor of clubs GOES AWAY.

Tyler Durden