I saw Good Will Hunting when I was fairly young and the movie made a huge impression on me. In fact the reason I don’t believe in college and subsequently never went is because of this film. I should say here that I love Good Will Hunting. The part in particular that really stuck with me was the line about you pay x-amount for a degree that would cost you $8.50 in library fees or something like that. I have believed that for as long as I can remember and still do actually. The idea of college isn’t lost on me, I get it and I love to learn. I own a ton of books on subjects that really interest me, like music, writing and technology. However, the only caveat with that whole ideology is that you have to actually read the books to gain the knowledge. Reading is something that I love, I just don’t do it as often as I should.

I didn’t really have any direction when I started writing this, I just wanted to make know that this movie changed or rather ruined me for better or worse. Perhaps my life would be different if I had seen the movie later in life, I’m not sure. All that I know is my life is starting to resemble that of Will Hunting, minus all the genius bits.

Anyone that knows me knows that I am a passionate person. I believe in a lot of things and I have a lot of ideas. I try to be impartial and listen to all the facts and make decisions accordingly. However there is an issue that I find myself having too frequently. I care what you think, honest I do. In fact I care so much about what you think that I stop myself often from saying the things I really should and want to say, the things that need to be said. Tonight, for example, I had started writing a piece for this very blog entitled, “America is Broken.” I would have probably finished it too if i wasn’t so chicken shit; I decided however to scrap that post. I don’t know why, it’s not like anyone reads the shit I post here. This whole experiment is just an escape for me to post all my inner thoughts and yet I find myself too afraid to post them.

Perhaps I could write things and then not post them, but then I struggle with what’s the point? If I express myself and then let no one read it then I’m not really expressing myself. I fear that I will write something and perhaps someone will comment. Maybe someone will say my writing is shit and then I’ll have hurt feelings. The truth is yeah my writing is shit, it’s gotten better, but nowhere near where it should be. I keep writing though and believe it or not I do write daily, but it’s just about video games and the like. I wish that in writing this and telling you how I feel it would change things, but it wont. From time to time I will try to write something that is honest and might mean something to someone, only to trash it because I am afraid of what someone might think. It’s easy to say fuck what everyone else thinks, it is quite another to have the follow through to accomplish that feat.

Photo Credit: TurboPhoto.com

In the wake of the news about Steve Jobs, I have seen a lot of people talking about their first Mac and what not, so I will take a moment to tell my  story.  I never met Steve, but he has touched my life in a way that’s so profound I don’t think I can entirely express it in words.

I must have been about 8 and it was christmas, I remember we were at my grandparent’s house and we had opened all the presents, but some how missed this one large box from my uncle.  I remember the tag said, “from santa,” we tore into the box and inside was an Apple 2e.  Included with the machine we had the keyboard that the machine was built into, the monitor, a 3.5 inch floppy drive as well as a color monitor.  My uncle also included a bunch of software.  We used to play Oregon Trail all the time, we used that machine a lot.

The next machine we got was an AST with a 133mhz cpu and 16mb of ram.  I remember that machine cost around $2k dollars, that was the first machine we had the internet on, with it’s included 24bps modem through Internet Direct.  I even remember the first piece of software I ever bought for that machine, Doom 2 from Computer City for $10.  That computer later went with my sister to college.  After the AST we bought a Gateway 2000 with a 333mhz pentium 2 cpu and 128mb of ram, compared to the AST the Gateway was a demon.  The Gateway broke a lot and their included tech support would just format the machine whenever we would take it in, so I just started fixing it.  That would later lead to me building and selling custom computers with some friends in High School.

It wasn’t until about 2 years ago or so that I went back to Apple.  Up until then I was a PC and quite happy being so, I had been hanging out with the Social Media elite of San Antonio and just about all of them used Macs exclusively.  My brother and I, were blogging for MySA at the time and one of our friends was the manager of the Apple store in North Star mall, he suggested we come down to the store and put the machines through hell to see how much they could take.  We set up a time and went down there, we did everything we could think of to these machines and nothing crashed and they were still fast.  I remember in particular being impressed with the Mac Mini, it was so small and fast and the price compared to the other machines I found to be quite fair.  After I filed my income tax I had some money left over so I bought a Mac Mini (in fact that is what I am writing this on).  I was tired of having to fix my PC all the time which was a frankenstein that I had built and was fast for about the first year and then just started running like crap, also I had to reinstall Windows every 6 months or so to keep it stable and fast.  I wanted a small machine that would allow me to do the things I wanted without me having to fix it all the time and with the Mac Mini that is exactly what I got.

I know that story was longer than I had meant it to be and can you believe that is the abridged version?  Technology plays a huge role in my life, it is one of my life’s biggest passions and at times biggest headache, but I wouldn’t change a thing if I could and to think it all started with a Mac, thanks Steve.

Photo Credit: Vectronic’s Apple World

I have noticed lately that a lot of musical artists have abandoned the traditional title for their albums and gone to numbers.  Most recently I noticed Beyonce’s newest album is called 4, just 4.  You also have Adele that has two albums out 19 and 21 respectively.  Personally I have a pretty hard time coming up with titles for posts, so I am going to adopt this trendy numbering system, unless I come up with a title that is fitting and I like it.  Call this an act of desperation or sheer laziness or perhaps a stroke of genius, I will let you be the judge.

So I was thinking a lot about what to write and I think since I have already started down this path of honesty and the site is named after me I will start telling stories about my life.  Sometimes you will see a post about something I see like I was doing months ago, but for now I am going to write what I know.  This is also an attempt at more frequent posts and since I have 26 years to pull from (27 in October) I will write about that.

When I graduated from High School it was possibly the happiest day of my life, mainly because of the deep hatred I felt towards school.  I didn’t really do anything for about two years after I graduated, mostly sat around the house and played video games or hung out with friends, it was awesome.  Sadly that life couldn’t last forever as I had car insurance and other bills started to pile up, so I did what any kid would do and I attempted to get a job.  I applied at Rackspace and Time Warner Cable which still are two of the largest companies in San Antonio, while doing random computer jobs for friends and what not.  I had to settle for a job at Domino’s Pizza since I hadn’t really had much work experience.  I didn’t get either of the jobs I applied for at Rackspace or Time Warner, but little did I know that wouldn’t be the last time I would cross paths with Time Warner.

Fast forward about three years or so and I am in desperate need for a job and both I and my live in girlfriend were unemployed.  I went to a temp agency and they had a job that I was qualified for at where else, but Time Warner Cable, so I eventually wound up there it just took a little longer than expected.  When I got there it wasn’t really what I had expected, but I didn’t really know what to expect since I had never worked in any sort of an office environment.  At any rate there was a guy that I met there and this is really the story I am trying to tell.  So I met this guy Tracy, he was a nice enough guy, he volunteered at his church and seemed to have a pretty cheerful disposition.  I got along with him just fine, since he was extremely religious he was also a bit prudish about language and what not which I didn’t find all that surprising.  What surprised me about him though was finding out that early on in his career with the company he used to edit the “money shots” out of the pay-per-view pornos.  Apparently in Texas it is illegal to show the act of ejaculating on tv, if it’s on a dvd or something that is fine, as is penetration and just about everything else you can think of, as long as you don’t show them blowing a load it’s all good.  So Tracy’s job was to watch these pornos and remove all of the ejaculate, which struck me as really strange considering how weird he would get if someone swore or even mentioned any hint of sexuality.

Well as is too often in life it doesn’t matter how good of a person you are bad things will still happen and that is what happened in Tracy’s case.  About a year later he totaled his car which actually turned out great for him because he bought a brand new Ford Mustang which he loved.  He had that car for about six months before someone hit him and totaled the car.  Shortly after that he had a stroke and was in the hospital for months, they would occasionally send out e-mails updating us on his condition.  While in the hospital his house flooded and he lost everything, so they said if you were going to visit him don’t mention his house.  After all of these unfortunate events he quite his job and went to go work for the church, I guess the church didn’t pay well because I saw him a few weeks later in the office.  Tracy had and interview for his old job, I later found out that of he had gotten it, after all he had been working there for like twenty years or something before he quite.

Weeks went by and I was told he would be starting Monday, it was a Thursday or something I don’t remember the day exactly.  Monday came and went so I asked when he was coming back and I was told that he wouldn’t be.  I was pretty confused considering I had seen him recently and was told he got the job.  Well apparently the day before he was supposed to come back to work he had a heart attack or something and died, they found him three days later. Rest in Peace Tracy.

I don’t know why I felt like telling this story, but I guess to put things into perspective, life is short and all that.

Photo Courtesy of: Free Stock Photos

As a writer, particularly a lazy writer I find that at times I have lulls of writing and I never know quite what to say when I come back.  For the past few days I have been thinking about what I could possibly write about on this blog as a sort of welcome back, or I’m not dead yet.  What I came up with is just some honesty about myself and this blog.

When I decided I was going to start a blog I first started with barakwontserve.com, which at the time was my online handle; the barak wont serve part not the .com.  Contrary to what most people think the name had nothing to do with our current president, in fact I voted for him and while I consider myself a Liberal Socialist or Progressive (which ever leaves a better taste in your mouth I suppose) I don’t feel he has done enough as a president; I still like the guy though.  At any rate, the blog started as just a way to keep thoughts flowing because I was tired of using LiveJournal and yes my LiveJournal still exists if you want to find it, but I must warn you it is pretty angsty and poorly written (like you don’t get enough of that here).  So I started the blog mainly because at the time I was playing in a lot of bands and still had this crazy idea that I was gonna get signed to a record label and someone might give a shit about my daily going ons.  As I have gotten older I have realized that being in a band is hard, it’s not as glamourous as people like to believe;  The whole rock star thing fell through, but who knows I’m not even 27 yet so maybe there is still time.  In retrospect the whole blog was a pretty self centered thing to do, but I am only human so it is what it is.

As time goes on the blog has changed a bit from being a whats going on in my life to a random shit I see and choose to write about project.  I thought if I could wake up everyday and write 1 entry then I would be setting my self up with positive writing habits and possibly make something of myself.  That lasted a month or so and even then it is a little bit iffy.  I also run another blog with my brother and some friends, we write about video games there which you have probably noticed from the video game stuff on this blog that I am a gamer.  In the beginning of this post I said I was a lazy writer, perhaps I was being too kind, I am flat out lazy.  Other blogs I write for I slacked off and well haven’t been too prolific.

So I would like to say that is all changing with this post.  This post right here is me turning my life around and making a commitment to completing tasks, but come on we both know that is bullshit.  I will try to do my best and come up with interesting things for you to read and update as often as I realistically see fit.  I think it is okay to not post every day even though I may want to; Just so you know I have been thinking about this post for 2 weeks.  I wanted to write, err, say all the right things so that you might find it in your heart to take me back, or keep reading this, by the way if you are still reading this congrats, you have way more conviction than I do.

I hope this little burst of honesty will be appreciated and perhaps I will write more about my life, I have a lot to pull from.  Thanks for reading this and still checking out the blog.

-Mikey

Photo Courtesy of: Free Stock Photos

While purusing the aisles at my local grocery store I happened upon a two products that put the rampant obesity seen in the states in perspective.  You don’t need to be a doctor to know that fast food is horrible for you, but the country’s seeming obession with putting bacon on and in everything I suspect is a contributing factor.  I took a few pics so that you can see what I am talking about.

I don’t know what evil bastard thought it would be a good idea to take the worst condiment available and mix bacon in to the fold to make the abomination seen above.  I had heard about this stuff for some time, but when I stumbled upon it I was floored and had to take a picture.  Generally I am known to eat all sorts of bull shit and the Indiana Jones in me is curious as all get out, but I don’t even know if I can bring myself to eating this.  The thought of putting this monstrosity on a sandwich or anything else for that matter genuinely frightens me.

From the first time I saw Paula Deen and the generous amounts of mayo and butter she puts into her dishes I knew America’s collective cholesterol was in question.  I honestly believe that Paula Deen is on a mission to make the world bloat, even though bacon and shells does seem appealing I have to stay strong.  My heart hurts from just looking at this stuff, interestingly enough though the killer here is the sodium.

There are numerous other products that use bacon from cheese to bacon spread to even sunflower seeds.  The sheer number of bacon flavored products is staggering.  I am not a skinny man, I will be the first to tell you that, but eating this shit is admitting that you will stay fat and personally that’s a line I’m not ready to cross.

]]> http://mikeyvb.com/america-time-mega-fatty-problem-solved/feed/ 0 http://mikeyvb.com/a-little-time-off/ http://mikeyvb.com/a-little-time-off/#comments Mon, 18 Oct 2010 01:42:58 +0000 mikey http://mikeyvb.com/?p=333

It has been a week or two since I last posted anything.  Work has been the usual and my free time has been spent with my band A Day Like No Other, we have been playing shows and practicing a lot.  Sadly that has left me with a lot less free time.  I will be getting back on track with blog posts shortly, I saw some things recently that need to be written about.  In the true spirit of the internet I have pics so it happened.  I hope you have been doing well, I will write some posts as well as update you on the bands happenings if you are interested.  You’ll hear from me soon.

-mikey

Apparently Dairy Queen has some pretty tough looking individuals representing their kids meals.  While they are exceptionally tough they apparently have a softer side because they are strong arming DQ into giving kids a free Ice cream treat with every kids meal purchase.  On a serious note though this is a pretty sweet deal, but really stupid mascots.  What is it with this modern hang up on being “modern” means hip hop or this weak ass diluted hip hop inspired crap.  These guys couldn’t hurt a fly but lets make them look “modern” by making them “gangsta,” pretty shitty DQ.  However they are good for a laugh.  What do you think about this?

Okay so I have been writing fairly regularly for the past month or so.  While writing I have been wearing many different hats and been pulled in many different directions.  I am still going to be blogging here it just won’t be daily, it would probably be fair to say a few times a week.  I will try to be somewhat consistent with when stuff goes up, but once again I can’t make any promises.  Life has been very busy lately, though it has also been rewarding and a lot of fun.  I feel that sharing my thoughts with you has really helped me grow in a short amount of time as well as open some doors, so thank you so much for sticking with me.  I have some articles that I am working on for you so expect some new content today.  Once again thank you so much for reading and commenting, I hope you enjoy the future posts I have planned.

I like try new beers and it is something my friends and I do fairly often.  I really enjoy Ales with a lot of hops, the more hops the better as far as I am concerned.  One of my favorite if not my favorite is Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale, it’s extremely hoppy for an Ale and has a ton of flavor.  Ruination Ale by Stone is the hopiest beer I have ever had with an IBU (International Bitterness Units) of 100, but it is pretty expensive so I don’t get it that often, it’s usually Sierra Nevada for me.  I have had just about all of their beers and have yet to have one that I don’t like, same goes for anything from Dog Fish Head and Stone.  So what is your favorite beer?