LP induced musings

"God bless us everyone we were broken people living under loaded gun.
Now it can't be outfought, it can't outdone, it can't be outmatched, it can't be outrun."

It seems to me that a lot of us aren't too happy with our situation. Maybe it's immaturity, an unwillingness to accept our fate, or an awakening from all the lies we've been sold our whole lives. But I'm finding that I, like many people around me, are throwing into question the meaning of their existence and the path our environment has forced upon us. If not the meaning, then the consequences, whether they be personal or general in nature. Look at yourself, where you are, what you're doing?. Can you say that you are satisfied? Is it wisdom, faith, or the erosion of time that makes the older generation seem more content. I suppose we have a lot to be thankful for, but does that mean you should maintain the status quo?

What is happening to reason?

"God save us everyone we'll be burned inside the fires of a thousand suns, for the sins of our hands, the sins of our tongue, the sins of our father, the sins of our young."

People don't like to concede the obvious, particularly if it means that something fundamental in their lives must change. People are creatures of bad habit, happy to continue even the most ignorant and illogical behavior as long as it is comfortable and familiar. They will ride the pendulum to the very extreme, swinging further and further, laughing all the way, until the whole system crashes without ever even trying to understand why. Our history is rife with the consequences of mass ignorance.

The only question that remains is when the pendulum breaks again, will you be frightened or ecstatic?

Back to reality

Well, the Achilles injury this year was way worse than last year's ankle injury.  It cost me four months of running and forced me to do elliptical instead.  Tried a short run in June and the Achilles was still injured.  Finally, I timidly tried out a slow, short run today to test it out and so far no pain.

 

Going to re-institute a slow running program to ease back in to running starting today.  New goal for the year:  300 miles as 4 months of downtime cost me roughly 200 miles of running this year.

 

Wish me luck!

 

Progress and info to date shown below:

Testing Observation / Epic Fail

Wow. That's all I can say. Wow.

Applicable Einstein quote:

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"

Hiralious.

A Copy of a Copy of a Copy

With insomnia, everything becomes a copy of a copy of a copy.

Can't sleep tonight. Just like many nights these days. Instead of laying in the bed staring at the ceiling, I decided to head downstairs and watch Fight Club instead of worrying about my nice neat flaming little shit. I had found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.

Unfortunately I am unable to lose all hope. To let that which does not matter truly slide. Don't know why. For all intensive purposes there should be no hope. Global destabilization in almost every respect. No one willing or able to do anything about it. All trapped as white collar slaves working jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need. The things you own end up owning you.

When the earthquake woke me up the other morning, at first I thought either a massive explosion went off miles away or that several tanks were rolling down the street. I found myself somewhat disappointed that it turned out to be just a mild seismic event, and that in fact civilization had not ended abruptly at 5:06 a.m. on July 16, 2010 and I wouldn't be spending what would have been my workday engaging armored infantry or starring in a real-life version of Fallout 3.

Maybe I should take a Tylenol PM. After all, there's another day of work to look forward to tomorrow. . . .

New lunch item

New Lunch item, the beefcake mocha: Cup of coffee, dash of milk, dash of sugar, and two scoops of chocolate whey protein.

Mmmmm. Delicious!

Love the Benefits

Ahhhhhhhhhh . . . . . . . . . 3 weeks taken off total this year so far.

100 hours to go minimum. Plus the comp and credit time already and still-to-be earned.

Refuse to donate leave, so I'm taking the annual leave as I earn it to keep my balance at 240.

Two ten hour days per pay period and the rest nines makes for every Friday off.

Cake!

New York

I only have one thing to say about New York . . . .

"You tell Bruce Leroy: Now he has to fight me!"

No T Like OT!

New assignments came out at work. Before I had three Chapters out of 19. Now I have 5, including:

Chapter 4: Reactor
Chapter 6: Engineered Safety Functions
Chapter 15: Accident Analysis
Chapter 17: Quality Assurance
Chapter 19: Severe Accident Analysis and Probabilistic Risk Assessment

Also, assigned as a backup for one of the COL applications. Have a rotation assigned to me full time starting next month.

Boss said to let him know if I'm drowning. Only thing I plan to drown myself in is OT!

Fun sanitized email thread

A fun thread from today . . . .

-----Original Message-----
From: Person 3
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 10:27AM
To: Person 2, Person 1, Person 4, Person 5
Subject: RE: I am requesting your feedback by Monday 4/19/2010

I concede that it is indeed a matter of scale, and that each individual has to scale it to suit their own needs.

Personally, I find it not only liberating, but in fact necessary to extend meaning to cosmic proportions, thereby making my own experiences go to zero in the equation in order to avoid howling madness. After all, depression is a medical term for seeing what is actually there. Look too closely and who knows where it will take you.

I suppose we've put more thought into this than Franklin-Covey originally intended. But thought is not their strong suit: they are business majors.

One thing is certain: Fridays rock.


-----Original Message-----
From: Person 2
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 10:06AM
To: Person 1, Person 3, Person 4, Person 5
Subject: RE: I am requesting your feedback by Monday 4/19/2010

Ok, so I assumed we were talking about an individual's sense of meaning in his/her own life, as opposed to the one, the only, "Meaning of Life" that I agree is a ridiculous concept, so much that it didn't even occur to me.

I do take issue with the pursuit of meaning (lower case!) being a fool's errand. There are those of us that need the crutch of some meaning to function in life. If you like who you are or you can weather life's storms without depression, then sure, you don't need the crutch and I can understand that would be liberating.


-----Original Message-----
From: Person 1
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 9:42AM
To: Person 2, Person 3, Person 4, Person 5
Subject: RE: I am requesting your feedback by Monday 4/19/2010

I took the question with an "or" in mind. And the majority of people do like to think there is meaning to life, and some even try to find it. Whatever works for them.

I have come to the conclusion that there is no real meaning to life. Perhaps a purpose, but no meaning. And liberating is a great way to describe the resulting feeling. Think of yourself as a tree. Who knows, after life has left your body you may be useful.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Person 3 Date: Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 9:35 AM
Subject: RE: I am requesting your feedback by Monday 4/19/2010
To: Person 2, Person 1
Cc: Person 4, Person 5


By your own admission, "Life has meaning" is not a logical progression from "Person 2 finds meaning in life." In addition, does the pursuit of pleasure qualify as having "meaning." If so, on what scale? And if being alive is good, that doesn't make it meaningful. The problem is, the pursuit of pleasure fits in with the enjoyment portion of the question, not the meaning part.

As I just conveyed to Person 1, I would have no problem with the question if it were re-worded to say "Takes time to find enjoyment OR meaning in life." That way one can find enjoyment in life and not necessarily find meaning. Conversely, someone can spend their life trying to find meaning, which is a fool's errand, and not find enjoyment. To suggest that the two are inseparable is pure hubris.

As for your last question, I am perfectly comfortable with the fact that my life nor anyone else's has any meaning whatsoever according to scale. And I don't see why people find this fact depressing either. If anything, it should be liberating.

-----Original Message-----
From: Person 2
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 9:18 AM
To: Person 3, Person 1
Cc: Person 4, Person 5

Subject: RE: I am requesting your feedback by Monday, 4/19/2010

Alright Person 2, lets do this.

"Life has no meaning" is not a logical progression from "Person 2 finds no meaning in life". The meaning in my life is the pursuit of pleasure. Granted, I'm not very good at it, but the pursuit keeps me alive. Why is being alive a good thing? I'm not sure, any help from the peanut gallery?

What is your excuse for continuing to live, if life has no meaning?

-----Original Message-----
From: Person 3
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 6:37
To: Person 1
Cc: Person 2, Person 4, Person 5
Subject: RE: I am requesting your feedback by Monday, 4/19/2010

I have a question on one of the ratings:

74.Takes time to find enjoyment and meaning in life.

How does one take time to find meaning in something that is so blatantly devoid of meaning? Unless, of course, the subject is prone to musing (wasting time).

I guess you can spend your whole life looking for something that isn't there . . .

-----Original Message-----
From: Person 1

Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 4:57 PM
To: Person 2, Person 3, Person 4, Person 5, and other non-consequential Persons
Subject: I am requesting your feedback by Monday, 4/19/2010

All,

Next week I will be participating in FranklinCovey's 7 Habits workshop.

Please help me by taking 10 - 15 minutes to give me your honest assessment of my personal effectiveness. To participate, copy and paste the Web address below into your Web browser and respond to the questionnaire.

Questionnaire Web Address: [WEB LINK DELETED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT]

Thank you for your time.

v/r,
Person 1

2010 on the move

Getting started on 2010 running. Been running 10 days straight. Gotta keep it up until I reach the weight goal of 225. Shown on the graph is the current progress, overlay of last year's actual mileage as a comparison, and a current trendline if I can keep the mileage up. As long as I hit 650 I'll be happy.

Running Results - 2009

To answer inquiries, I reached 502 miles running distance for calendar year 2009 on December 31, 2009. This year I hope to make 650, but I’ll be satisfied with another 500. I also hop to drop a lot more trees this year and make that paper.