The Column

Motto: Adept at being Inept This isn't going to be fun to read, but It was fun to write.  I'm not writing about any of the things that have happened lately that would be considered "interesting". You can stop here. No really, it's okay. I'll even do the picture to go out on! Not bad Google. You should stop. Alright, your loss. 2018 has coincided with my best New Year's Resolution yet: No Zero Days. Meaning - I will work, at least a little bit, every single day, toward one of the following: Home improvement (not just maintenance) Getting a Master's and/or PE and/or PMP certification Creating an Android App Physical fitness The other thing +whatever else I deem appropriate for my long-term development Over the holiday, I had a new experience - I failed to escape an escape room. I'm shooting 7 for 8 now. I got to see a new take on the escape room concept. I got to see what a bad  room is like. A BAD room... 1. Has too many...

Motto: 2017 is 99% complete & I'm 100% ready for 2018 to start. Christmas has come and gone. Gifts were given. I gave Melissa a back & neck massage thing from Costco that we nicknamed Jerry. I do recommend getting yourself a Jerry. It was a hit. Melissa got me ARMS for the Nintendo Switch, which is surprisingly fun! Melissa and I are the best gift-givers.  Also the best gift-receivers. Go ahead and test us. Buy us stuff! Anyway - my dad continued his new tradition of having the kids do a scavenger hunt to find their presents. The grandkids had to follow a trail of drawings on sticky notes. Each one stuck to the thing that the previous one was a drawing of.  Maclee figured out the location of the next clue The big kids had to solve a Breakout-Room-like set of puzzles to tell them where their next clues were. We got through all the hard stuff in relatively short order, then got stuck looking for something bigger than a baseball, but smaller than a football...

Motto: ...THERE'S NEVER "TOO MUCH" TO SAY ABOUT THE MCU First, a quick aside about some English stuff. Active voice: Thing A performs this action to Thing B. Active voice is frowned upon. Passive voice:  Thing B has this action performed on it. I use passive voice too much. A quick aside from a quick aside before I start talking Marvel stuff - what you just witnessed is a brand of Aaron humor that I dub "only funny to me & would make people who don't know better assume that I am stupid". This specific example was me saying "Active voice is frowned upon" using passive voice. Then me saying "I use passive voice too much" using active voice. It's funny to me because, if somebody did that on accident - it would make me laugh. So I do it on purpose but don't (normally) call attention to the fact that I did it, but have some dumb goofy grin on my face like I'm some sort of comedy genius... and people don't understa...

Motto: What a Marvelous Continuation Preface: Nearly 4 years ago, I wrote  this long post about the Marvel Cinematic Universe  (as it existed then). In that post, I made several predictions, which may or may not have come true, and several statements, which  now I may or may not disagree with. Since then, a lot has happened. The MCU has expanded.  Another guy named Aaron and I made a  Spreadsheet . I made a video you'll see later. Everyone has become familiar with the shared-universe concept. Thor: Ragnarok just came out. Last time I wrote this it was after the release of the previous Thor movie. It seems like a good time to go back to the well. This is my update to that post. A Brief History of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: The MCU is a series of movies, shows, web series, and comic books produced by Marvel Studios that exist in the same shared universe, each telling their own story while contributing to a greater, overarching narrative. Specifica...

Motto: Discipline Beats Motivation Lately I have had trouble doing new Aaron things. The ideas haven't gone. It's the follow through. I sought to remedy this situation by nixing passive entertainment from my life in October. That worked until it didn't.  I set goals, do a great job with them at first, but after a bit I'm back to baseline Aaron. The goal is present, but the change in behavior is not. Comfort is the problem. Control is the answer. Captain America. ...or maybe that's just what I think. I wonder if it I could play a Clair De Lune on the piano in a month? I wonder what it would be like to stop drinking caffeine & alcohol entirely? I wonder what it's like to eat an IIFYM diet? I wonder if I could make my own shirt from a sheet of fabric? I wonder if I could design and construct my own pergola? I wonder what I should do to continue my education? I wonder if I could have an Android app in the Play Store before the end of the year?...

Motto: Some Handsome Hand I don't like this post. You should skip it. I'm not saying this to intrigue you into reading further. This Column was supposed to be  about  something. Then it turned into me writing about me writing, which I'm exacerbating by talking about it right now.  SKIP IT. SKIP IT. BOP IT. TWIST IT. SKIP IT. SKIP IT. SNAKE PIT. SKIP IT. SKIP IT. I really liked my previous post. It's in my top 5. It actually is. Thanks to the way I started this Column, I just read through dozens of my old posts. Sometimes I make myself laugh. Other times I make myself cringe. I wonder if and when I'll stop writing like I know better than people. Maybe that's the nature of writing your current opinions on the things you're currently thinking about. I didn't continue writing after that. Here I am a few days later, I went back even further into the archive Column. All the way back to #150. It's a little disheartening seeing stuff I wro...

Motto: Round and Round We Go Routine. Imagine life without it. It would be chaos. Everyone has routines they go through every day. You do the same things in the same ways. Try putting your pants on starting with your off-leg and you'll see what I mean. It feels weird.  We have little routines. We have big ones. Our big routines are made up of little ones.  Butting routines together forms a loop. These loops exist at different levels, too. You loop your mornings, your afternoons, your evenings. You loop your days. You loop your weeks. On a long enough timeline, your months and years take on similar characteristics.  You wake up. You prep for work. You commute. You manage tasks and email until lunch. You eat. You manage tasks and email until it's time to leave. You commute. You do a hobby. You cook food. You eat. You entertain yourself. You sleep. Loop. You work. You work. You work. You work. You work. You engage in social activities. You gather and orga...