sunday

I had this conversation the other day with a coworker about people being dispensable. He said that people are not, while I say people are. I don’t exactly remember how the conversation started, or whether we were talking about people or friends in specific, but I said I would explain my reasoning once I figured it out.

Yesterday, the conversation finally came to the point of arguing the semantics of people being “necessary” and “important,” which he thinks are the same. Mikey, I’m going to have to disagree with you. First, you can’t call them one and the same, they don’t mean the same thing; they’re in separate categories, describing different things. Dictionary.com says that need means something that is required or wanted. To need something is something you can’t live without, sometimes stemming from feelings and emotions. On the other hand, important means to affect the course of events or nature of things. It describes priority, it stems from logic and how you organize things. The only way they are in common is that one is a cause and the other an effect; one describes a “what,” the other describes a “how.” The only thing that anyone really needs in this world is food, water, and air.

Everyone at some point in their life has been emotionally hurt by someone else. That’s life. I don’t say people are indispensable to protect myself from being hurt, in fact I would say I’m quite the opposite. But the fact is that people come and go in our lives and it’s not how many friends we have (life is not a popularity contest, I don’t think at least…), but it’s how they affect us.

I think the issue of indispensable people is a superficial layer to the true matter at hand: being self-reliant. Emerson wrote about it in “Self-Reliance” and Thoreau built upon it in “Walden.”

Thoreau dwells on the contentment of his solitude, on his finding entertainment in the laugh of the loon and the march of the ants rather than in balls, marketplaces, or salons. He does not disdain human companionship; in fact he values it highly when it comes on his own terms, as when his philosopher or poet friends come to call. He simply refuses to need human society.

I’m not that extreme when it comes to be unsocial, but there’s a basic instinct within humans to thrive on competition. Unless you’re like my autistic brother who cannot survive without his family, making people indispensable is like saying you depend on them; we were built to be survivors. Even if people or friends are dispensable, even if we don’t need them, isn’t that what friends are for? To be there when we don’t need them?

Do you know what Sunday is? It’s daylight savings time, and for the first time in four years, I actually have to do something about it. Living in Indiana for college has afforded me the luxury of not needing to adjust my biological clock. But FINALLY, them Hoosiers will participate in daylight savings. About time people! And it’s actually more complicated than I thought. I remember my freshmen year this guy telling me how he lived in one county that didn’t do daylight savings, and went to school in another where they did. That’s gotta suck–I think.

Of the 92 counties in the state, 10 are in the Central time zone and observe daylight-saving time. The remaining 82 are in the Eastern time zone but do not observe the change.

To make things even more complicated, five Indiana counties near the Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky, area illegally observe daylight-saving time so they can do business with these cities smoothly and without time conflicts.

So, that’s the news for the day. Indiana is, at last, joining the 21st century, six years later.

I got my sofas yesterday! And what’s the deal with delivery guys showing up late? The cable guy showed up on Saturday at 2PM when he was scheduled to show up between 9 and 11 AM (apparently he thought the 9 on the work order meant I was supposed to be the 9th person in the day (?!?!?!??)). And then yesterday, I was supposed to get my furniture between 9:30 and 11:30 AM, but the lady from Pottery Barn calls at 11:54AM and says “they’re running 30 minutes behind schedule, they’ll be there around noon.” Oh really…well just as long as they don’t show up at 3 in the afternoon that’s cool… I don’t get it.

A woman has a close male friend. This means that he is probably interested in her, which is why he hangs around so much. She sees him strictly as a friend. This always starts out with, you’re a great guy, but I don’t like you in that way. This is roughly the equivalent for the guy of going to a job interview and the company saying, You have a great resume, you have all the qualifications we are looking for, but we’re not going to hire you. We will, however, use your resume as the basis for comparison for all other applicants. But, we’re going to hire somebody who is far less qualified and is probably an alcoholic. And if he doesn’t work out, we’ll hire somebody else, but still not you. In fact, we will never hire you. But we will call you from time to time to complain about the person that we hired.

So after my little rant about online social networks, I stumbled across this:

I’m getting it.

Yup, it got released to inital testers couple of days ago. I’m not one of them, nor would I want to be, but it’s loaded with new features…and a completely new look (duh). One of things I will be looking forward to in Vista is the transparency feature, although that’s nothing new if you’re familiar with Glass2k. Anyways, here are some high res screenshots from ActiveWin.

    

    

    

    

Holy shit I need to learn how to do this:

I miss my piano. I also wish I could get a semi-concert grand piano. That’s not gonna happen until I get a bigger place. Well, technically, it would fit into my current place, but I wouldn’t have room for a dining table. (Do I really *need* a dining table?) I don’t really need a grand I suppose–I’m certainly no Jordan Adams, but I sure do want that piano he’s playing.

I suck.

Yeah, it’s that time of the year again! Except this year I haven’t watched any of the games because 1) I didn’t have my TV when it started and 2) I’m not living with three guys anymore (as in, I’m not as dedicated).

Point is, my bracket fucking sucks this year. Duke lost after the Sweet 16, and underdogs UCLA, who have been struggling to make it to the Elite 8 the past decade, seems to be making a comeback. None of my teams are in the Final Four. Except for maybe UConn. I wish I had seen last night’s game so I could be screaming at the TV how much Duke sucks. But I was too busy watching Basic.

I have issues with myspace. I have issues with eharmony. In general, I have issues with online social networks. They’re so impersonal and distant that no one really ever thinks anything harmful to come from it. And it’s like, we’re all part of the network, but we don’t talk about it either. Closet online social networkers.

Some are more willing that others to admit their need for vitual friendship. Others abjure their unpopularity with the “I’m too good for it” tone. I fall in between.

A social network is only good if your friends are actually in it. I have no qualms of using facebook (although, I’m appalled by the people who check it twice or more in a day) because it’s a good way for me to keep in touch with my long-lost friends. I’ve also realized that my joining Orkut was pretty worthless. I have a whopping two friends and because the network is so selective, I’m bound to not build my network (it just takes too much effort!).

My point of this in the first place is not to review or analyze social networks. I merely just want to say that I really hate myspace. Because it occurs online, it gives a sense of anonymity and privacy, and therefore people don’t give as much consideration to their actions. But it’s the internet. Everyone’s going to see and everyone’s going to know, no matter how discrete you may be about transactions (I’m referring to “writing on walls”). It’s almost like a tool–like emails, text messages, and cell phones–for spying. It seems innocent and harmless to browse around and look at other people’s pages, but sometimes there’s just too much information that you did not want to know.