Category Archives: Hobbies

Changing interests

August 10, 2015 6:46 AM , Leave a Comment ,

My remodeling caper precipitated a rare burst of cleaning and consolidation on my part.  Amazing how much “stuff” you accumulate in a couple of decades without even trying.

I’m going through a bunch of boxes and realizing that I’ve picked up more than my fair share of statements, and addenda, and advertising, and plane ticket receipts, and pay stubs, and who knows what else.

“throw away your bank statements and keep love letters” goes a line from a popular advice column.  Ain’t that the truth?  My paper shredder is getting a workout.

I get past the miscellaneous papers layer and get into some books and manuals.  College textbooks that I thought would help me in my post collegiate career, magazines I saved from 20 years ago because they had one interesting article.  Then I find my engineering notebooks.

Among other things I had been in engineering school for a year.  Aerospace Engineering to be exact.  I was going to be a rocket scientist.  This was part of my “flying” phase that I passed through during my teens.  I was all about airplanes.  I wanted to fly them, I wanted to build them, I wanted to do nothing but talk planes all day and night.

I would go to the library and pore over the latest copy of “Jane’s All the world’s aircraft” and read and re-read every section till I memorized the vital statistics of every plane I saw.  I would hang around the engineering building and talk rockets with professors all the time.  My life was aerospace engineering.

But after a year I found that I was really not cut out to be a pilot or an engineer.  My eyes weren’t up to snuff to be a fighter pilot or a test pilot.  My mathematical ability wasn’t up to the advanced calculus required for the theoretical maths necessary for the latest air designs.

So after my freshman year I quit engineering school and moved over to the geosciences and finally found my way into geography.  A big change, I know.  But it felt right and I can’t say that I regretted the decision.

I’ve never looked back or longed to go back to that career.  I’ve kept these books and airplane plans mainly due to inertia.  They’ve followed me round from place to place and survived past cullings.  Every time I do one of these ‘cleanings’, one or more items from my old life go into the trash.  Most if not all of it will end up in the garbage this time.

Don’t get me wrong.  I enjoyed my time as an engineer.  If I would have had the skill to make a go of it I would have been an engineer or a pilot right now and maybe I wouldn’t be writing this blog.

I’ve broken away from several other interests over the year and I don’t regret letting go of them.  At some point you have to let go of the last vestiges of that old life to make room for the new.

Besides which, these are “things”, physical things.  They’re not that important.  That advice is correct.  Throw away those old bank statements (things) and keep the love letters (friends and family).  With luck and some care I have maybe another forty of fifty years of life left.

I have enough time to get more things, I can develop more interests, I can accumulate the detritus of life all over again.  The people though.  Those I intend to keep.

 

Posted in: aging, attitude, hobbies, life in general

relax

March 27, 2015 6:08 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been running full tilt this year.  Been keeping busy as much as possible and trying to get things done and trying out as many new activities as I can in my spare time.

I’ve been programming my spare time, mainly the weekends, for the last few months and I’ve been able to see and do a lot of cool and fun stuff these few months.

But inevitably you are going to get a weekend that you’re not going to have anything to do.  Now to clarify, I always have some chore or some thing to accomplish but I generally have more spare time on the weekends, generally in the evenings, to do something and I’ve been putting that to good use.

Like I said however, you’re going to roll into one of those weekends where either nothing appeals to you particularly, or the timing doesn’t work out, or you just don’t feel like doing anything in particular.

Unprogrammed time.  It happens.  In a way it’s a good thing.  Just a chance to let things settle down and let your mind relax.  We all need that sort of weekend from time to time.  At first I was a bit anxious about it as I thought to myself “come on, I have to have some “thing” to do”

But really this is just one weekend out of hundreds.  Maybe this will give me a chance to reflect, to take turn off the smart phone and just think, or at the very least just hit the reset button on my mind and start fresh on Monday morning.

Putting pressure on myself to have something to do is good in most cases but becoming fixated on that notion is not.  Using this time to really relax is a gift I should embrace.

 

Posted in: attitude, habits, hobbies, life in general, plans, rest, thought

Online lives – Everquest

September 9, 2013 8:41 PM , Leave a Comment ,

So there we “were”.  My girlfriend and I doing the same old thing on a Friday night.  Hanging out in greater faydark killing orcs in Everquest.  We had 2 low-level players and weren’t really advancing in the game.  She got bored (as she often did) and suggested we make human characters.

We decided on Freeport as our home city and she made a Bard and I made a Cleric.  I figured these characters would last maybe a week before she got bored and deleted the new character (I was right in her case).  I was playing and watching Adult swim on the cartoon network at the same time and the “Brack show” was on.  So I called my new character Brackie since I figured this was going to be a short-term character and that the name wouldn’t be important.

As I had some money and some experience I was able to outfit the new character better than most and he was soon zooming up the levels.  What’s more I found that healers were in wide demand.  In a game that’s very proactive and promotes aggressive playing, players that are willing to sit back and play support roles are extremely sought after.  I could get into any group I wanted and I soon was accepted into a guild (a player club).

I was soon raiding.  Raids are large encounters where sometimes as many as 72 people gather together to do a multi hour adventure.  These raids require special tactics and planning.  I was the senior most healer in the guild and got assigned the task of developing our healing strategies.  I turned to the healing chain.

In the ultimate encounter of a raid the toughest meanest fighter takes on the boss monster.  All the other warriors take up supporting roles while the healers in the raid form the chain.  A single healer would be overwhelmed by the encounter but a whole host of healers working in concert could sustain that one lone fighter.  So I organized our chain of healers.  One healer would heal and then the next and the next.  We kept the chain going on a nice steady pace.  Casting spells with machine like precision.  Usually it might last 5 or 10 minutes.  One encounter lasted a full hour.  Over time we got to be pretty good at this and we attracted players due to our reputation.

Still amazes me how much time and effort I invested into all of this.  How involved the community was in the whole game.  I mean we had online worldwide rankings!  Items in the game (computer files) could be sold in the real world for real world money.  People would dress up as their characters.  We had our own language of online terms that we could use easily and freely with each other.

Eventually all good things come to an end.  That character that I was going to throw away in a week lasted me nearly five years.  I had reached the ultimate level (at that time) that was allowed in the game.  His equipment was the best and we had beaten all the boss monsters available.  New expansions were coming out and new content and adventures but I felt that I had accomplished what I set out to do with that character.

Reluctantly I pulled the plug on that chapter of my online life.  I had a wonderful time but I felt that I had new places to visit and new experiences to be explored.

Posted in: games, hobbies, internet

people and their toys

June 2, 2013 1:01 PM , Leave a Comment ,

You always learn something new about your parents.

The other day my dad related that he had been a “motor head” back in the ’50s.  Hard to believe that he and some of his friends had scrounged an old car from the junk yard and souped it up to make a hot rod.  And to make it cooler they did it in California!  I never imagined.  1950’s, in California, and hot rods.  Wow!

But back to the post in question, I suppose that everyone has their little hobbies or passions whether it be cars, boats, cooking, gardening, or in my case, computers.

I went through the phase about a decade ago.  I peeked through websites, magazines, and talked to people and decided to build my own computer.  You could of course custom order a machine from a website but it’s not really the same.

Manufacturers have to make deals for the most cost effective parts, they have profit margins to consider but most of all they’re designing for the masses.  Designs that are too skewed in one direction won’t sell so they limit the customization choices.

I picked out a case, the motherboard, a CPU, the power supply, the cables, and then put in the video card, hard drive, DVD drive, and LAN card.

I downloaded a BIOS off the net, and tinkered for days.  Gave up a couple of times, restarted, got some advice but in about 2 weeks it was up and running.

It was no world beater and really had no huge advantage over other machines.  So why make it?  I can’t say really.  Maybe it’s the artistic yearning to express myself made manifest?  It was a decent machine that ran for about three years.  Finally ended up donating it.  Sadly I came back to that charity shop and found that they had scrapped it for parts since it wasn’t a name brand.

I may do it once again or maybe not.  Mainly I did it that one time for the feeling that I could do it.

Posted in: hobbies