The Column

Motto: Rare Day This is going to be a short post. It's late and my computer's dying. I just wanted to write a quick post and say this one thing: TODAY WAS AWESOME I knew it was going to be cool. There was a Marvel event, a new episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and a sneak preview of The Avengers: Age of Ultron. After that preview leaked online & Marvel decided to publish it early (see my previous post for more), they decided they were going to give us, the S.H.I.E.L.D. watching fans, a little bit extra. They gave us a scene from the movie. It was glorious. The Marvel event was an announcement of every movie between now and 2019. They blew away everyone's expectations with their announcements. Is it 2019 yet? I am so happy to witness all this in my life. After all that craziness, I go to Reddit to find out what the hivemind has to say about the movie announcements and what do I find? News of Google Fit! Google unexpectedly and without

Motto: No Strings Attached Being a critic is not one of my skills. However, I must be at least partially capable of writing critically because that statement itself was a criticism. Here goes. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has got my attention. Season two has started strong, which you couldn't say about last season. I care about the characters. I'm interested in the story. I don't want to miss a minute of the show. Each week I get to see a little action. Each week a little character development. Each week I'm surprised. This week's episode was really good, but what surprised me most happen in the last 6 seconds before whatever dumb show that follows SHIELD came on - "that's what happened in this week's episode. Here's a little preview of next week's episode, so make sure you catch that andohbythewaywewillhavethefirstpreviewofAgeofUltron". I annoyed my wife heavily by saying "WHOA" with a bit more volume than intended. Then I proc

Motto: Let's Get the Naming Scheme Right On Saturday Melissa and I had one of those crazy productive days. The kind of day that you only have once every 2 months. The kind where you sit back at the end of the day and think "man, if I just did this once a week - I'd be so ahead of everything in life". On Saturday we: Drove around the area we'd like to live next year looking at neighborhoods and houses in our potential price range. Went to car dealerships to look at SUVs - we've had "buy a car" on the whiteboard for a couple of months now. Found an SUV we both really liked. Bought it. More on this later. Returned some improperly sized frames to IKEA. Looked around there for a bit. Sunday was pretty darn good too. On Sunday we: Went to an open house, to get an idea of what we'd like for a future home. Checked out a couple of other houses around the neighborhood. Played our last sand volleyball game of the year. Our team only had 3, but we sti

Motto: I Like These Oddly Formatted Columns. Expect More of Them. Impressed Robert Downey Jr. is rumored to be joining the cast of the upcoming Captain America 3 movie (working title). That same rumor says that his involvement will mark the beginning of the MCU adatpation of Marvel's "Civil War" storyline. Here's 20,000 ft overview of the civil war plot: The government enacts a "superhero registration" act, Iron Man leads a faction of superheroes that are for it, Captain America leads a faction of superheroes against it, the story follows Spiderman in particular whose kind of in the middle of it all. The Civil War story is big and long and the type of thing that wouldn't take place JUST in Captain America 3, it would take place over several movies. So we're left with several questions: 1. Are they really doing the Civil War story? 2. How faithfully will it be adapted? 3. How will it work in movie form? one movie? A whole phase of movies? 4. Doe

Motto: Tonight's a Twofer I have a theory about stress, not all types of stress, but certainly some times. The basic premise of my theory is this: The human body seeks a certain level of stress and will adapt itself to find and maintain that level. The overall amount of stress or adversity you'll face in life is, for the most part, fixed and out of your control. Here's a made up example: Let's say you workout at the gym for an hour and a half total each week. For that hour and a half, you are bringing on all sorts of physical stress and hardship - but for the rest of the week you are able to do most things without any difficulty. Compare that to a person who never goes to the gym. They don't have any major spikes in their level of physical stress. I believe this person will come to find that little things like carrying groceries or getting out of bed will become more and more taxing as time goes on. Let's compare those two in a hypothetical graph for

Motto: Tangent Systems analysis - that's got to be a passtime of mine. I like taking apart different systems to learn about how they work. Taking apart machines to see how they run. Analyzing workflows to find inefficiencies. Looking at a set of logical processes to and finding ways to reduce their complexity. I like all of these things. So, for a long time I've wished I had some sort of example or set of examples for "how to live a successful and happy life: an up to date guide". It's this fundamental desire that drove me to obsess over note-taking systems, do a several-week-long time analysis project, build a Aaron's Life Reference guide, and create the Life Tracker 1.0 & 2.0... but think about how much easier this would have all been with some examples! I'm talking about something like a series of tutorials & how-tos. A reference guide to everything from "making, keeping, and tracking a budget" to "how to exercise effective