The grass is always greener...

Things have not been going according to plan lately. It seems that I am running outta steam, getting confused over trivial things, and have many moral dilemmas about other things as well. It always makes things look greener on the other side. I know... The grass isn't always greener on the other side, but it just seems that way quite often. Physically I feel better since taking up Goju Ryu, but some of the buddhist roots bother me, even though little or none of the buddhist religion is even brought up. If anything, it's helping me become more devoted in my Bible studies due to increased focus. Work has not been easy either. I keep making bone headed mistakes. Correctable as they may be, they are still mistakes. I finally bought a car for my wife at auction, and when it gets back to the dealership the stupid thing has a huge dent in the side of it. I'm just getting sick of all the conflicts. Most people that know me, know that at one point I was headed to Saint Louis for a job in design. Long story short, I decided to stay in town and keep the family business going. I work like hell, do what I can, and always seem to come up short. Oh well. I found this little short on the Layers website, a must if you dig any part of the Adobe suite. It is a musical of the life of a digital grunt. Or "creative professional." This could have been my life. It doesn't seem that bad really. Of course this was my last two semesters at school, in a four minute clip, but this could have been every ingle day of my life. Anyway, I'm just sitting here venting. Enjoy the clip.

Self-centering

As I slowly try to bring my life back to a balance, I have been researching the possibility of disciplines that may help bring things in line, in my life. My life has been somewhat globular in form. Work flows into my home, home into work, stress into the family room, and so and so fourth. One of the disciplines I was looking into was Shorei Kan Goju Ryu Karate do. Hide and I went to a class to watch and found it interesting. Like me, Hide has a few too many things on his plate as well. Sooo,  I went t a free class tonight and practiced to see what I thought. First lesson: I am way out of shape. Second lesson: This ain't no McDojo.  The Sensei is direct, informative, and very rigid (in a good way). I think this will bring alignment in my life that will hopefully bleed over into the rest of my ways. It sounds a bit daft, but I need more discipline even in my walk with God. Although I do everything with God in mind, I kind of just go with the flow. I need more confidence, focus, and borders in my life. I think I just may have found the ticket. 

30 to 12 in 6 darts flat.

Life can suck sometimes. Actually, pretty often. Speaking of which, a good friend of mine got some not so great news last week. It also right before his birthday, too. I finally coerced him into coming over for a birthday dinner, and some cake. We even got him a little gift. I searched high and low for something that would peak his interest.

Nuthin', I couldn't find anything. Finally, after shopping for groceries at Wal Mart one night, I happened upon a wall of Nerf guns. Although a bit young for our tastes, I thought "What the heck..." So I bought him two. After dinner we cleaned up the dishes, put the cake away, and gave him his gift. He looked at Sara and I with the "What the....." look. We joked a little bit, and the proceeded to open the packages. Ten seconds later, we were 12 years old, without a care in the world. the house was our battlefield. Jumping over couches, ducking for cover, even throwing pillows as decoys. It was just like we were on summer break so many years ago. I'm sure the guns will eventually be given away, broken, or end up back in Japan with him. But that 2 and a half hours was what we both needed. Nobody lost, nobody won. Nobody even tried to keep count. The only thing I lost was my breath. I'm still a bit sore a few days later. I think I'm gonna need another dose of that.

The more I think about it, the closer I get to heading to Wal Mart for the Sniper Rifle version.

Vices

As most people know, I have a few too many irons in the fire. As a step to help reduce some stress, I am cutting back on my many, many hobbies. I started the other day with Optrata, Wordpress, a couple of neighborhood blogs, and so forth. I am currently taking inventory of other things to cut back on. My side project (again, one of many) Goufy Shumi is on the chopping block as well. I have slowed my use of Flickr, drastically, and next would be my proper hobbies. I don't have much time for photography anymore, Gunpla has become a pipe dream. Right now, my only hobby is listening to Last.fm and playing my DS. Something's gonna give, and I'm afraid it's gonna be me. Lately, I been going to bed at 9:30 as well as sleeping in every second that I can. Life just hasn't been fun. In an effort to maximize what time I do get away from work, I have to trim things out. Who knows, this blog may be next.

Separated at birth? Ford Verve/Chevy WTCC & Beat

Ford took the wraps off an "exciting" design study called the Verve. Although it's a nice looking car, I think I've seen it elsewhere. Perhaps last year as a Chevy?

Listed left to right: Ford Verve - Mid 2007 / Chevy WTCC - 2006 / Chevy Beat Early 2007

New Logo

You might be wondering about my new logo. Well, when you are called something long enough, one starts to believe it's true...

Flocked, again.

*8/3/07 Edit - Some people have asked me what Flock is. Flock is considered a "Social Network Browser." Basically, it is an alternative to Internet Explorer or Firefox. It just happens to have a bunch of cool bells and whistles.

Flock 0.9 was released the other day. Although a bit slow, I like the improvements. The new look is gorgeous. Integration between social networks has been tidied up a bit. And getting to the features of Flock has been made easier. A new feature that's pretty nifty is the "My World" page which incorporates your favorite bookmarks, RSS feeds, and Media Favorites (such as Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket, etc.). The ability to blog an article or picture directly from Flock still remains, as well as using del.icio.us to manage your bookmarks. Magnolia is available, too, but I haven't gotten a chance to mess around with it. Overall the new Flock is much improved, and I highly recommend it, as I rarely have a desktop to call my own. This way I don't have to actually go to any web pages to publish, watch, look, or pull up. Everything is integrated into one slick browser. Flock is still in Beta, so other than the speed deficiency, there are a few bugs still being worked out, but is very stable in XP and OS X.