Smiling

For those single people who haven't figured it out yet: Smiling is attractive. Give it a try.

Married people can do it, too. Just be careful whom you smile at and for how long...

Aging

It's odd growing older, and seeing how distant friends are aging, through pictures on Facebook, when my mind still feels as active and inquisitive as a teenager. I forget that I'm aging, until I look in the mirror and remember that my face is sagging, or feel the arthritis in my hand.

Time is a difficult concept for me to grasp, because in my mind time stands still, while the world around me pushes on and my cellular architecture continues to degrade.

I like being outdoors. I enjoy the peace and tranquility of a quiet forest, or the soothing sound of a river, as the water cascades over the rocks. I definitely have an affinity for water.

Sometimes, as much as I like people, I just have to get away and spend time on my own, enjoying nature. It's an opportunity to clear the mind, to concentrate, contemplate, and meditate on life and how everything around me interacts with everything else around me.

For me, everything is connected in one way or another, no matter how obscure that connection may seem. Thoughts and scenarios intertwine and inter-lock; reality and theory; past, present, and future. Everything has a connection, whether temporally, spatially, emotionally, or neurologically. It's interesting to consider the myriad connections, but when everything spiderwebs out from the middle, even trying to explain the most basic of concepts can be a real bear...

Living outside of the socially-accepted box is not an easy path to follow. Generally, society wants conformity to the norm, which geniuses are unable to deliver. By virtue of their nature, they will excel in some areas, but then fall short of the standard in others. No one human can excel in all areas.

Too often, employers and society choose to scrutinize the weakness, and ignore the strength, so they are left with workers who are neither exceptionally motivated, nor exceptionally productive. This, it appears, is what society finds acceptable.

The Heavens open!...

The opportunity-of-a-lifetime finally comes within your grasp: an entry-level Web developer position, with a dominant focus on the Linux operating system and writing code in Perl - both of which have been self-learned over the past three years. Finally, the opportunity to tune out the ever-present chaos of the world and the uncertainty of illogical human interactions... an opportunity to finally delve into the recesses of the mind to analyze, theorize, and fabricate in a surreal realm of structures, functions, logic, and processes.

Success is in sight!...

You successfully make a positive impression as a team player who can communicate well with others and you provide an extensive portfolio to evidence your computer knowledge and programing prowess...

Irony...

Two hours of the three-hour interview are spent by head management explaining that the role they really want you to take involves interfacing directly with the customers and the store employees, to help improve their business model and develop new methodologies for customer/employee/computer interactions, because "there are some programmers who should never be put in front of other people."

So, you're qualified to be a developer, according to the coding evaluations they gave you, but you're not anti-social "enough" to hide you from the public eye.

Sigh...

Yes, lengthy, but read if you choose. These are just some of my personal views and logical analyses toward the emotional impulses being applied to the improper use of inanimate tools. This was originally a private exchange with a friend:

The statistics that we have in the United States do not match the emphasis that is being placed on rifles. The legislation is focusing on rifles, specifically, yet rifles account for very few of the homicides that occur every year. If they want to be true to the statistics on deaths caused by firearms, then they should crack down on handguns, instead, but that still won't affect anyone who doesn't care about obeying the laws of the land, such as career criminals and gang members.

So if we have to get rid of the tools that are being used inappropriate and causing harm, then why is there no initiative to confiscate knives or baseball bats, both of which are frequently used for homicides. A tool is a tool. *An inanimate object cannot kill.*

On the contrary, an inanimate object in the hands of someone who has a good heart can be used to help and defend, whereas an inanimate object in the hands of someone with an evil heart will be used to hurt and destroy. The tool is the not problem and removing the tool from the "good" people only opens the door for its exclusive use by the "bad" people.

Yes, we have had some concentrated tragedies recently, and they are tragedies, but to focus on one tool over another tool, when other tools have been abused on a far greater frequency over the years, is not logical. It is emotional. Long term problem are never resolved by emotional impulses, when those emotional impulses only focus on short-term symptom and fail to diagnose the long-term cause.

If legal civilians are forced to turn over their guns, then they will, because they believe in obeying the laws, but the individuals who are committing the homicides, burglaries, assaults, etc, don't care about the laws and will thrive on the defenseless citizens who were already obeying the laws and striving to be upstanding citizens.

Disarming the good people only gives free reign for the bad, because the bad don't care if they act contrary to the laws of the land. If the good are left defenseless, then who will protect the innocent?

Might I add that I have never been a "gun advocate". I only have a couple and have rarely gotten to shoot them in fifteen years, because I didn't have a safe place to do so. I may not be a gun advocate, but I believe absolutely in the right to protect my family with whatever means are necessary, when peaceful withdrawal is not an option.

I like peace. I like avoiding conflict. But I believe in defending my nation, my liberty, my family, and myself. I don't want to hurt anyone, but I don't feel that I am required to stand by and allow someone else, exercising their own agency, to hurt me or the people I love. I was often on the receiving end of attacks when I was younger, until I learned to defend myself. I believe in being allowed to defend myself and my family.

With that, I am not a fanatic about hoarding guns. I never have been. My favorite defensive weapon has always been the staff, or bo, which was used by the compassionate Shaolin monks to deter and defend, rather than to attack and kill. Unfortunately, I never learned to use a staff.

I don't ever want to stand before my Father in Heaven and have Him tell me that I chose to kill someone when the situation could have been alleviated more peaceably, but generally speaking, He also does not require His faithful followers to lie down and be slaughtered like sheep.

As law-abiding citizens and humble followers of the Lord, we have a responsibility to protect our country, our families, our freedoms, and our religion (The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ: Alma chapters 46 & 48, in reference to Captain Moroni and the Title of Liberty).