Had an interesting discussion with a friend recently on whether or not fate exists. My thoughts? It's like lots of things in that it's a way to describe the way that we perceive events that make logical probabilistic sense. Nobody remembers the tons of things that aren't coincidental or have an eerie rightness to them. We remember the few that are and label them fate - our perception of the mathematically expected number of phenomena that are bound to happen in a universe of many possibilities that will seem freakishly like they were meant to be.
Yeah, that's the logical side of me speaking.
The side that's still subject to human perceptions? Wondering a little more recently than I used to.
Do you believe in fate?
--Nick
(Reading back this entry before posting, I realize it'll be strange for most of you. So it goes.)
So, I didn't realize until this afternoon that Valentine's Day is tomorrow.
brief pause while people recognize how sad that is
I've got a friend coming into town tomorrow and we wanted to go grab dinner. As is my usual bent, I wanted to find a relatively decent restaurant. Usually, in Seattle, you can get a seat at any restaurant by calling the night before - even Friday and Saturday nights.
Yeah, let's talk about how much that's not true for tomorrow.
Not exactly sure what I'm going to do now.
--Nick
Edit: I expected people to tell me to cook - honestly, I did think of it myself first. But, we couldn't come back to my place because my parents were in town (househunting - a story for another time) and my Dad wasn't feeling well, so he was already asleep. We ended up going to a less popular (and less good, though still fine) seafood restaurant. They were still packed, but they had seats in the lounge open and served full dinners there.
Hope that everyone else's Valentine's Days went well ...
Potential Spoiler Warning: Pumpkin
Have you ever seen that Pepsi ad? The one where the kid is standing on the beach and sucking Pepsi out of a bottle through a straw and then keeps on sucking until he sucks himself into the bottle?
Pumpkin is kind of like that. Words don't exist to describe the size of the objects which Pumpkin manages to suck.
And it's not even a short intense burst of pain - it's a long, drawn out, almost two hour stretch of twisting a knife in your gut.
The movie is presumably based around a mentally challenged person, and I'd say that it is, but I'm not talking about the character in the movie - his unrealistic progression makes you kinda wonder if he was ever really challenged at all. The mentally challenged I'm talking about shows up in the credits, conveniently labelled "Writer".
I'd say more, but I'm mentally soiled from having talking about it this much and need to go take a few dozen showers now.
Never ever see this movie.
--Nick
My roommate Hoop and I had a lengthy discussion tonight, me asserting that he's a big dork and him asserting that he's not. The primary point of contention? The fact that he reads CLI specifications in his free time for fun. Not only that, but that he lusts after other books in the series that he's reading so he can learn about other .NET technologies in depth. Now, don't get me wrong - I certainly respect him for wanting to devote time to something that will make him more effective at his job (the primary argument he uses to say that this isn't dorky behavior), but that doesn't change the fact that it makes him a dork (which is not a derogatory term to me).
I'd go one step further - I think that reading CLI specs in one's spare time for fun (with the side benefit of getting something for one's job) is more dorky than playing Magic, and I'd bet that if you asked a random sampling of people that is not in the computer industry and doesn't play Magic (explaining either one or both as necessary), more than half of the people with a response one way or another would agree with me.
Now, I recognize that all of my audience works in the computer industry and that none of you play Magic, but still, am I just smoking crack here on either or both points?
--Nick
Edit: Well, unfortunately it seems I'm wrong. The concensus at work (which is unfair, but whatever) seems similar to the comments - apparently everyone differentiates between dorkiness and nerdiness, something I wasn't bothering with. Fair enough - Hoop, you're a big nerd. :)
Edit: I have to say, it's truly touching how everyone comes out of the woodwork to tell me that I'm dorkier than Hoop. Guess I finally figured out how to galvanize the base. :P