blogahrah

It feels good to be back in so many ways, but even better to feel like I’m back as myself. With a greater understanding who I am and how I want to interact with the world.

Really, it’s the same as I was before. There was little discovery, only unwinding and rolling back of the bullshit that overwrote my life experiences and tried to replace it with the desired experiences and outcomes of The Other. Other people, systems, institutions, dedicated to their own will and purpose and disregarding mine.

Now I understand my will and my purpose. But like, don’t ask me what it is, ok? It’s not like I understand it and can explain it, but I can live it. And that’s what I want to do – to live it.

Many moons ago, I wrote this article on Medium, published in The Startup. That makes me a published author, right?

(click on it above to open, dummy).

I could say a lot has happened since then, but honestly, not a lot related to that has happened regarding venture capital. The opposite has happened. Plenty of stuff has happened to actually working on building a product and business.

I got burnt out quickly on the startup nonsense. It’s a bubble. Where is all this cash coming from to fund all this nonsense? (Survey says….China and Saudi Arabia). Everyone is chasing the next googs or ubers – good on them, I suppose, but those things by nature are excruciatingly rare (that’s why they are unicorns, I guess – but unicorns, if they were real, I don’t think necessarily were rare, and also they were quite deadly).

These megastartups are nowhere near as useful as deploying an army of well-funded businesses run by normies (fuck this entrepreneur bullshit) that require far less capital, can grow and scale organically (like, ya know. a normal, real successful business), and provide far greater financial benefit and economic stability to far more people.

But wait, I forgot. We’re thoroughly capitalists, so no one gives a flying fuck. Billion dollars or bust, bitches. More cash in the pocket of people with cash, still doing nothing except sitting on piles of cash making more cash. Apologies to the ones doing something useful with their cash.

When I’m done with this, if I have extra resources, I hope it can be poured into local, real folks, with real ideas, and real capabilities, who are currently being ground up in the capitalistic profit machine. They don’t need $2,000,000. $50,000 and a good business plan to follow should get the right people where they need to go.

Slavery never goes away. It just looks a bit different. We need to be working on converting slaves into free men – not free men into slaves.

why do i need to announce that i’m back to myself? no one reads this except me. and a few stalkers, i guess.

i’m excruciatingly tired of the rest of the world. i thought i’d write on medium to build an audience, and that worked out pretty well. it turns out i don’t necessarily want an audience. instead of writing on medium and cross posting here (which i’ve never done), i’ll write here, and cross post to medium things that i feel are worthwhile.

man, wordpress has added some nice feature since i left

michael, upon returning to wordpress

i hate that medium social-media-izes writing. i hate that i feel drawn to see if people clapped or started following me – especially when ‘following’ someone on that platform is of questionable use.

i’m not the most bothered by their monetization route – really, $5/month, some of which goes back to users (most of which goes to power users) isn’t too bad. plenty of articles are worth that much to read.

it does seem to turn writing into a platform, and turning things into a platform in this age seems to come with some downfalls. something about power users, power posters, power writers, and a huge amount of lovely writing goes unnoticed.

• There’s
• Also
• Way
• Too
• Many
• Lists

anyway, i’m going to go back to being me. writing however i want. not worrying about if anyone likes it.

because fuck you guys

Even if the earth moves in a direction that eliminates scarcity, we’ll be heading in to space. I’m back to planning for scarcity…

I started blogging on Medium. Silly me. I guess I’m more easily influenced than I’d like. I even thought – if course I’ll use Medium. Why would I try to roll my own?

Then I decided to gob back and read my blog to see what sort of things I used to think. On my personal blog. Dummy.

Soylent, day a lot after.

I did Soylent for a week. It went pretty well!  I lost weight and stopped feeling shitty after 2-3 day, as well as had normal/clean poops.  The first few days were not so.

I believe I was a bit sharper mentally, mostly from cutting out sugar.  I had no giant leaps of awesomeness, so I suppose I wasn’t deathly allergic to anything in my normal diet.  Because my wife cooks awesome meals and Soylent was a bit of work to make, I went back to a conventional diet.  Maybe someday I’ll be able to cut out Mountain Dew. Probably not.

Anyway, gear reviews.  As you all follow my blog religiously, since I write in it religiously, I’ll let you know how my backpacking trip went.

Also, I went on a 6 day backpacking trip to Glacier National Park.  At the end of May, my mother in law died.  It’s been pretty rough for a bit.  Meg went to Italy for 2 weeks and said I could stay home and watch the dogs. I went backpacking instead in attempts to find myself, or recharge my chi, or just  have a good time.  I go a little more gear crazy than I go most things crazy.  I have a Google Docs spreadsheet with all my gear, the cost, and more importantly, the weight.  I got my base pack weight to ~15lbs.  Total starting weight was ~26 lbs, and end weight was ~18 lbs.   I splurged in some unnecessary places, but that should be fixed another time.  On to the GEAR!

Lightheart Solo Tent

This was my first time with this tent.  I was pretty stoked to use it.  It lived up to expectations.  I got it from Lightheart Gear, and I’d recommend it to almost anyone.

It uses trekking poles as supports, so I’d recommend using trekking poles, or the tent will just be a dead weight on the ground.  The tent itself is 29 oz, and with the PVC top support and stakes, it comes out to a hair over 2 lbs, at a seam-sealed cost of $280.  This is quite competitive with best-in-class big brand tents, which are ~2.5 lbs and can be $100 more.  And don’t we want to support mom and pop shops instead of the big brands?  Maybe.  Anyway, the tent packs down super tiny, especially as you will be trekking with the support poles instead of carrying them.  It has an integrated rain fly, which as you can see in the picture, can be pushed up on pleasant evenings.  It got pretty cold on my trip, so the fly was always down.  It’s really a double wall tent, with mesh all around + rain fly, so even though there was plenty of condensation in the cold weather, I never got got wet.  My hands did get pretty cold packing it up in the morning, but that’s not the tent’s fault.

All in all, I’d give the tent an thumbs up.  If I could change anything, I’d perhaps add some top vents, but without adding any weight or bulk, which is probably not possible.  I don’t think you can do better than this tent for 3 season backpacking.  For me, (5’8″, 160lbs) there was plenty of room to stretch out and fit all my gear inside the tent as well.  This was good, since there were plenty of goats that wanted to eat my shoelaces if they got the chance.

The footprint is larger than some other tents – it’s not freestanding, so you need to stake it out in windy or wet conditions.  If you have to share small camping spaces designed 2 tents with a group needing 3 tents, it make things a little tight.  We managed, but it was more cramped than we liked.

Verdict : A+, will use again

Osprey Exos 46

I probably shouldn’t review a pack that is discontinued.  I’ve had it a few years, and used it on a number of trips, so I should say something good about it.  Measured weight for this pack is 2 lbs, 4oz.  I took off the top, and it was 2 lbs even, but then put it back on after my packmates mocked me for trying to shave off ounces.  I shouldn’t listen to them though – their packs started out ~50lbs vs my ~25lbs, so they were just jealous.

At 46L capacity, it’s a good deal smaller than many other packs.  This just motivates me to shave off bulky gear.  After packing everything for our 6 day trip, I still had room to spare somehow, unlike my 65L and 90L companions.  The 90L companion did bring battery powered speakers to go with his iPod, so I suppose we had a bit of a difference in philosophy.

The pack is very comfortable for me.  I hear it’s not so comfortable for chunkier people, so I better keep watching my weight.  <25lbs is great with this pack. I’ve done with closer to 30lbs, and it starts getting a bit uncomfortable.  There’s pretty much zero padding in the belt straps, and minimal in the shoulders, so it’s really not designed to cope with heavy weights…and with only 46L available, there’s not room for it either.

The volume measurements do NOT include the capacity of the pockets, and the large back pocket is perfect for stowing my Lightheart tent + stakes, as well as rain shell and insulating layer as necessary.

On this trip, I (for the firs time) ditched my compression sacks.  I put my sleeping bag in first and let it naturally compress into the crevices in the bottom of my pack, packed my food around it, and did the same with my clothing bag – didn’t compress it, just put it in a drysac and let it mold to whatever shape the rest of my gear pushed it into.  This was the right move for me in this pack – it felt super spacious.

The only noticeable downside is that the belt straps either stretch or slip – when the weight is in the mid twenties or higher, I have to readjust the straps fairly frequently.   This can get annoying, but the pack is still comfortable.  With some weight removed, the problem is mitigated.  I’ll blame myself for bringing too much stuff, rather than blame the pack for not pulling its (and all the rest of my equipment’s) weight.

Especially after some food weight was gone after the first day or two, the pack rode like a dream.  I think this is my third trip with the bag, and it’s still going strong.  Unless I go on a longer cold-weather trip that requires bulkier gear, this should be my go-to bag for a long time.

Verdict : A-, will keep using.

MOAR GEAR REVIEWS LATER, MAYBE.  I’m a bad blogger.

 

my pee is bright yellow after a soylent lunch.

If you are unaware, soylent is this thing.  It’s not mostly people, but I suppose you have a little people in it.

If you don’t know how to click a link, it’s a food replacement.  You end up with a (without additives) fairly tasteless and bland shake which has all the calories and nutrients you need to survive.  The actual product isn’t shipping yet, and it’s actually cheaper to make a variant yourself, so I did that.  I’m not planning on a total food replacement, but I might do that for a week or two to see how it feels.

The plan is vaguely to get ~900 cal a day from my soylent concoction, and the rest from dinner and Mountain Dew.  Dinners will mostly be meat and greens, so my soylent mixture is built with that in mind.

The first batch tasted pretty bad. I think it’s because I drank half of it for lunch-ish, then went to the store to get iodized salt and salt substitute (for potassium).  I added that directly the half-remaining portion, as well as some powdered strawberry flavor and orange juice.  I didn’t taste anything in between.   I don’t recommend doing that; it tasted salty and acidic and weird.

I started making a batch for tomorrow.  I realized I was a dummy for making a super salty shake last time.  This time went much better…the oats I food processed I let food process for much longer, so it was much finer and resulted in a less oatmeally type shake and a more, less-oatmeally type shake.  I put in a serving of juice concentrate, hoping it’d make it taste like that.  It didn’t really, but the mix ended up being pretty palatable.

When time came to take it out of the blender, I made a mistake.  You just have to lift up, and the blender/spinny thing attached to glass comes up, ready to pour into whatever you’d like. I somehow managed to untwist the glass from the base (probably through the twisting I was doing), which resulted in the glass coming up, the base and blades staying down, and the soylent pouring out the bottom all over the floor.  Oops.

I salvaged enough, dumped the shitty tasting soylent I made early with too much salt and orange juice,  and am finishing the newer batch tonight.  After the dishwasher finishes cleaning up the mess, I’ll make the real batch for tomorrow.

My stomach feels a little weird already…strangely heavy for how little it seems I ate by volume today. Maybe that’s called being full.

You may now feel free to travel back into this archive to the beginning of 2005!  Old blog archives have now been moved to this blog.  You don’t see them on the front page here because they have older dates, dummy.

Special thanks to Xanga.com, which is moving to some new non-free blogging scheme, so the old site xanga.com/ihaveablog is no longer available.

They did provide a wordpress-happy-style xml file to upload to here, which appeared to work flawlessly.  I need to find something to go through the externally linked photos and pull them into the local gallery so when photobucket kicks the photobucket those photos won’t disappear.  There’s a moderate chunk in the middle of the old blog where all the images were lost, so you’ll have to use your imagination.

I take no responsibility for what old me used to think, feel, and post.  Old posts have the author “ihaveablog”.  I still have a blog, but its not ihaveablog

Oh hello again.

I updated the theme.  If things are wonky, sorry.  By update, I mean I downloaded a theme update, which overwrites some of the customization I did.  Since I’m baller, I edit the theme in ways I’m not supposed.  Since it’s been awhile since I edited it, I have no idea what I need to change to make everything flow prettily.  You can deal with it. I noticed nothing after page 5 (or maybe 7, who knows) was showing up, so you, dear reader, were deprived of reading my old-old posts.  Don’t confuse that with my old-old-old posts, which are all on my Xanga page (link on side).  My Xanga page isn’t dead, I just have no idea what my password is. Also, Xanga?

I would be rich if I had bought Bitcoins awhile ago.  I’d also have been rich if I bought Apple stock (or Microsoft, or Google, or invented the Internet + Global Warming).  It’d be nice to be rolling in cash. Here’s what the most-recent Bitcoin bubble looked like (picture on the right).  Nice and bubbly, right.  I still could mine for bitcoins (google it, nerdypants.  I’m not here to hold your hand).  I’m sure I could get a couple, hold on to them for years, and become a m/billionaire.

However, I won’t. Maybe I will to keep the bitcoins for myself to spend on, something.  I guess it’s mostly drugs that people use to be them, but maybe that will change soon.  The issue is simply exploitation.  The bubble to the right is people treating these things like a commodity.  Maybe commodity is the wrong technical term for an economist (or maybe not), but you know what I mean.  Bitcoins are about as worthless as a dollar bill.  People don’t buy and sell dollar bills (well, they sort of do, but nevermind).  Use currency as currency, and stop trying to get rich quick this way.  You most certainly can get rich speculating, but it’s at the expense of someone else.  For your to make billions of other-coin off of bitcoin, you are taking someone else’s money.  They may simply be dumber than you, or potentially just less lucky. Regardless, it’s just redistribution of wealth between people who usually can’t afford it.

Basically, work hard, work smart, but don’t be a douche.  You douche.

Here’s other interesting things that I won’t write about now, and maybe never.

the mormon missionaries visiting being married moving to illinois grandmother in law dying mother in law diagnosed with terminal illness losing friends gaining friends being bored at work quitting work drama getting new job being brilliant being stupid living with uncle/cousin in law buying a house towing 2500lbs in an STI getting an STI selling a car normally selling a car to one of those WE BUY YOUR CAR sketchy places in paterson

a lot has happened. ive been really tired. im not as tired now.  if you want to hear about them, come at me bro

hearts and kisses

 

Abstaining from voting (or just plain not voting) should be seen as a message.

Abstaining would probably fall more into the conscientious objector camp, while not voting falls into the apathy camp.

Either way, it points to a flaw in the system.  However, since the 60s, voter turnout hasn’t always quite been in decline.  It dipped during the 80s, and is now in the mid 50% range.  So, historically speaking, people for the past half-decade have had a similar level of interest in voting.  Even though our party system and campaign process is utter shit, it’s been that way for awhile…nothing particularly new there.

When we compare US voter turnout to other countries, we look much worse.  Sampling countries with non-mandatory voting shows us Austria with 92% turnout, Iceland 89%, German 86%, Brazil 83%, Norway 81%, Israel 80%, UK 76%, and even our favorite lazy, no good country France with 76%.  The 50-60% of US looks pretty poor, especially for the country founded on democracy while Europe was still tinkering with monarchy.

People are lazy across the board.  I think lack of participation in voting points to issues in the system.

I don’t vote, because I have never found a presidential candidate worthwhile.  I believe I’ll vote in local elections, but to date, I’ve moved almost yearly, and never in the same town, so have never been much for learning all a town’s politics on short notice.  Someday, I’ll get there…