I Bought a Bike

In my ever increasing attempts at staying active, for fear of being fat again, I decided that driving to work was a waste of money, and so I decided to buy a bike and just bike to the train station and get in some cardio every day.  So I started shopping around for bicycles. What I learned is that because I am cursed with being very tall and large in stature, like my brother before me, is that I wasn't going to find a good deal on a bike, because I had to get an XL frame which apparently no one has at a cheap price, because everyone caters to the "average" height/weight biker. Which is ridiculous. I feel like it is some kind of prejudice against larger than average people. Needless to say I had to bite the bullet and go to the local bike shop and buy a new bike that was actually big enough to support my statureness.

Once I got to the bike shop I tell the guy what I need and they set me up with a bike. I ended up getting a $420 hybrid bike, because, who knows, I could end up doing a little bit of off roading, and I wanted to make absolutely certain that I would have a bike that would support those kinds of situations while being smoothish like a road bike. So I buy the bike and a bike lock, and start riding the bike to work the next day, and every thing seemed fine. The bike rides just fine, and I am happy with my purchase.

The second day of riding to work I am in a hurry and while I am going over all of the speed bumps in my neighborhood, of which there are many, because old people - who are a different problem entirely. I swear the old people in this neighborhood should probably be living in a care facility somewhere and not by themselves in a neighborhood fraught with young fast driving whipper-snappers and ethnic diversity. Seriously, in my col-de-sac alone there are upper-middle class white people, blue collar hispanic families, single rich kids like me, and Polynesians. This is old person hell. Why are they living there? Anyway, lots of speed bumps. So as I am going over these speed bumps my handlebars start moving around, and I don't have time to go back home and get my tools to tighten them up. So I just got to deal with loose handlebars all day. It was pretty terrible. So feel bad for me.

Once I had tightened up my handle bars I went to work out and sat on my weight bench and felt an annoying aching pain in my bike seat area of my body. The bike seat wasn't super comfortable, but I didn't notice that it was actually painful until afterward I guess, because I was distracted by the flailing and out of control handlebars that I was dealing with. Needless to say, and this is where my actual rant is starting, I started wondering why on earth people sell products without things like, I don't know, a seat on a bike that won't destroy your rear end after 2 days of use. Seriously, I think that anyone that is buying a new bike, especially from a place that has a limited supply of something and is not giving a bargain, would just want a gel padded seat. So just charge an extra $10-20 for the bike and put on a better seat instead of the glute destroying triangle of butt death.

Sadly, that isn't even the end of things that needed to come standard on this bike. On Tuesday morning this week I went to get on my bike to ride to work, and noticed that it had a flat, and thinking back on what I had ridden through the day before I could not think of what would have caused a flat, because there was almost literally nothing. Here is the kicker. They have thorn resistant tubes and tubes that aren't thorn resistant. They also have a goo that they use to prevent flats that they can put in your tires and fills up holes. So why does that not come standard on all bikes? I am going to buy that crap anyway, because it is obviously necessary. I don't want to spend $100 on tubes every month to fix a flat tire, because I used my bike for the reason that people use a bike and got a flat 4 times. It is ridiculous. Include all of that crap in the purchase of the bike, just charge an extra $70 for it, and completely get ride of tubes that aren't thorn resistant, because what use are those? Is there any purpose for not having a thorn resistant tube? It's like if we lived in a world where you could buy children, and you went to the children store to buy one, because that is what you do in this world to get children, and there are kids that come with an immune system that doesn't actually do anything. It is just there, because children need to come standard with an immune system even though it doesn't do anything. Or, you can buy a child with a fully functioning immune system for a little bit more, but the one with the immune system is actually going to live for more than 3 minutes after you take it out of the box. Weird analogy? Yeah, I know, but I think I made my point.

So, here I am. I have had my bike for almost 2 weeks. My butt hurts and I have only been able to ride it to work 5 times since I got it. All because it didn't come standard with things that it should have obviously come standard with. So I guess the lesson to take away from this is that if you intend on selling a product. Include the necessary things even if it is a little more, because your consumer is going to buy it regardless, because they need/want the product, and they will be far happier with their purchase if it actually works like they expect and it doesn't destroy a triangle shaped area of their butt.

-- RANT END --

How I lost 130 lbs in 8 months

March

November

I think I have waited long enough to talk about this. I'm not really big on sharing things like this mostly because I am annoyed by everyone who loses weight on some program or product and then tries to sell it to everyone. I firmly believe that instead of selling weight loss products we should be educating people on what causes them to be overweight in the first place, and how to get back to a healthy weight. I now know that it doesn't take some expensive program or crazy workout routine to lose a large amount of weight. What it does take is a large amount of self discipline and real desire to change yourself. So now, without further ado, here is my story on how it happened and what I believe are the core factors in my success.

The first thing that really contributed to me losing weight was that I finally accepted that I wasn't really happy with myself. I never really felt right in my skin and that caused a lot of self confidence issues that have begun to bubble up over the past few years. I kind of became a hermit and started pushing people away. This coupled with the fact that I am approaching my 30's and that I haven't really had a proper relationship my entire life really started eating at me. Then a few friends at work started talking about having a weight loss competition. So in preparation for that I started talking with a friend who had told me that his wife did a weight loss program and lost close to 30lbs in a month. Since I like to win things I decided I would use this program for a month and win the weight loss competition. So I order the stuff for the program and then find out that the weight loss challenge kind of fell through. So I decided since I have the stuff I might as well use it since it costed more than I am willing to admit that I spent on a weight loss program, and went on the program for a month. What I didn't know is that it was this small chain of events that would start me on a life changing path eventually leading me to where I am now.

The weight loss program did what it said it would. I stuck to it and lost about 30lbs, but immediately quit it after the first month. During that month I had started to research what exactly the diet was doing to help me lose weight which eventually led me to finding a weight loss practice called keto. Where you remove the bulk of carbs from your diet and replace it with fats and protein. I read a lot about it and decided that I was going to start using that to shape a diet after I was finished with that month long program. After the month was over I began the real weight loss, and it was this diet that was the biggest factor in my success. However there are a few more factors that have been incredibly helpful in achieving the weight loss.

The factors of my success

Diet

I have always had a big misconception about what it takes to lose weight. From everything that I heard and saw it was working out super hard and almost killing yourself in the gym that helped you lose weight. I am here to tell you that is not the case. If you want to lose weight the diet is the key, and you workout enough so that you don't lose muscle mass during the diet.

Consistency

Another thing that I found was that if I ate the same thing every day, for the most part, it was easier to regulate my diet. I knew my calorie intake, and all of my macro nutrient intakes so I never had to guess or check whether it was ok or not, and since it was always the same it was easier not to cheat because I never had to think about what to buy at the store.

Education

I have done a very large amount of reading on everything from body types to macro nutrients to figure out how to do this, and to figure out what will work for me. I strongly suggest educating yourself first before jumping into anything. And read multiple articles on the subject.

Never Cheat

Another thing I found helpful was that I never cheat on my diet. Unhealthy food is a slippery slope back to where I began, and staying away from the things that got me to that point was a must.

Remove possible excuses

Instead of getting a gym pass and having an excuse in the morning to not go I brought the gym to me so that when I wake up I have no excuse to not work out. I got an adjustable dumbbell set and a bench that, for the most part, covers all of the workouts I need.

Love the word No

I have become very accustomed to saying no these days. There have been so many times that people will offer me something that I can't have, or I am not sure whether or not I can have it. The easiest thing to do is just, for the most part, say "no, thank you." You don't need the extra calories and you don't even need the food.

Discipline

In order to lose weight you have to make the decision and stick with it. So being disciplined on a diet and workout routine and not breaking that routine is very important. Once you start to get lazy about something it gets harder and harder to stick with it. You just have to fight through it. Discipline yourself.

Determination

To be successful you have to be determined to succeed. It won't be handed to you and there will be times when grabbing a slice of pizza at the work party looks very appealing, but you have to have the determination to succeed that will help you overcome the desire to fall back into your old ways, because sadly it is a complete lifestyle change and you will likely never get to go back to eating and living the way you were. (Fat me cries a little when I think about this one.)

Ok, now you know what the factors of my success were. Here is what I have been doing for the past 7 months.

Meals:

Breakfast: 

isopure protein shake (strawberry sand cream is the best)

Mid-morning snack: 

handful of almonds

Lunch: 

ham or turkey and cheese red leaf lettuce wrap

Afternoon snack: 

string cheese or beef jerky

Dinner: 

large spinach salad with boiled egg, half an avocado, chicken or fish and a little bit of ranch dressing

This adds up to around 1200-1300 calories and I use the MyFitnessPal app to track calories and macro nutrients.

My workout routine

I always do my sets of reps 12-10-8 and work out 2 muscle groups each day. I will probably end up getting a personal trainer or at least someone that knows what they are doing eventually, but for now this works for me probably haha I am a total amateur.

Monday:

Chest and triceps and crunches

Tuesday:

Back and biceps

Wednesday:

Crunches traps and chest

Thursday:

Legs

Friday:

Crunches chest and shoulders

I would get more specific on what the workouts are but they tend to vary when I find a new workout for a muscle group that I like better.

Anyway, this may have been a long read for you, but hopefully it was interesting or educational at the very least. Thanks for reading.

My First Week At InsideSales.com

I got so much traffic from the post about my first day that I decided to do a follow-up on how the first week was. It we surprisingly well. Most companies will do a lot of talking up about their products and the company making it seem like everything is bullet proof. So I made sure to take everything said with a grain of salt. Even doing that I am amazed by the company. Not everything is perfect, but I believe that they are making some great strides to fix the things that need to be fixed. Above all I think there are a few things that make me so excited to work at this company.

Culture

Something that most tech companies have is a culture that is work hard play hard. This is the reason that a lot of these companies have game rooms, soda machines, great benefits, and all the other awesome things that you have heard of tech companies having. It makes an environment that encourages people to be able to unwind for a little bit, and then jump back into their projects. 

I know for me I like to power through a project, and then take a break for a while so that my mind can reset. It also helps to go do something that will take your mind off of a problem so that your brain can process it while you are focusing on something else. Also, it is just fun to have cool things, and it entices employees to stay if they are having fun and working on things that are worth while.

Planning

I feel like a lot of companies will just let themselves grow without planning in advance, at least this is what I have seen before, but from what I can tell there has been a lot of planning in this company's growth. They have hired key individuals to build out an education platform, lead improvements on their software, do business research, and grow their sales and support staff. People that have been company for a long period of time have not really been replaced with more knowledgeable people, but positions have been created to integrate new high level hires. The company seems to have a good hierarchy and structure with what seem to be very qualified people from all over the country.

I believe that it is because of restructuring and finding highly qualified talent that this company will be able to find itself as an industry leader in not just selling software, but in leading thought and driving change.

Science

Something that has been repeated over and over is that InsideSales.com believes that "science holds the key to unlocking human potential." I love that this is their mindset. They are all about making informed decisions based on scientific studies and factual evidence, and using that information to improve themselves and their clients. It is also very cool that I get to not only see the intersection of all the sciences and their programmable application, but I get to work with data scientists and people with PhDs. How cool is that?

I never would have thought that I would be in a company that has a research team with scientists and I am a part of the team that implements their findings. My interests lately are very much in tune with what this company is doing in this area. I couldn't be any more excited about getting to work on something this revolutionary.

Big Data

InsideSales.com is ultimately playing the same game that a lot of other companies are playing these days. And that is the game of data. What it really comes down to is whatever company has the most data has the best ability, assuming they are using it wisely, to make informed decisions because they have identified the patterns that give insight to consumer habits. Which in turn reduces time that people waste on useless tactics and and poorly time efforts. This makes work incredibly efficient and lets you focus on more important things instead of playing the guessing game with how consumers behave. This information is a game changer for struggling companies, because it gives them the ability to optimize their time and efforts so that they aren't wasting as much time. 

This is just one example of how you can gather data to gain insights on human behavior, and that is why this big data movement is so intriguing to me. I love learning how people work and how you can find patterns in something that seems so completely random. The greatest part is that this is just the beginning of what can be done. It will be exciting to see how this industry evolves.

So those are my thoughts and why I am excited about this job. Yay!

My First Day at InsideSales.com

I figured I would type this all out so that I don't have to retell the story over and over again. So even if I talk to you in person I am going to refer you to this blog post if you ask me about my first day. Ok? Ok.

The first thing you have to know is that this company has way too many people for the amount of parking spots they had. I was lucky that I read the multiple emails that had been sent about parking, and I made sure that I showed up at least 10 minutes early. I got a really nice spot right in front of the building because of that. I think I am going to continue showing up 10 minutes early, because I really don't feel like walking forever to get to the building. That information isn't exactly relevant I was just kind of thinking out loud...but while type. So the loudness was from my fingers making typing noises...yeah.

Ok, so I walk into the building and a guy walking in asked if I had a badge to get in because he forgot his. I told him it was my first day so I didn't have one. Lucky for both of us the door was open. Apparently this is going to be an almost play by play of my day. That rhymed.

Once I was inside the building I was greeted by my recruiter Julie, and handed my new hire badge so that people know to treat you differently because they can see that you are new. I was then greeted with a handshake by Ron...I can't remember his last name, but that's ok it isn't relevant. Ron is also a new hire, and he is going to be an executive sales person, or something like that. I can't remember all of the job titles. An interesting side note however is that they call all of their employees accelerators. Every company has their quirks and that is one of theirs. I mean there is a reason, but I can't remember/don't care to tell why at this time.

Anyway, once everyone in the training group showed up we were given sparkling orange juice and we all toasted to welcome ourselves to the InsideSales.com community. I thought that the orange juice thing was kind of a risky move considering everyone had brushed their teeth at most 30 minutes before this. Everyone knows that OJ and toothpaste don't mix. -- Insert O.J. Simpson joke here --

Now that we had toasted our way into the company it was time to go to the training room where the 12 of us will spend the next 7 business days of our existence. As we were going up the stairs a weird thing began to happen. There were a bunch of random people clapping at us. It was like being part of a sports team that was running out onto the field except we were a bunch of new hires at a tech company, which everyone knows are generally anti-social, so clapping at all of us was probably a cause of a few anxiety attacks statistically speaking. Another funny thing that a kid, Ian, mentioned is that to get that together they probably went through the company and just asked people if they wanted to go stand by the stairs and clap at new hires early Monday morning. When you actually think about how some things are actually set up it can become weird thinking about what was actually done to make it happen. I could probably give another example, but I am not going to.

Once I finally made it to the room we were sat down, and basically introduced to all of the company's processes and procedures. Talked about benefits and just general need to know stuff. Then we were shown some information about how well connected this place seems to be. They have a lot of ties to Silicon Valley as well as some big names in the general tech industry. It is pretty exciting to see some of the names of people that are involved in this company as well as some huge names that are clients. I don't know if I am allowed to share any of that information, but it was a lot of pretty impressive stuff. I mean this company was given a $1 billion valuation. If anything I am going to learn a lot and be able to have some connections to some large names in the industry.

Once we were given the initial presentation we were given the tour of the building. Since there was a lot of team introductions I will just leave those out and highlight the things that I thought were aesthetically impressive.

Open Workspace
The first thing you would notice about this company is the open layout of the desks. Some people don't really like this layout, but after working in a cubicle I can personally say that I like the idea of an open work space. It is easier to communicate, and it doesn't feel like you are alone. So that is my 2 cents about an open work space.

Whiteboard Desks

This is something that I wish that I had at my last job. We had whiteboards, but they were really difficult to write on because of the angle, and because of that I rarely used it. Having your desk as a whiteboard makes it so that you have scratch paper everywhere essentially. I really loved it. Something that I have seen at other offices is actual whiteboard paint for a wall, or just using glass as a whiteboard. All of these work, and are pretty cool for an office.

Soda Machine

Have you been to a new Wendy's lately? If you haven't then you haven't seen the cool soda machines they have there, and you should probably google a picture of them. If you have then you know the ones that I am talking about. Well we have one of those at the office. Pretty much every flavor of soda that you could think of...except mountain dew :(, but oh well. It is probably for the best. I don't need to get diabetes, and if there was mountain dew I would have little control over myself.

After the tour we got to have lunch. They ordered Papa Johns and we got to eat with our respective managers. This was great for me, because I really wanted to see what my team was going to be like. My manager's name is Scott, and he was a very laid back guy. I don't think I could be any luckier with a manager. We had a great conversation, and got to talk about what the day to day of the team was like, and what kind of projects I will be working on. It sounds like my team is relatively young and gets a lot of freedom and flexibility with projects so that if we can find ways to make it better we can explore those ideas. Also, it sounds like there is a lot of opportunity for automation as well so that is another thing that I am excited about. Something worth mentioning is that we also have a data science team, which is something that I am very interested. I am pretty sure that they are implementing machine learning and neural networks which is something that is increasingly sparking my interest.

After lunch it was kind of a blur until the end of the day. We got a lesson on sales methodology as our company implements it and consults it. We talked a lot about data as well, because that is basically the way the company does business both internally and with clients. It was pretty amazing to see the way that they run things internally. The organization made me believe very much in the company as a whole. I can't speak in detail about they way that they use data to improve the way employees speak together and interact, but it is something I had never heard of. Something else that I really liked was that they continually reminded that they are of the mindset that they don't like to follow the crowd on a lot of things. They gave many examples of how not following the crowd and thinking outside of the box had given them a leg up on the competition. It is really exciting to me, because I like to think I am also the type of person that doesn't like to do things the conventional way.

Overall, I think I made a good decision in going to this company. I believe that I am going to have a lot of great opportunity and learn a ton! Also, if you are reading this and need a job I am told that since their investment rounds they are going to be hiring like crazy this year to meet client demand and growth predictions. So if you are looking for work let me know, and I can refer you.

Thanks for reading!

Interstellar Review

I saw this movie a week after it came out, and everything I heard was positive. One person even told me they read that it was the best movie in the last 100 years. If there is one thing I hate, it is movies that get too hyped up. Unfortunately, that is how this movie ended up for me. My expectations were far too high for this movie, and it only lived up to half the hype.

The Good: The movie was actually pretty scientifically accurate, except for one scene where their ship was able to leave a planet that was 130% that of the gravity of earth with a ship that when leaving earth had to have significantly more boost. The visuals were also quite good, except for Anne Hathaway looking way too much like a mustache-less Hitler, and the idea of the movie was also pretty cool.

The Bad: I think the actors were a poor choice for the film. I can't watch Matthew McConaughey without thinking of him in all of his previous chick flick roles, John Lithgow is a comedy actor in my mind, Michael Caine is Alfred, and Anne Hathaway is just hit and miss with her roles. The amount of science used in the film made it hard for me to believe the science fiction when it got pretty far past theoretic. In my opinion, the relationships between characters was more spoken than portrayed. Overall, it felt like a very good try at something that could have been a lot better with a little more time. Speaking of time it was 3 hours long.

The Science

The science in this movie was actually very well done and believable. A real physicist was commissioned to assist in the accuracy of the films science which is likely why it was done as well as it was. At one point in the movie they go to a planet that is very close to a black hole, and because of the time dilation that occurs as a result of the gravity of the black hole 1 hour on that planet equates to 7 years outside of that gravitational field. As crazy as it sounds this is actually real science and it is called gravitational time dilation. Relativity is a very big driving force of the movie, because they need to find a habitable planet before earth essentially expires. Overall, I felt they did a very good job explaining a lot of the scientific concepts in the movie, but you had to pay very close attention or you would be left scratching your head if you aren't familiar with those concepts.

The Cast

As said above I felt that the cast wasn't very strong just because of the type of actors that they got. I think had it been a better cast the relationships of the characters would have been more believable and stronger. A huge driving force of the movie is a father that wants to return home to his daughter, but the connection with them never seems that strong. In fact, that is just as much the direction as it was the actors. You are told from the beginning of the movie that Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is more interested in the stars and science than he is anything else. The first scene in the movie is Cooper being told that he needs to go to parent teacher conference by his step father, because that isn't the role of a grandfather. So from the very beginning of the movie Cooper is seen as a distant father. Sorry, that doesn't have to do with the cast, but I just realized it. Anyway, I still believe a different cast could have made it better. I have seen McConaughey in way too many romantic comedies, John Lithgow only in comedies, and Anne Hathaway probably would have been fine if she kept a normal length hair and attempted to look like a woman. I wasn't going to bring this up, but another thing that bothered me about the cast was Matt Damon being the character Mann. I am pretty certain it wasn't necessary and kind of took attention away from his character's small role in the movie. The whole time I was just thinking why Matt Damon for this role? It was distracting. You don't find out about him 'til half way through the movie, but I just had to say something. It was completely pointless to cast him as that role. "And that's all I got to say about that." - Forest Gump

The Outstanding Bad

I am a person that is very specific about continuity in a film. I know that no film is going to be perfect, but there were things that really stood out and bothered me. The first thing is early in the film there is mention of 'ghosts' that you find out are trying to communicate with them, because Cooper's daughter Murph, named after Murphy's Law, determines that books pushed out of her book shelf are in a pattern that she determines is morse code. Later these 'ghosts' communicate the coordinates of some location using binary. Here is the problem I have with that. In the movie the binary is represented by 6-10 lines in the dirt. However an actually set of coordinates converted to binary would look something like:

001100110011000000101110001100100011100100110001001100100011100000001001001011010011100100110111001011100011011100110011001110000011010100111000001000000011001100110000001111110010000000110001001101110010011100100000001100100011100000100010

I know it is trivial, but people notice these things. Whenever there is a movie where a person playing an instrument doesn't match with the music they are playing it bothers me so it would make sense that something like this would do the same.

Another thing that bothered me was the robot TARS. Maybe I have been spoiled by movies like iRobot, Bicentennial Man, Terminator, Star Wars, and every other movie that has a robot. The problem is that I don't think I have. In this movie that robot looks like a fridge with 2 1980's computer monitors on it. I can't even describe the way he has to walk. So here is a gif to demonstrate:

Seriously? What the crap is that? Then somehow he can turn into a 4 french toast stick rolling thingy, and have hook hands. This 'robot' makes absolutely no sense, and all that it caused me to do was laugh at moments in the film that were not made to laugh at. I knew I couldn't take this movie seriously the second this thing showed up.

The final thing I will mention that made me not like the movie was the scene in the black hole. I feel like they needed a way to tie in everything in the movie, and so they just did something ridiculous. I am not a scientist, physicist, or any other type of ist, but I am almost certain that entering a black hole will kill you. What actually happens in the film is pretty far fetched and after all of the believable stuff in the movie kind of just seems like an easy way out and a way to throw the audience off in the process. It was kind of upsetting.

Conclusion

Should you see the movie? Yes.

Was it visually amazing? Yes.

Did it live up to all of the hype? Eh.

Was I disappointed? Yes.

I was really hoping to get my socks blown off by this movie. However, that did not happen and I left wishing it was better. So if you haven't seen it yet I recommend buying matinee tickets and carving out a 3 hour chunk of your day. That way you will have only lost 6 or 7 dollars and 3 hours of your life instead of $10 and 3 hours of your life. Then afterward get some comfort food with that money you saved so that you can handle your post movie depression better.

Think Before You Post

Hello everybody.

I know it has been a long time since I have posted something, which really sucks. I mainly blame being employed for that. I am pretty sure I would be much more active in my blogging and social media endeavors if I wasn't racking up hours and XP in the game of life. You will be happy to know that I am now a level 40 web development manager, and have learned a lot of code spells. If you don't know what I am talking about you should probably play an RPG, or at least read about what they are. I don't actually play them, nor have I ever, but I have just heard people reference them enough that I feel I can accurately reference their gameplay style as needed. Anyway enough of that nonsense. Let's get to the real topic at hand.

I am a huge advocate of UYB, or Using Your Brain. I know it can sometimes be difficult to boot it up after not using it for so long (I am talking to you youth of America), but it is very important that we use the thing that separates us from the Mexicans...I mean animals. (I really don't have anything against Mexicans. I use jokes like that mostly for shock value to get a cheap laugh.) Today I am mostly going to focus on the underlying cause of our awareness of stupidity these past few years. 

It isn't new news that, generally, people seem a lot dumber than they use to be, but why is that? You would think with the huge leaps in technology that have brought us into the information age that we would have more intelligent youth solving the mysteries of science. Well we do have a lot of these, but they are still not as abundant as the rest of the gauged ear, completely tattooed, drug addicted, and sexually promiscuous youth that seem to be littering the earth. Not to say that people that have gauges or tattoos or whatever are unintelligent, but generally all of the morons I see all over social media making complete idiots of themselves have all of these qualities. They also seem to be very outspoken about everything and throw their every thought on the internet without regard to consequence. This brings me to my point.

The reason that we are noticing so many stupid people and an influx of intelligent people is because people are sharing their every thought on the internet. The beauty of having a brain is that you can have thoughts and not share them. Unfortunately, as of late people seem to have forgotten that they have that ability. So we see every thought whether smart, witty, stupid, informative, or useless. It will be surprising to all of you to know that I only post about 50% of the things that I had originally intended to post. That isn't even counting things that I had dismissed from my mind before even picking up my phone or opening my laptop to share it. For the most part I have probably put on average of 5 - 10 minutes of thought into everything that I have shared on the internet. Even then not everything has been a comedic gem or a thought provoking anecdote, and that is with me putting a lot of time and thought into what I share. I really doubt there are a lot of people that do what I do with their social media and sharing practices. So we are left with a lot of people posting nearly their every thought, and now we can see with clarity how stupid they really are. 

I feel that people that people who spend most of their time talking spend very little time thinking, and that applies to social media as well. Put some thought into everything you put on the internet. You will be less likely to read through your posts in the years to come and wonder how you were ever so stupid to have posted things like these. 

I believe that you all have the ability to stop the over sharing, and become a little bit better at filtering the useless garbage that you discard onto the internet for innocent passers by to read. Make me proud.

Thanks for reading.

Need for Speed Review

Ok ok ok...ok. I know it has been a while since I have written a review, and for that I am sorry. So I am going to make up for it by reviewing a movie that I saw yesterday, and knew almost immediately that I had to make fun of it in my blog.

If you are familiar with my style of reviewing you will know that if a movie has attractive women I am at least somewhat forgiving if it is incredibly stupid. Sadly, I don't think I can be very forgiving. My biggest problem with this movie is really just a problem I have with movie makers in general. If you are going to make a movie that is suppose to be realistic, and then you throw something in that is obviously not even plausible you kind of just ruin your movie. For example, in the movie they are driving a mustang - whose front end is likely just make of tinfoil, plastic, and fiberglass - (I don't think I used the hyphens right, but whatever. They should have something that separates a list and something else that can separate side note kinda stuff, or whatever it is called. Not just use commas for both. Everything seems to work for a while, and then you get into a situation where you have to use commas inside another comma separated part of a sentence and it seems wrong, and then you find your self looking at the sentence wondering why our language sucks so bad. No wonder immigrants can't speak or write in our language. Not even Americans can speak and write in our language. I often wish that I was asian so that I spoke a language that wasn't just a big trash can of languages, and so that I could be a ninja.) and the guy driving this mustang jumps over 2 lanes of traffic and lands pretty much on the front end of his car. Any real car would have been crushed like a soda can. Then after this impossible feat the director decides that they need to have the car lifted by an army helicopter by clipping 2 cables together through the windows of the car. I can't say for certain, because I have never done it, but I am almost positive that the top of the car would have been torn off. It would have been more believable if one of the huge bird things from the Lord of The Rings would have come and grabbed the car and carried it to safety. Sadly that was not the case, and I had to just sit there and accept that there was another hour of this movie to watch.

Another thing that really bothered me about this movie was how predictable it was. They made the plot far too obvious, and then tried to detract from the awful plot by having terrible dialogue and overly dramatic acting throughout. I swear it was like I was watching a daytime soap opera, except it wasn't daytime and no one was singing. They sing in soap operas right? You could pretty much call every shower that I take a soap opera. I will often times start singing some Pavarotti, and there is soap...because I use soap. I am just missing a large audience of stay at home moms that have nothing better to do than watch the shows that were purposely put on daytime so that people with half a brain wouldn't have to watch it, and so the people making the shows feel like they are contributing to something even thought they really aren't. Then there is this guy that is in a lighthouse or something stupid the entire movie, and has some kind of live video streaming app for his vlog "I'm Michael Keaton and I get to have a big part in this movie even though it's pointless". All this character did throughout this movie was give a play by play. His dialogue didn't even make sense half of the time. He is suppose to be this really popular car race dude with his app and he hosts some race called "The Lion", or "de Lion", as he says it, that is supposedly a huge deal. Yet, he references the main character, Toby, as if everyone is aware of who he is, and understands all of the small intricacies of Toby's life.

Don't get me wrong there were good parts of the movie. Like when people weren't talking, and when there weren't unrealistic stunts I was actually enjoying myself, because there were cars going fast and a lot of movement and colors. So yeah, it was a movie. So if you like movies, even if they are a little dumb, you could go and see this and waste a couple hours if you have nothing to do. If you are looking for something that will blow your socks off might I suggest saving your money for Captain America Winter Soldier. That is a movie I am excited about. So yeah...I think I am done now.

FIN