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