Saturday, March 31, 2012

Touch Typing

"Shingeki no Kyojin"
A great shounen manga I found, it has won some awards as well, fully deserving of them

Thought I should at least what I've been reading for each of my entries to spice it up. Walls of text are so unattractive although they are my very own. Anyways back to my topic today.

Lately the past few days I've been getting more and more accustomed to touch typing. For as long as I can remember I've always been typing with a tiger claw like stance lol. Which is basically just three fingers from each hand. It seems like the WPM for that kind of typing caps up at around 60 WPM. I say that because I've been typing this way for years, and naturally I'd assume that I'm pretty damn good at it lol.

The toughest part about adjusting to touch typing is the fact that you need to use all of your fingers. With my tiger claw style my index and middle fingers saw the most action, that leaves my ring and pinky fingers out of the loop- especially the pinky fingers. I have to hit "a" and "p" for the most part with my pinkies and also of course shift, quotes, and apostrophes. So it was really tough in the beginning but as I keep practicing my fingers gradually get used to it.

Touch typing easily the superior way to type. I mean even when I was struggling I was still managing to punch out 30 - 40 WPM, so once I'm up to speed the sky is the limit for my WPM. Exactly do I want more WPM? Well for one thing I want to be able to deliver trash talk quicker when I play games lol. Another is obviously for  just the overall convenience of it. You're always typing, and when you touch type and do it well in class or at work, it makes a good impression. Employers like productive employees after all. As for writing papers and such it's not exactly that important to type fast, but if you're like me and you just know what you need to hammer out onto your Microsoft word, having fast WPM helps. It's also more accurate for spelling as well.

Even after spending years of typing improperly I still make tons of mistakes, because often I make a typo and do realize until I look up at the screen. Right now I'm doing this entire blog with touch typing, and so far it's great practice since I shit out a wall of text each time I blog. Other than that there's not much to talk about today. It's been a long day at work, I've only got 3 more hours before I get out @_@.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Another end of the week

This week has been quite uneventful. Usually something comes up that completely blindsides me. I remember last week after returning to class after skipping just one day, an exam was to be done on that day. I didn't do a lick of studying. But to be honest I didn't really need to. It was a statistics exam so it dealt with regression analysis, forecasting, and weighted moving averages to project information for next year's business period. It's very easy stuff once you understand what it's used for. It's just a tool to help out on making financial decisions. Like for regression there's these r^2, F-values, and p-values those are very intuitive ways to just determine just how accurate your regression model is, but people look at it like its poison.

Ok to be honest if you had to do the calculations out yourself and not on excel, it'd be a pain in the ass, and it would take a good amount of practice to breeze right through the calculations. However, the course I'm in is the next level of statistics, the level where you put that math to real use. In the real world we don't have to do those calculations, they are already done for us through the means of excel and etc. But people are still terrible at it. When the professor stepped out the room (I still have no clue why he does it) nearly everyone except for the two sitting next me start asking for answers from each other blatantly cheating. IT'S OPEN BOOK AND OPEN NOTES FOR CHRIST SAKE! The professor just wants us to fully understand the concepts we learn in class, because he's just being real, when you get the job you just need to know how to use your tools.

Well that was a little off tangent, but there's not much else going on this week since my random episode of anxiety. I've been drinking a little more than usual this week since I knew for a fact that I didn't have any obligations the following morning, although it would be nice if I could wake up earlier and spend that time productively. The drinking also destroys my diet. Each glass of wine I shove down my throat is around 250 calories. I've adjusted by eating very little during lunch and and dinner, but I'm still getting very poor nutritional value out of it overall. Not to mention I slacked off on running for the week as well @_@. Which is even worse in my opinion.

I've set a goal to run around 15+ miles each week. About 3 miles every other day and a mile in between is all I ever needed. So this week I've only done three, I've been meaning to do 3 yesterday but my friends intervened and I really didn't want to go running at 11 PM at night. Hopefully I'll be able to get out of this slump by running hard today and tomorrow. If I can at least get 9 miles done, then that'd be fine. On a good note I've worked out my upper body at least since it takes up significantly less time than running.

I really can't wait for nest week to come. Because it's that time of the year again, the time when the Anime Convention rolls around. More specifically Anime Boston, which has a great ring to it. I've got more money this time around so I'll be sure to purchase some more goodies, like a K-ON! clock and more posters. My friend keeps bugging me to try to cosplay for this year, but cosplay really just isn't for me haha.

The Magic Words

"Don't worry" - Those are the magic words an adult says to a child to calm them down. It's as if everything in the world will go back in order with those words. However, when a child is no longer a child it's quite frightening to see that magic become broken. I actually came up with these magic words through reading a light novel. I'm really glad that I've moved from watching anime, to reading manga, and now presently I'm reading light novels- basically the real origin of all our favorite shows.

Right now I'm reading Toradora!. Reading a light novel is pretty no different from reading a book, except you're reading a book heavily influenced by the Japanese culture. Thinking about my taste of Anime since my middle school years, they've evolved according to how I matured.

Of course back in my middle school days I was enamored with ecchi lol. Well that shouldn't be a surprise, every boy going through puberty will start getting extremely interested in the opposite sex, although I can't say that that's the healthiest way to be interested haha. Going into high school, my taste broadened, and being the higher level nerd than most I began taking great care to dissect the shows I watched and promoted the great shows that came out from the 2000 - 2007 era. I basically watched nearly everything and also began reading mangas. I even checked out a ton of shoujo series, which was fun since my girl friends were really able to relate to them rather than my other genres catered towards men.

My early college years were horrific. Especially freshman year, one way to describe it is just me being pessimistic in a really facetious way. Quite embarrassing really, but that's not to say that when I get all moody it's not as equally as silly lol. I partly blame it on my lack of foresight and the ridiculous satire manga I read. The shit I read was poison. It was really scary, I mean at one point I remember very clearly that there was one short story (the artist followed a short story format) about a woman around the same age as I was who had the same issues when it came to drinking, half-heartedly taking classes, and basically just living a very a carefree lifestyle.

That scared the crap out of me lol. So I stopped reading brooding gloomy mangas full of satire. Although now sometimes I feel like returning to that one short story and seeing how it ended... yeah it was that frightening close to my life that I just had to stop. Nowadays I just read and watch comedy. Laughing is great. Laughing is one of the best remedies to a salty mood. But if I ever feel like digesting something more potent, I read light novels. Although the story and setting seem albeit a bit childish, the author is not, and when they share their thoughts on some things in life it's an interesting read,

Toradora!, despite it catering to high school students- the author really tried to assert himself into the book. His own life questions and such, so it was a really surprisingly good read. I've been reading it for the past month now, just on my commute to work and school. I shouldn't be too surprised that the book is finally coming to and end. An hour worth of reading everyday is enough to bring me to the end of the book. I just hope my next book will be as enjoyable.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Getting Back

Well it looks like the work/school week has started up again.

After the whole ordeal over the weekend I was left feeling pretty rattled. I really needed to decompress. Sometimes I just don't know why I get caught up in things. It doesn't happen often, but when it does- it sucks. But as I have stated before, maybe I just need to learn how to enjoy life more than grumbling over to silly stuff. The problem with that is, by trying to release all your stress, either by partying and drinking, or just shutting yourself up away from the outside world, you're avoiding reality.

However, as pessimistic I am, I can't deny that there will be a time when I seriously just need to relax. Maybe I'll be a happier person if I had a girlfriend. Or maybe I'll be even more miserable? If I really had to choose a type of girl that I would want then it'd probably would be one that could understand what I really want to say or how I really feel. Fuck me for that being my number one priority in a girl, all my other guy friends just want to have sex, no surprise there. Unfortunately for me that approach is probably the only way to get a girl interested at this stage in life. It'd be too weird to have a guy who likes to talk so pessimistically. After all most people are just looking to have fun... didn't I talk about this before a long time ago?

I'm going to go to a party in a few weeks. Knowing the way my friend likes to run his parties, it'll be a wild one. I just want to see how I am now when it comes to drinking with a large group of people. In years past I'm known to get violent when I'm drunk.  Since then I've avoided parties for that reason, and going to a party without having a drink yourself fucking sucks balls. So I drank alone. I don't get completely shitfaced but I do get relatively drunk.

I just looked up the subject of drinking alone. It seems I'm not the only one, in fact I'm far from the only one who thinks that this whole drinking alone habit is a bad thing to do. It really just isn't. In fact I'm 100% that this it's just a taboo created by society to give judgment to those who practice such a thing with great prejudice. It's like hey, I drink a glass of wine every night, "YOU'RE AN ALCOHOLIC OMG" that's the average reaction you get when you tell someone that you drink alone.

But whatever that not's the point. The point of this blog entry was to outline the nice stuff that happened to me this weekend.

I went shopping with a few friends. Got drunk, friend drives me home. I'm nice and cozy and content. The end.



Saturday, March 24, 2012

Aftermath

So I got it over with my parents.

Should I be surprised at their reaction? They've had the same one when I confronted them before with this issue. They tell me "don't worry, just focus on your life and we'll take care of the rest." but really I know that this is more than they can handle... Yet they still insist on handling it themselves and excluding me from everything.

Having a well paying job right about now would make things a lot less complicated, right? Would I be a happier person? That's hard to say to be honest. I mean even if I did get myself a real career job I'd still would have to deal with all the hardships of working in that type of job. Undoubtedly there will be obstacles that I will have to come to face with. Even with the confidence in my ability to work hard in less than 1st world conditions, there will be things that come along my way that will shake my sanity- things like flat out failure.

I'm confident that I'll be able to face these obstacles however, in the past I know that I may not be brave enough to face them. In high school my dream was to become an artist. It takes an incredible amount of courage and talent to become a successful artist. I didn't have that courage, to be quite frank I was simply just a coward.

I remember having a friend back in high school whom I would talk to occasionally about art and art as a career. She was very confident in her decision to pursue art. I remember asking her "Aren't you afraid of how tough it'll be to succeed?". I don't quite remember her answer, whether she was afraid or not, but I remember clearly that she told me that if you truly love art you'll pursue it regardless. So perhaps I'm lacking not just in talent, but also in passion.

Coming to this stage in my life I can openly admit that the art I made in high school days were partially for showing off the ambidextrous skill-sets that I had developed so casually over the years. I think that a real artist wouldn't have a shred of that type of desire. They would just make art because something within them compels them to.

You know what's funny I just realized that the manner in which I write out this post is very much like a certain character from a manga full of morbid satire. Although I'm not directly attacking society itself with my rants, it's still pretty gloomy to read through it. I guess I need to learn how to enjoy life more. I was never one to go out partying and all that jazz but I'm quite sure that doing so would have helped to mold me into a much more normal person than I am now- which is a person who is agonizing over things that nearly everyone has to deal with at some point in their lives.

I wonder how some other people deal with it. You can't exactly go with the flow, because not taking these issues seriously will end up ruining your life very easily. From what I can tell, just looking into the eyes of people who have endured these dramatic life events, they just glaze over. In a sense they plow through their issues with as little emotion as possible. Again, I think they simply just become boring people.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Reality

It's been a year.

So much can happen in a year its quite shocking. Sometimes you just need an outlet to gather up your thoughts, because storing them up all in your head will create a huge mess.

I guess I was a lot more immature than I originally thought I was. Or maybe I was mature, but not mature enough in certain areas of my persona. By nature I was really laid-back. Really laid-back. Now it has come back to haunt me. The truth is you can't live a life with a laid-back attitude. It simply doesn't work. I tried, and forced my way of living for so long that the repercussions of it are bringing me to the brink of... insanity perhaps? Well I don't know, but it's a god awful feeling.

So what have I been doing this past year... Well to start off I've made some improvements in my life, particularly in my academia. My grades were absolute shit during my sophomore year, for no good reason. Now as I try to salvage my GPA and bring it up to a reasonable level, so that my employers don't crumple and throw away my resume, it's nearly an impossible task- but very doable. So okay I'm getting back in line with my fellow students who want to succeed in life.

Good... right? No, there are still other things I have not dealt with yet. I've always been internally conflicted. I don't have anyone to talk to, not even my family since I've done such a wonderful job isolating myself from them. I cringe as I look back on my other blog posts. I think I'm a decently interesting character a year ago, still full of dreams, ideas, all stemming from my light-hearted high school days.

Adults have to be boring in some way or another. I can feel myself getting boring. Today was the worst.

It's like a foot race between you and reality. When you're young and bright you've got tons of energy. Reality being as old as the human race itself has quite the cumbersome pace. So naturally you're flying way ahead of reality, it's almost as if it'll never catch up to you. But as you get older and lose energy yourself, reality starts to catch up. Eventually it'll be mouth breathing down your neck, ready to bring you down.

I never really blogged at all this past year. I guess because my life was starting to look pretty good. Up until now things were looking amazing. I'm doing well in school, despite the shit GPA. I work out on a regular basis finally. I've also given more attention to my personal appearance, buying new trendy clothes to spice up my wardrobe.

I should have known something was going to crawl out to shit on my face. Actually I did know, but I never actually confronted it. Now my entire lifestyle is in jeopardy. Tonight I have to tell my father the bad news. I hate to break the good relations we have had the past few months, but fuck my life I guess terrible dramatic things are inevitable.

All I ever wanted... was to live a carefree life. I bet everyone does. But the definition of carefree is very deceptive. To what standard does your "carefree" hold up to? If I truly want to live a peaceful life, marry a wonderful woman, have a family- I need to fucking sit up in my chair and stare my demons straight in the eye and tell 'em that I'm ready to play.