Rick's World

Hell yeah!

Last night, like a good little geek, I went to the midnight showing of X-Men 3. It was well worth it! The movie was great! This movie was everything I hoped for. The movie had seemingly endless special effects, more mutant cameos than I could even keep track of, and lots of action. The movie starts off fast and doesn't stop for the entire movie. If I had any complaint it would be that the movie moved too fast. It was almost like they rushed things to cram as much in as possible. The movie was also a lot more 'adult' than I expected. There was swearing, a borderline sex scene, some almost nudity, and lots of intense action. A movie well worth seeing. This movie will do very well this year. I expect it will easily beat the money earned on the previous two.

One more little hint. Don't leave the theater when the credits start at the end. After all the credits are done, there's one more short scene that you have to see. I won't give away what, but it will be worth it.

Last week, Apple released their new 'consumer-grade' laptop - the MacBook. So like any good Apple nut, I made a trip down to the Apple store to take a look. Here are my thoughts after a brief encounter with it.

Visually, the laptop looks pretty good. It's nice and thin. It has an Intel Core Duo processor. This means, this little 'cheap' laptop essentially has two processors. A very nice feature for a low end model. At 2Ghz per processor, it is sure to be a quite capable machine. It also has a feature that I really like, and I'm sure other will too. This is the user upgradable hard drive! This is the first laptop I've seen where you can easily swap out the hard drive. This means that you are not forced to play expensive Apple prices if you want to upgrade the hard drive at a later time. Plus, you can throw in any laptop hard drive you can find in the thing, so you could potentially upgrade it beyond the 'officially sanctioned' Apple standards. A very nice feature.

Another nice feature is the 'Mag-save' power plug. I like this design. It's a very small, lightweight plug that plugs into the side of the computer. It plugs into the computer by way of a magnet holding it in place. It's a nice feature because if you can get that plug pretty close to the laptop, it practically 'plugs itself in' because the magnet sucks the plug in the rest of the way. Plus, it easily pops out so you can't yank the laptop off the desk by way of the power cable.

I have to say that the color of the cases, both the white and the black are quite nice. I was rather expecting the black case to look like a typical, boring black laptop, but it actually looks quite nice. The Apple logo on the top of the case is a nice touch too. When the laptop is closed the Apple logo is not lit up. As soon as you open the case, it lights up. A neat little touch. Now for the things I didn't like...

I'm not sure I like the keyboard. It has an odd 'chicklet' style keyboard. The keyboard buttons remind me more of the buttons on a cheap handheld calculator, then on a good laptop. Also, the keyboard seemed a little off-center. It almost seemed like what should be the center of the keyboard was more off to the right. It feels a bit weird to someone like me who is a fast typist.

The screen is a bit odd too. From what I understand there are two types of screens on the MacBook - the glossy screen and the standard screen. I suspect the one I was trying had the glossy screen. This means that the screen has a very shiny, reflective coating on the front. This strikes me as a bad thing because it was constantly reflecting the overhead lights. It was distracting. If I were to buy one of these, I would have to go for the non-glossy screen.

Another thing I didn't like was the video chip they choose to put into it. It uses an onboard, low-end Intel video chip, rather than the much more capable ATI video chip in the MacBook Pros. This video also shares memory with the main RAM on the laptop. This means that you potentially have a lot less RAM on it than you think you do. I'm sure this lesser video chip was put into here to lower the cost. I'd much rather have the higher end chip though, or at least a way to upgrade it...

One last thing I noticed was the integrity of the casing itself. Maybe it was just the heavily handled and abused demo model I was looking at, but it didn't seem like things fit together quite right at the back of the laptop case, near the joint where the top part connects to the bottom part of the laptop. The seams seemed uneven and a bit sloppy looking. Maybe this one had just been abused and that's why things were out of kilter, but it looked a bit odd.

All in all, I'd say this would make a good first computer or a good computer for your kids to take to school, but this is definately not a power-user laptop.

Now that 17" widescreen MacBook Pro was beautiful though! I'd love to have one of those puppies!

Things didn't go as planned last night. I planned on it being a night out at the movies. I was going to go see "Over the Hedge". That didn't work out. Instead I ended up having to rush Jewel, my kitten, to the pet emergency room.

Last night, as I was walking around the house, I happened to notice Jewel sitting in the bathroom with something odd in her mouth. I turned on the light and got a brief glance at what looked like a piece of string. It looked like those strings that tend to hang off an old, frayed towel. I immediately grabbed her and tried to get it out of her month, but it was too late. She had swallowed it. I knew that it is a very bad thing for a cat to swallow strings, threads and stuff like that. Those things have a tendency to get clogged up in the intestines, causing the intestines to get all bunched up and twisted. This is a painful and likely lethal problem. I figured that the best approach was to make her vomit the string back up. So, I hopped in my car and went over to the pet store, just before it closed and asked the people at the vet there if they knew of a product I could buy in the store to make her vomit up that string. They told me that it's not a good idea to do that. They suggested I take her to the pet emergency room and have her checked out by a doctor. So, I called the emergency room and told them I was coming. I headed home, grabbed her and headed off to the emergency room.

We arrived at the emergency room and checked her in. The doctor came and examined her. I explained the problem - that I thought she had swallowed a string, but I didn't get a very good look at it, so I wasn't too sure what it was. I explained the hazards of what can happen if a cat swallows strings. He then recommended an injection to make her vomit. It turns out the injection is actually a sedative, but it has the side effect of making a cat vomit, almost right after the injection. So I agreed and the doctor took her off to give her the injection. A few minutes later, he came back and showed me the string she had vomitted up. It was definately the towel string, as I thought. He then advised me that she would be groggy for the rest of the night and to not give her anything to eat that night, since it might upset her stomach, after the vomitting. So after paying, and leaving I brought her home.

It was kind of funny, but a bit sad to see her trying to walk. She stumbled out of the cat carrier, walking around as if she was drunk and could barely stand. She kept trying to walk despite her being 'tipsy', but she didn't have much luck at it. I finally picked her up and put her in her bed, hoping she would go to sleep. She didn't. She continued to stumble after me wherever I walked in the house. Finally, I sat down and she proceeded to climb into my lap and go right to sleep.

This morning, she's fine and back to normal. It was a bit of a scary night though. This was my first ever pet emergency in the 3 1/2 years I've owned pets.

Today I bought an acoustic/electric guitar. It's a Takamine EG544SC. It's a great guitar. The sound on this thing is absolutely fantastic. I think I like this better than my electric guitar. Why did I go out and buy another guitar when I'm still learning how to play the dern thing? Could it be just a bad case of G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome)? Nope. (Well I guess in part...) I got it because I wanted something simple. I didn't want to have to hassle with guitar cables, amps, the million different settings on the amp etc. I just wanted a guitar that I could pick up and go with. This thing certainly can play loud, even with no amps or anything! I really like the way it sound and I'm truly enjoying playing with it. I also got a hard case with it. I figure I'll start bringing this acoustic guitar with my to my guitar class now. I was getting tired of getting drowned out by the other acoustics there. I never thought of myself as an acoustic guitar fan, but I gotta say I like this thing.

A few days ago, I wrote about my little experiment with trying to solve this problem I'd been having with really dry skin on my hands. I finally figured out that it was the hand soap causing the problem. I should have figured this out long ago. After all, the problem is only happening on my hands, and what do I put on my hands a lot every day? Soap! In retrospect it should have been obvious. Well, I'm now in day six of the experiment and I think I can safely say that the hand soap is the cause of the dry skin. My hands have not been in this good of shape in years! The soap is the cause and the dry skin is the effect. Now this is the way health is supposed to be done! You cure the cause of the problem, not the effect.

Some months ago, I had gone to the doctor and showed her my dry skin on my hands. She gave my hands only a passing glance, told me I had Eczema, and told me to buy a hand cream for my hands. This was utter bullshit. She only glanced at my hands for a few seconds at best and made a judgement based on that??? What she should have done is asked me some questions like, "What do you do with your hands?" "What kind of soaps do you use?" "Do you use a lot of chemicals in your work?" These kind of questions would indicate that she is looking for the cause of the problem. Instead she offers me a 'solution' to the effect - the dry skin. This does not solve the problem! When you give someone a pill (or hand cream) you are essentially masking the effect, but not curing the cause! That pill/cream is only going to 'cure' the problem as long as you keep using it. It is not a cure. It is simply hiding the problem. Had you spent the time to find out the cause of the problem, you could cure the cause of the problem without any pills/creams. I essentially cured myself of Eczema, not by using a cream, but by removing the cause of the problem. Then my body healed itself at an amazing rate. Doctors only know how to give you drugs. These drugs merely mask the effect, and don't cure the cause. This is not a cure!

People, if you have a health problem, the solution is not to take a pill or use a cream for the rest of your life. The solution is to find the cause of the problem. If you eliminate the cause of the problem, you eliminate the effect.

If you have migraines, do some reasearch into what causes migraines. Then do whatever you can to eliminate the cause of the migraines. If you do this, your migraines will be mysteriously 'cured'. You have just cured yourself. The alternative is to spend the rest of your life buying expensive migraine drugs that will only mask the migraines, not cure them. These drugs will also damage your health further.

If you have trouble sleeping, the solution is not to take an expensive drug every night for the rest of your life. The solution is to take an honest look at yourself. What do you eat and drink in the evenings that could cause you to have trouble sleeping? Try changing things around. Try not eating or drinking certain things for a few days before you go to bed. See if it helps. Experiment. If it's something you eat or drink, then by process of elimination, you'll eventually discover what it is. Then, once you figure out what it is you eat that causes you to have trouble sleeping, then just stop eating/drinking it! There, your sleeping problem is solved. You can throw out all those expensive damn pills and never need them again! Maybe you simply can't sleep because you aren't getting enough exercise. So try going to the gym in the evenings and using the treadmill for a while. Wear yourself out. Come home, take a nice relaxing shower and hit the bed. You'll be out like a light without any damn pills.

Cure the cause, not the effect.

Well, it turns out I didn't need to wait until Monday after all. I found out in guitar class today that we could sign up for the class today if we were already students in the class, so after class I went and re-signed up for the next 8 week class. Dave (the teacher) isn't getting rid of me yet!

The interesting guitar tidbit I learned a bit about today was arpeggios (or as the teacher called it - arpeggiating). I had always thought this was just several ascending notes played in sequence. It turns out, it's more of a 'slow chord'. When you play a chord you strum the strings on the guitar. Normally you do it fast and it makes what sounds like a single note. With an arpeggio, you are playing the same chord, but you are playing each string separately, with a slight pause between each string.

Now I *really* need to get an acoustic. I think I'm going to get one now and not wait until July like I originally planned. Hey Dave, are you up for a trip to MAE and Guitar Center this weekend? :)

Today I received in the mail the schedule for the next round of adult education classes that are being offered here in Broward County. Naturally, the first thing I did was look for my guitar class. It's there. The same time, the same day, and the same location as before. The first class of the new session begins June 1st. This means that I'll finish my current class, have a week off and then start over again with the same teacher at the same place for another 8 weeks. Registration opens Monday May 15th. I'll be there, money in hand, ready to sign up. This class is definately worth the money! This will be my second 'semester' of the class. I wonder if I should stay in the beginner's side of the class or the advanced side?

As you may know from some of my previous blogs, I've had a great interest in natural products lately. I've been eating 100% organic food almost exclusively for months now. I have to say that I love organic food. You never realize just how bad regular food is until you try the healthy stuff. I swear, I can taste the chemicals in non-organic food now! I've also been up to some other experiments lately when it comes to natural products...

Non-flouride toothpaste

The information I have been reading suggests that the flouride they put in the public water supply is actually a toxic, cancer-causing chemical. I was rather skeptical of this since everyone has always said that flouride is needed to strengthen teeth. Based on my experiment here, I'm beginning to believe that flouride is bad for you! For the last 6 months, I have been brushing my teeth with non-flouride toothpaste. 99% of all toothpastes contain flouride. It's not easy to find ones that don't. If you go to Whole Foods Market, you can find some. Make sure to read the labels carefully to find ones that don't contain flouride. After 6 months of 'denying' my teeth the flouride they supposedly require, I can honestly say, that my teeth are in better shape without the flouride. Back in my flouride toothpaste days, I regularly had bleeding gums. Now they never bleed. Obviously, this means that one problem has gone away, solely due to the switch to non-flouride toothpaste. When I changed the toothpaste, that's all I changed. I still use the same toothbrushes, still brush the same amount of times, still brush the same way etc. The toothpaste is all that's changed. And it's helped!

Shower Filter

I've also been taking showers using a shower filter for the last 6 months or so. Why? For the same reason I'm using non-flouride toothpaste - To eliminate toxins in the water. Flouride is a toxic chemical as is the chlorine they use to purify tap water. Would you drink a bottle of bleach? I think not. The chlorine in the water supply is obviously not as concentrated, but over time it adds up. Has this change helped me any? I'm not entirely sure, though I don't have any complaints. You can find show filters at Home Depot or Lowe's.

Distilled Water

I drink at least a gallon of distilled water each day. Often a lot more than that. Why? Distilled water is about the most pure water you can get. It's water and NOTHING else. Isn't mineral water just as good? No, since it has minerals and likely flouride and chlorine in it too. Same with tap water, same with 'drinking water'. The distilled water tastes a bit different from regular water. It takes some getting used to, but onc e you do, it tastes fine. Has this helped me? I don't know, but it certainly doesn't hurt.

All Natural Hand Soap

For the last two days, I've been trying to only use all natural hand soap whenever I wash my hands. This includes at work and at home. How do I handle it at work? I keep a bottle of hand sanitizer at my desk (which is just alcohol). I use the bathroom, rinse off my hands and then use the sanitizer rather than the soap. Why? There is a very good reason for this experiment. For a long while now, I've suffered from a really bad case of dry skin on my hands. It gets to the point where my hands get so dried out they crack and bleed! I could never figure out why this was happening... It was my one last annoying little health problems. I recently read that the sodium lauryl sulfate that is is most hand soaps (and deoderants, and shampoos) is known to cause skin irritation and dry skin. So I replaced the hand soap in my house, along with the shampoo and body soap, with all natural versions that do not contain sodium lauryl sulfate, to see if this helps. Granted I've only been doing this for two days, but I am already noticing that my hands aren't as dry and seem to be getting softer. This test may, in fact be working. I'm going to continue this and see how it goes.

No more milk

I drink very little milk these days. I used to drink two glasses of milk with my breakfast every morning, as well as a couple glasses every night. I was easily polishing off 2 gallons of milk a week. Now I buy 1 gallon and it's likely to expire before I drink it all. Why? I've read that drinking milk can be bad for your health, so I'm trying to live without it. These days I have a big glass of distilled water with my morning organic oatmeal and organic banana. Whether it's helping or not, I don't know, but I'm going to stick with it.

No more diet sodas

Diet sodas are extremely addicting. I am certainly addicted to them. I have read that diet sodas are extremely bad for your health and in fact contribute to making you fatter! For the last two days I've been avoiding diet sodas. I would go out somewhere during lunch every day specifically to buy a Diet Coke and drink it. Add to that the 1 or 2 cans of Diet Coke at work and the Diet Cokes in the evenings if I go out to dinner and I was drinking a lot of this stuff. I've managed to avoid them for two days straight. That's a big acomplishment for me. I'm going to do my best to maintain this. I am really beginning to notice the addiction to them based on my thoughts during the day. "Ok, it's lunch time. Where am I going to get my Diet Coke today?" "Hmm, 3pm, time for a Diet Coke." Not to mention that the free refills at most restaurants and fast food places means that whenever I eat out, I often go through at least two 32 ounce cups of the stuff. Bad, bad, bad Rick! These last two days it has been really tough fighting the addiction to this stuff. I have to conciously stop myself from going for the "Diet Coke" dispenser every time. I've replaced them with regular non-diet sodas lately. These are still tasty but don't have the addiction affect. Some of the stronger regular sodas, such as Mountain Dew tend to give me a stomach ache. This is another way to discourage myself from this stuff. If it makes me sick, I won't drink it! Maybe I should start up "Diet Sodas Anonymous"...

I will continue my experiments and let everyone know what happens.

My God, this stuff is starting to make sense!

Today was guitar class #6 (of 8). We have two classes left. The class next week is our last regular class. The final class is mostly just our 'final exam' and then we are done.

Today we spent the entire class discussing minor chords and seventh chords. We talked again about how to figure out the three notes in any chord. We talked about the differences between major chords, minor chords, and seventh chords. This was the first class where we spent a lot of time on anything other than major chords, so it was a lot of new stuff for me. New chord shapes, new concepts, etc. A lot to absorb. The thing that amazes me, is that I'm actually understanding this stuff (most of it)! I think I was ahead of a lot of the class in understanding things. This is likely due to the studying I did in the months before the class. However, despite the fact that I've been trying to learn this guitar for probably 9 months now, I had made very little progress. I understood single notes, but chords were 'Greek' to me. Now I'm understanding them! Not only am I understanding them, I can play some of them and I can even recognize some of the chords the teacher is playing just by watching his hands!

One thing the teacher had taught us was that a chord is just 3 or more notes played at the same time on the guitar. What had confused me, was that if a chord only has 3 notes, why were we hitting more than 3 strings on the guitar to play the chord? I had assumed if there were 3 notes, that would be 3 strings played (1 note per string). It turns out that even if you are playing four, or five or even 6 strings, you are still only playing those 3 notes. The difference is, you are playing some of those 3 notes in more than 1 place at a time on the guitar! You could be playing 6 strings, but only be playing 3 different notes because several of the notes are repeated in different locations on the guitar. We had been discussing seventh chords (which is a 4 note chord). I was comparing the chord charts between the major and the seventh chords, trying to spot that additional seventh note. I was getting confused though, because the fingering for the seventh chord (an A7) was fretting less strings than the major chord. How can I get a fourth note if I'm fretting 1 less string? I didn't get it. So, to figure it out, I went through all 21 of my chord diagrams (7 major, 7 minor, and 7 sevenths) and diagramed out which note is being played on each string. Once I did this, I started to see the pattern. It was true that only 3 notes were being played for the chord. I could see exactly which string was playing which note. I could also see where the extra strings came into the picture because I saw that the extra strings were in fact playing only the notes from the 3 notes in that chord. Once I got to diagramming the seventh chords, I figured out why fretting one less string caused me to gain a note. It was because taking my finger off that string caused a different note to be played on that string - the seventh! The 'missing' note that I lost my not fretting that string was still being played on one of the other strings! I have to learn to stop associating the fretting of a string with the playing of a note. Even if you are playing an open, non-fretted string, you are playing a note there. You gotta count that one. This diagraming of the notes was also very helpful in starting to help me remember what notes are where on the guitar. The more I did them, the faster I got at remembering what note was the open note on each string.

I'm really starting to get this stuff. Yeah, I have a long way to go, but the $60 I spent to sign up for this class was well worth the money!

Recently I discovered something really interesting out there on the wild and crazy Internet - Second Life. What is Second Life? It's a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) but it's quite different from every other game of this type that I've ever seen.

Most online RPGs follow the typical pattern of: Run around and kill the monsters. You then collect money, equipment and weapons from the dead monsters. You use the money to continually upgrade your equipment and weapons, change your appearance, gain new skills for fighting etc. Most are a Dungeons & Dragons type of theme (swords, armor, monsters. etc). Some follow a sci-fi theme (Star Wars Galaxies) or even a superhero theme (City of Heros). They are also a very social environment. You can log on and chat with others around the world.

Second Life (SL) is quite different. While it is a 3D world as are most MMORPGs, and you have an 'avatar' (your character in the game) that you control, that's where the similarites end. There are no monsters to kill (that I've seen). And while you can customize your character, it's not generally done through armor and the like. It's more a matter of customizing the appearance of your clothes and body. You can do all kinds of interesting things, such as completely customize your clothes (color, texture, shirt sleeve length, pants length), as well as your physical appearance (hair color, skin color, sex, etc.) What I find truly unique about SL is that what you can do in the game is limited only by your imagination. Most MMORPGs limit what you can do and how you can look to a series of 'canned' appearances and costumes. Not in SL. You can design your own costumes. You can even create entirely new outfits and textures and upload them. This allows you literally endless possibilities to make your avatar truly unique. You can even create a full body 'naked' suit that is anatomically correct, if such is your desire. (Thankfully, the adult areas are kept separate from the kids areas).

Other things you can do include include completely design your own objects in the game in every way. You can custom build 3D objects within the game, add custom textures, and even build custom scripts that control these objects. The possibilities are endless.

You can also buy land in the game and build a permanent home there. Since you have complete control customizing your home, you can create as elaborate a home as you like. It's all up to you. I've done some wandering around the game and there are some truly incredible user-designed areas there.

Second Life also literally has a real-life economy to it. You have money in the game called 'Lindens', but you can easily exchange between in-game Lindens and real-life cash! This means that you could conceivably create objects in the game, sell them to other players, then take your profits in Lindens and convert those profits in real money. You could literally earn a real-life living in the game!

How does this game make money? You can join for free (as I did) and wander around and chat with people. You also have a good deal of 'free' customizing of your appearance available to you for free. You an wander around, play games, probably find a job and earn enough money to survive. However, if you want to more than just the basics, you need to buy a subscription to the game. This subscription gives you the ability to buy land and build your home. I would imagine this would also give you the ability to buy supplies that you can use to build products to sell to other players in the game. You can then setup an in-game store and sell your wares to other players. I would expect that the makers of this game also get a cut of all money exchanges between Lindens and real money.

I don't play MMORPGs much, but I can certainly see how unique of a game this is, and how it stands to change how people think of MMORPGs in the future. Once you get used to being able to do literally anything in the game, would you ever go back to the other MMORPGs that limit what you can do? I think not.