9:09AM. I binged last night on snack food. Ate a whole bag of Chex mix, had a large handful of dried mango, two large handfuls of soy nuts, a handful of almonds, and a can of olives.

I think I stayed up until 3AM. I would have stayed up later had I not thought about the need to wake up at around 9 to walk the mail to the mailbox. Oh shit, did I forget to flip up the mailbox flag? I’m half awake, I don’t know if i remembered to do that.

I was thinking of ending the night by visiting iwara.tv. I actually had the discipline for once to not go there. I watched Kingsmen last night. I thought it was supposed to be a serious movie about the Secret Service, but instead it was a fast paced action flick with exploding heads. They had an exploding head scene set to some energetic classical song. They tried to make it less gruesome by adding all sorts of patriotic colors like red, white and blue, along with adding this mushroom cloud effect as if every head exploding was a firework. I didn’t buy the humor, I was just grossed out.

That movie was incredibly violent. So many people got impaled by shit. So many people got shot in the face.

Kingsmen was paced for the modern attention span, and I really disliked that about the movie. There was little meaningful character development, low regard for setting ambiance, and every other scene was so painfully obvious that the actors were on a blue screen sound stage.

I might be able to forget about Kingsmen, if not for the exploding heads and other excessive violence. The acting was pretty good by all parties, but there were so many movie cliches, over the top unrealistic shit, and endless melodrama for this movie to earn my full respect or attention.

I walked away during several scenes because it was so obvious what was happening. The “good guy” is doing some over the top fighting maneuvers and is going to save the day in just the nick of time. I walked away and got a snack. I came back to the predicted outcome.

Kingsmen is just another hollywood action flick, with the common reinforcing social ideals baked into the cake. The social ideas being reinforced here are that 1) secret military operations are necessary and good. 2) Respect authority. 3) Westboro baptist church members are less than human and deserve to die.

I say that last one tongue in cheek, but there is a point to be made there. Guess what? Westboro baptist church changed their ways. They could have started out as a racist, bigoted group, but they are not a lost cause and violence against them is not warranted. Just look at Daryl Davis and the work he has done at convincing countless KKK members to give up their robes and their position in the klan. Daryl simply became their friends, and dispelled their prejudices about black people.

It’s easy to wish death on certain groups of people. In Kingsmen, a whole congregation of a hateful church group gets slaughtered, and it’s choreography, pacing and soundtrack seem to suggest that the scene is fun. People violently and graphically killing each other because they’re a hate group is supposed to be enjoyable! No, I did not enjoy that. That was simply gruesome.

By the way, if a Kingsman is so highly trained as is the case in the film, he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger on his own empty gun. He would have counted his bullets as he shot them, and known exactly when he needed to reload.

This is why I can’t watch movies. I break them apart, analyze and compare them.

Why was anyone mad enough to get an implant? That part was just glossed over. The only benefit I saw from them was that the overlord could push the button to explode everybody’s head. There was no explanation on why people would even want to do such a thing.

Goddamn, the more I think about it, the more I hate it.

OK then, time to think of something else.

I came up with an idea for my eBay store. Because I’m able to have 50,000 items listed until the end of April, I thought it would be a good idea to export my inventory to Woocommerce before my allowed inventory gets shrunk back to 1000. This way, I can keep my best inventory live on eBay, and have a reserve of inventory ready to shuffle back to eBay as items go out the door.

It’ll make relisting items much easier in the future, if it means that it’s as simple as looking up the item in my woocommerce store, and publishing to eBay. The alternative is to have to repeat all the data entry every time I want to put a card back on eBay.

I don’t have a woocommerce store, but I have in the past. Twice, actually, this blog had a built-in woocommerce webstore. I just didn’t get enough use out of it, and my audience doesn’t seem large or diverse enough to want to buy items from my shop.

I had some good deals in there! 100x Neopixel clones $15 with free shipping, for example. I don’t think anybody in the target market saw it, is all.

Actually, I think it’s probably a bad idea to pin on a card store to this blog. I think the right move to make would be to set up a separate website for just the store. A grimtech/weebtech store doesn’t make any sense. I need good branding, or nobody is going to trust it!

I’m envisioning it now. A large SpongebobThriftPants at the top left, with a colourful blue sea water background and sandy footer. White boxes feature the items for sale, and there’s a card system/checkout accepting a variety of payments. Paypal, Credit Cards via Stripe, and Bitcoin!

I could do what buckscardshop does, and send a little advertisement with every eBay package which advertises the web store.

I’ll need to find a really solid eBay integration plugin. Something with flawless import/export, and synchronized listing functionality. By that I mean if an item sells on eBay, the item is immediately removed from the web store.

And of course, web store users get a discount for supporting the store directly! Wait a minute, I’m not sure that makes sense. There would be no eBay fees for direct webstore payments, but I still have an overhead and expenses in operating the webstore. I’m not sure discounts make sense, as I’ll have to pay server and software license fees to keep it running.

Well, it’s a nice dream. I’ll keep thinking about that one. I have a month before I have to thin out my eBay inventory count, so that’ll be the time when I make the decision on how I’ll proceed.

I’m feeling a bunch of strange pains in my body. Like the hairs in the back of my head are hurting. I think I’m just not well rested, and my body is wigging out. I think right now might be the perfect opportunity to go back to sleeeeeeeeeeeeep… Zzz…

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I slept until 3PM. It’s amazing how I woke up at 3PM, sharp. I had some crazy dreams. None of them made any sense so I don’t even want to get into it. I’ll give a quick summary though. The first one I fell in love with a girl who only loved me for my money. The second one I was in a house of a bunch of people who were doing renovations on an apartment, but their friend, the apartment owner was not home. The renovators tripped the alarm system and the police department comes on over the loudspeaker. “Homeowner, are you here in your flat?”

The renovators thought it was a joke by the apartment owner who was a total techie. They just kept working but I knew better. The police were about to raid the apartment and arrest everyone so I went and hid in a room that nobody would find me. It was a UK flat with UK police. Thanks for the shitty dream, Kingsman.

The third dream was most interesting, but I completely lost it. Strange how that works. I was just thinking about how dreams have changed for me. A year ago I would have almost no dreams. A big difference in my life between then and now is that I get daily exercise now. I think that’s all it is! Now when someone I know tells me, “I don’t have dreams.” My follow up question is going to be, “do you exercise?”

I think exercise is the reason why I’ve been dreaming so often. I did stretches and strength training yesterday. 10 laps instead of 20, and some yoga or burpees or tree hanging every lap.

I say tree hanging and I think of a noose. Not that kind of hanging! I just found a good sturdy branch which is about 2 meters above my head. I go on my tippie toes and grab a hold of it, then relax my head back and I just hang for as long as I can. It feels good on my shoulders and my neck.

I can’t hold on for very long. My grip strength is pretty low. I remember when I worked for a landscaping company and my grip was really starting to improve. My hands would ache just about every day because of all the gripping that I had to do in a day. Even running a snowblower all day was enough to really grow my hand muscles.

Fuck that job though. I am starting to figure out why I don’t like any job I try.

Hell is other people

Scott Garner

I read that quote in a headline of a Hacker News article. I was hoping it was a rant about social interaction. I guess it kind of was, but it wasn’t what I was expecting.

Hell is Other People is a web app for distancing yourself from your friends using FourSquare API.

I watched the video right now where the creator, Scott Garner tried it out and avoided his friends. It only works if your friends check in via FourSquare. I think he could have accomplished the same thing had he just used Snapchat!

Anyway, I’m going to redefine, “Hell is other people.”

Working with other people is hell. People get emotional and justify their anger because they’re the boss. I had a boss in landscaping who would get angry and throw her anger into her work. She’d get impatient that I wasn’t fast enough to move a wheelbarrow into position, and she’d yank it out of my hands and put it where she wanted. She was bad at communicating her needs and she would become frustrated at other workers who didn’t fulfil her unspoken requests.

I can think of an example of a mean person at almost every job I’ve been in. A lot of people don’t like their jobs, and they are grumpy to have to spend all their time doing them. It makes working with those people difficult, and I just want to avoid them rather than collaborate with them.

Right now we’re in an economic crisis due to COVID-19. A part of me wants a complete collapse, to the point where a restructuring and rebuild of society has to occur. In that rebuilding, I would hope that people approach work with a newfound look at what’s important. I would hope that people end up happier because they put their work efforts into the things they love, not the things that make them money.

I don’t even know how that would make sense. I suppose what I want is a collapse of government entities which restrict small businesses from opening or operating. You want to be a small business owner? Congratulations, you’re a small business owner. No permits, taxes, regulations, or licenses. Simply find an unfulfilled role in the community, and provide a service which fulfills the need.

I’d like to see krony capitalism collapse, and in it’s place, the restoration of free market capitalism. No bailouts for companies who deserve to fail, no tax breaks for the wealthy, no regulation which stifles competition, no fucking patents. All bureaucracy gets a complete wipe, because nobody can make money anymore being that kind of stooge.

Wishful thinking indeed. Instead, what I foresee happening is trillions of dollars being allocated to economic stimulus. Another drip of morphine to keep the financial failure that is the USA going for another year. That’s going to solve some short term shit, but it’s only going to exacerbate the bankruptcy of the country. China is going to own the USA in the future, I’m fairly certain of it.

All dollars are debt at this point. The only thing stopping USA bankruptcy right now is the Military Industrial Complex. At some point, I think China is going to overcome even that, and make a legitimate claim that the USA is overdue, past due, and repossession is going to take place.

Right now, the economy is weak, and China could make a move right now. Maybe they released COVID-19 as the conspiracies go. Maybe they have the vaccine already. Maybe their losses were intentional and they’re waiting for peak infection to occur in the USA before they invade. Maybe their soldiers are immune already, and they’re preparing for a strike. The Chinese media is already blaming the USA for creating the virus. This could just be some propaganda created to incite hate in the population, and ease the transition to war.

An invasion during a mass pandemic is a perfect time. US citizens and soldiers would start to fight back. Social distancing would lessen in their organizing, and large numbers of them would end up getting sick and can no longer fight. Meanwhile, Chinese soldiers invade, vaccinated, and wreak havoc on the cities, knocking out infrastructure and capturing key geopolitical points.

It’s so perfect, it’s terrifying. Meanwhile, anti-gun lefties are flocking to gun stores for a means to protect themselves. For them, it must be a disgusting wake up call.

I wonder how this will play out? Am I completely wrong? Am I a little correct? Will China invade in my lifetime, or is this an event which will take years and years to come to fruition?

When will the USA fail?

Just like how my body will fail me someday, and I will die, there is an answer to the above question. I’m cynical for hoping it is sooner rather than later, because I think there are so many problems with people’s philosophies and how government works. The philosophies where people ask for government to solve problems for them is ridiculous. Government is by nature inefficient and bureaucratic. Just look at SpaceX vs. NASA. SpaceX is a private corporation who moves fast and breaks things. NASA is a bureaucratic bohemoth, which spends mountains of money wastefully, and moves so slowly that only a few projects reach completion in a person’s lifetime.

Government is the same way, and there’s always regulators trying to steer the outcome, change plans, refocus the goals, blah blah blah. Government solves shit so poorly, but people are insane and want the derelict process to continue. Meanwhile, an endless argument carries on as all parties involved want to do something different.

My proposed solution is companies without government. Accountability comes in the form of customers who can bankrupt a misbehaving corporation. Police force corrupt? Stop sending your checks to that police force, and hire a new one.

Monopoly formed? Congratulations, you’re back to government. Time to boycott or move.

I should boycott or move right now. I don’t like how Washington operates. Idaho has been calling my name for some time now.

I think I just wrote this whole schpeel because I’m angry. I’m being all political (antipolitical?) because I’m scared. I have gone against my personal code by arguing politics. I don’t appreciate politics, I appreciate engineers who work at solving problems. Now I feel guilty.

I hope nothing plays out like I wrote it, but I guess I’m trying to mentally prepare for it it does.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Affirmations and gratefulness then I’m out.

15. Today, I will celebrate me.
16. I matter.
17. I can find peace through prayer and meditation.

I’m grateful for the peace and prosperity that I live in. I’m grateful for this because I can follow my dreams of being a web developer, I can eat well, and I have lots of options for peaceful activities to engage in.

I’m grateful for marijuana. I think I would partake more often if I were not living with my religiously oriented parents. All I can safely do right now is use tinctures to get high, and even then there’s a risk of getting busted. I just don’t get high at all right now. It’s expensive anyway, and I can’t afford that. I appreciate marijuana because it is simply a brain relaxant. The myths surrounding marijuana are unfortunately unfounded and based on superstition, corporate propaganda, and enforced stereotypes of minority smokers. In actuallity, Marijuana is incredibly safe, moreso than alcohol, has incredible health benefits and great medicinal roles.

For example, marijuana is a much safer alternative to prescription drug Hydroxyzine. I’ve had Hydroxyzine and I can say that it is a terrible drug, with an intoxicating effect, increased muscle tension awareness, and a hangover effect. Marijuana gives a similar effect but relaxes my muscles, and doesn’t leave me hung over the next day. Marijuana is so much better and can fulfil the same role, and is just a plant that grows naturally!

That was a fun tangent to talk about.

I’m grateful for online maps which show me where things are and help me get around town. These maps help me get where I’m going in less time, and they teach me a lot about the neighborhoods, alternate routes, and sights worth seeing.