Just jump.

But instead he decided to take a giant, blunt,  souvenir pencil that belonged to his mother and stab himself in the groin until he died from blood loss.

…

My keyboard can’t accurately describe my screams when reading this article.

I didn’t do a lot of research into the phone because I lot of what I value are in aesthetics instead of pure horse power tech specs. If I don’t like the way a phone fits in my hands then I don’t care how awesome it is supposed to be I won’t want it. This is with computers as well. It is one of the biggest reasons why I don’t like macs. The OS and hardware looks like butt. I simple don’t like the way any of it is laid out, colored, or designed.

Well there are a whole bunch of ugly ass phones. The interface is slightly less important because well, mostly you can change that with skins. I looked at a few phones and in the end decided on the Samsung Moment. It has a nice simple look to it and it doesn’t have any awkward bumps or bulbs on it like a couple other phones I looked at.

The slide out keyboard on it works well enough to get by but the raised portion of the buttons are just a little too small and a little too close together. I hit the wrong key all the time. But not enough to make me hate it just enough to know that this could be better. The most common typo comes when I am typing around or on the space bar. I probably dislike that key the most.

There aren’t any complaints about the interface on the phone or using it. I like android quite well. I do have a couple complaints about a certain weirdness of the phone.

Number one, while I am starting to get the hang of it I still mess it up quite a bit. There is a call start button and a call end button. You use the call end button to flip the screen on and off. When you get a call you are supposed to take the phone out of your pocket and wait for the little light sensor to detect that it’s out of your pocket and turn the screen on itself. Then you push the call start button. What really happens is that you take the phone out of your pocket and by habit since you get text messages more is you push the call end button to turn the screen on to see who has texted you. Then the screen flashes for a split second showing you that oh actually it’s a call but then the auto light detector has seen the light and doesn’t turn the screen on but FLIPS the state of the screen. In other words it turns the screen off on you at this point. Now the phone is still ringing but the screen is off. If you push the call end button again in order to turn the screen on again you will hang up on the person calling. So how about we push the call accept button to just right to the call. Well it doesn’t seem to work that way and so the only option is to hang up and give them a call back. I’ve done this enough times that it’s really getting old now.

Sometimes if I’m somewhere a little dark the phone will sit there and not turn the screen on for me right away and it take all of my will power not to push the button to manually turn the screen on because I know it’s going to screw everything up. The phone will on occasion get confused about wheter the screen is on or not. If I push the end button to turn it off I’ll see it turn itself back on after a second and the only way to fix this is to unlock the screen and then turn it off.

Another thing that bugs me is that certain apps seem to never close and after playing around on the phone for a little bit suddenly it’s super hot because the processor is going at full steam, even though it’s been in my pocket for half an hour. I’ve installed a kill everything app to help prevent this. I hate this more than anything else because this phone seriously has crappy battery life.

The GPS isn’t all that great on the phone either. A clear view of the sky is a must, because if you have clear glass or a tree branch or anything at all over you, you are done. The one time I wanted to use it, it sat on the dash of my friend’s car with a perfectly good overhead view and it hardly ever worked. Eh, it’s not a GPS device so I don’t care too much about this.

Overall I have to say I like the phone. The few minor faults are made up for in everything else. Another phone may do all of that and not have the faults that I have seen but after looking at all of the phones in the sprint store I’m fairly certain that it’s the only one I wouldn’t have wanted to toss out the window after a few days just based off of how the phone looks and feels.

We had described our relationship as a roller coaster and that turned out to be a pretty good summary. You start out with a relatively slow climb big huge drop off with lots of thrills and then as gravity starts slowing you down and things go up and down with one last big dip at the end as a sort of last hurrah.

And then it’s over before you know it.

Three months and if I sit down and think about it things were rocky for more than half. If I allow myself anymore thought on it I start to come up with these odd musings that she was probably over me after about a month and then she was bored but she stuck around because I was helping her out. And why was I helping her out well because of that nice big first run. It was so good at the beginning, you know when she still cared, and I wanted that back so much that I tried whatever I could to maneuver it back to that. Obviously I failed pretty bad. But if it wasn’t for that big thrill in the begining I wouldn’t have put up with all the bull shit that came in the other two months. There I was holding onto the few memories of when it was great while it fell down around me. Not my smartest of decisions. It would sort of be like buying a boat full of holes because you really really like the way it looked in that one catalog. Some people can repair holes. I could not.

I fully understand that it was mostly my fault that she lost interest. It’s not for lack of trying. I didn’t just give up sit back and say I don’t give a shit anymore. Oh no I tried my very best it’s just that I tried all the wrong things. Sometimes it’s got to be more than just the thought there needs to be results and results didn’t come on either side of the cluster fuck we were in.

It would be nice to believe her that she didn’t take the money. Not because I have any desire to get back with her. Being away allowed me to realise that the way she treats me is not good for me and I want none of it. The good times we had in the beginning would never ever come back. But because that way we could at least be civil with each other and stay distant to decent friends. Right now to know that she stole from me after everything I did for her, or every time I stood up for her, well it lets me know exactly what she thinks of me and while I put up with being treated like a schmuck while dating her I sure as hell won’t put up with being the dumb ass schmuck friend as well.

First off what the hell is a naturopath? And why the hell do they get to call themselves doctors? Maine why are you so crazy? Alright anyway here’s a quick version of the story in a poem.

Christopher Maloney is full of baloney

gave out garlic pills for children’s chills.

Flu shots? Oh Contrary instead try elderberry!

Enter Michael who knows the flu cycle.

“Mr.” Maloney what you think vital is only your fake title (Doctor)

Your claims unfounded I am astounded!

I’ll let people know, how much you blow.

Mommy Mommy (Wordpress) Michael was mean to me!

Shut him down I’m not a clown.

I’m a Doctor not a quack! You take it back!

Oh what the hell wordpress why do you supress!

Now enter PZ Myers who will fan the fires

and his horde who desires to point out the liars

and show people the reality of Maloney’s lethality.

I mean how could I not. But if you couldn’t follow that Maloney made wordpress shut down Michael Hawkins’ blog because he dared call Maloney out on his bullshit. Maloney was providing nonsense proven to not do anything remedies to ward off and help fight the Flu and H1N1. Hawkins also pointed out the fact that naturopath have no right to call themselves doctors. Well like PZ says there’s no way this won’t become 20 times bigger now that wordpress censored Hawkins. I’m helping as well. Here’s PZ Myers take on it.

I watched Akira in highschool. I watched it twice and I really didn’t quite get it at the time. Now of course several years later I’ve forgotten enough of it to make my already muddled view of it quite opaque. I did enjoy it at least and a live action version is something that I would definitely check out.

I think this is a good direction. It breaks NASA out of the hum drum that it has been in. NASA should be making the ground breaking stuff and the rest should start to fall to the private sector. The more people involved in space flight the better and if NASA can lead the way with private enterprise pushing and following up then things will start to take off.

There is also a lot more money in general for science. This makes me happy and the main reason why I like Obama. He understands what science is and why it is so important. These days with technology ruling so much of our lives science is the driving force behind it. The more we understand about the world the more we push our tech to the limit, in space travel, atoms, particles, etc it spawns a host of other possibilities that work their way into our everyday lives. It boggles my mind how people don’t see the connection between these things. “How does smashing atoms together and learning about particles so small they defy logic and reason affect me? What does that have to do with my life. How does making a 100,000 powerdrill to work in a vacuum and wide ranging temps?” These people are small time people they don’t see the big picture. If you push your tech to the limit of what it can do and design things so outrageously complex and crazy it WILL improve anything that has anything to do with it. Magnets, MRI, superconductors, data storage and transmission. Want an ipod that stores even more stuff well that is being pushed not only by the demand of the consumer but also by the scientists that need to store and transfer amounts of data that dwarf even college music libraries.

Politics has for the last 8 years demeaned the expert instead of revered them, they have attacked the person who dares imply they know more than the common man just because they have devoted their lives to pursing and understanding concepts that the average person barely understands. The politics of the last 8 years has been one of the small picture person. The person who can’t see any benefit unless it is explicitly dictated in clear easy terms. Something that you can’t really do much because the benefits are sometimes so far reaching. This is why I support Obama and this is why I like this plan. It’s a big picture plan that aims for the future.

The years of neglect for teaching critical thinking and curiosity in favor of cramming for standardized tests and blatant anti-intellectualism from partisan pundits and post-modernists alike has come back to bite us and bite us hard. We seem to have jettisoned the idea of experts and authority and replaced it with manufactroversies for ratings and blowhards who generally have no qualifications other than a strong opinion on the matter. We started taking medical advice from Oprah and Jenny McCarthy instead of actual doctors. We see conspiracies everywhere we turn. And we have to be so nice and considerate towards everyone and everything that unless we want to be flooded with complaints about being mean and bitter, we have to give everyone a pass, from a creationist who wants to dismantle science education after having a chat with God, to homeopaths and faith healers who want to force insurance companies to pay for things that don’t work. And perhaps worst of all, the cranks are highly paid professionals in their con artistry while the skeptics and scientists who try to keep them in line can’t even hold a candle to their income.

Click here to read it all.