Category: random

Things I found at my parent’s house: TMNT part 1

I spent the winter holidays at my parent’s house.  This is the house I grew up in and it still has quite a few of my things lying around; stowed away in boxes piled up in closets and the garage.

Every time I visit I go through a little more of it.  In 2009 I went through about ten boxes of books and ended up giving away more than half of them.  Last year I finished going through the books and “culled the herd” down to about a box of them.  (Which will be highlighted in future post, maybe?)  I also went through some of the toys from my youth that had managed to stick around this long and I found quite a few Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I believe all of these are first runs of the toys, though I’m not sure.  I never was too concerned about the collectibility or resale value of my toys.  I got them to play with them!  Beyond these figures I’m pretty sure there is still a box or so out in my parents garage that has the Blimp and the Party wagon in it.

Wow, you can really notice the dust with the flash on.  These things have been in boxes for over 15 years or so, I think.  They’re all in remarkably good condition though!  All the limbs are movable and the accessories still seem to be in good condition.  I thought with the heat int he desert they would have dried out and crumbled a little more.  Strangest thing I’ve noticed so far?  Several of the toys have a sticky residue from when they were covered in ooze?!

Next time:  Vidja Games!

Well the Dogs were proud of themselves…

The look so sweet and harmless...

We spent Christmas at my parent’s house in southern California.  D at the last minute decided she needed to get me more presents and had Amazon ship out a package to their house that was set to arrive the day after we arrived.

The package had yet to arrive at 6 PM which considering it was the holiday wasn’t that big of a surprise.  Neither D nor I gave it much thought and went out with the family.  Later that night when we get back and I’m walking into the yard after opening the gate I notice more than the usual assortment of gutted toys and old clothing…  After catching a glimpse of a shred of manilla envelope it hits D and I, “The Package!”  We yell together.

After rooting around the yard in the dark I was able to collect what was left of my christmas gift… It wasn’t much:

I don't think it's watchable...

Thankfully Amazon is awesome and sent out a new copy right away; a copy that is now sitting whole and happy on my DVD shelf.

I still don’t know why the UPS guy thought it was a good idea to throw a tiny package over my parent’s wall into yapping jaws of three puppies…  Isn’t this the exact situation they get our phone numbers for?

Making Goals You Can Meet

 

Common resolutions

 

This post was supposed to go up two weeks ago, but life has a way of driving you 500+ miles away from your home and dropping you in the middle of “the Happiest Place on Earth” during the “Busiest Time of the Year” (more on that later.)  In the last post I reviewed my goals for 2010, in this post I will be talking about what I learned from making goals and then trying to spend a year accomplishing them.

1.  You have to care about the goal – If you are mentally and emotionally invested in the goal you’ll never meet it.  This was the problem with my skydiving and SCUBA license goals.  These are two things that would be fun to do but they were really just whims, things I’d like to do but have no real reason or purpose behind doing them.

2.  Make goals that can be done with others – Doing things on your own is hard, especially when the task is difficult.  Surrounding yourself with other people makes it easier, they can provide encouragement, advice, support, someone to compete with, etc.  Humans are naturally social (yes, even nerds need occasional human interaction) and harnessing that in-born desire is a great way to insure you meet your goals.  Better yet let those around you know this is a goal and they’ll be sure to provide even more help!

3. Make goals that make sense for tomorrow, not today or yesterday – Do you know where you are going as a person?  What are your professional aspirations?  What do you do in your spare time?  Who are you hanging out with?  These might not seem like important questions when it comes to goal making but they are!  Two of my goals last year (Painting armies and making a gaming table)  didn’t happen because the gaming group I used to spend a great deal of time with split up and my tabletop wargaming came to a dead halt.  With no one to game with there wasn’t any incentive to spend my limited free time painting tiny metal soldiers.  I knew that before the goal was made, but felt guilty having these things lying around and not using them.  That is a perfect example for planning goals for yesterday instead of tomorrow.

4. Make goals that scale –  New Year’s resolutions or goals are supposed to be life altering acts of improvement.  Not your to-do list for the first month of January.  You can make said goals but there isn’t much of a point putting them on a list.  A goal to get in shape, while on everyone’s list, is perfect as a year-long goal.  It scales nicely and is easily broken down into steps.

And that is it.  If your goals/resolutions follow these four guidelines you (and I) should find meeting your goals easier than you thought.  It goes without saying that it won’t be easy to change your life, just easier than it would have been before you read this =P

Next:  My goals for 2011

Where do we go from here?

I missed out on the Space Race.  From all accounts though it was an amazing time to be alive.  The Russian launch of Sputnik into space revitalized American research and development and finally put Americans on the moon and created a permanently manned space station that orbits the planet (I was there for that part.)  It seems though that the drive to put a man on a moon and one day other planets as well as spent itself.  Despite making plans as early as the 1950s to put a human on Mars, nothing has come of it.

There of course has been a lot of talk.  The President of the United States is even talking about a modern “Sputnik Moment.”  A call for re-training and educating the Americans to deal with an economy that has moved beyond the twentieth century is a good thing and is greatly needed in our country.  I doubt though that NASA and other such pursuits are not going to be the beneficiaries as they were of the first “Sputnik moment.”  United States interest in the stars has steadily been declining, as has funding for such missions.  In fact, one can argue that government funding for Science has been under attack since the Reagan administration, the latest example being Congressman Cantor’s idea to have non-experts cut science grants they don’t understand (or don’t agree with, or any ol’ reason.)

A manned mission of Mars seems to be a pipe dream at this point.  But, only for Americans.  China, Russia and India have announced plans to send probes to the red planet, Russia has discussed it since the 50s and India is actively calling for a joint international mission.  Despite the President’s call for NASA to pursue a manned mission to Mars the agency doesn’t have any sort of plans for such a mission (their plans go beyond 2020 but fail to mention any manned missions.)

The debate recently heated up though when Paul Davies of Arizona State University and Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University published a paper advocating a one-way trip for astronauts to Mars.  They aren’t advocating a suicide mission but instead the beginning of a permanent presence on the planet.  This is exciting, even more exciting is to know that after the paper was published the authors in-boxes began to fill with people volunteering for the mission.  What is lacking though isn’t the human spirit and will, it is the political will to make anything happen.

What has happened to Americans?  When did we begin to dream small?

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