Philosophers Home

Does playing video games really make you happy?

2015-11-08T15:46:00.003-06:00

Hello everyone, today we will be exploring a little bit of thoughts to help bring discussion about if video games really help people feel happy or if they are just a cause for frustration. There are many games (like the Pokemon series) that you can see a child play and their face begins to glow. However, unfortunately there are many games that will cause a person to throw the controller on the ground and start screaming in a furious rage.

For anyone that has ever played on xbox live and played the popular games Call of Duty or Halo, you have experienced the moment where even a young boy will be throwing swears in your direction. Another populate set of games that has recently left a lot of anger in it's path is the MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) video games.

Games like Dota 2 and League of Legeneds have been growing in popularity over the years but unfortunately they have also drawn the attention of the rage community. A new player will quickly be greeted with swears for simply being a new player. Even with this greeting, somehow the games and their communities continue to grow.

So why does it happen? Why do games like this inspire such rude comments from others? Everyone was bad at a game at one point right? So why is it so easy to forget that when you see someone who is struggling? I think the answers all align with the simple truth that once someone feels like they are "better" than others, they simply feel like they deserve to win. Everyone who gets in the way of what they "deserve" is a jerk and will be met with much hatred regardless of if it's the enemy team or if it's a bad team member.

So how do we stop this? With e-sports taking off the way it has and continuing to grow, is there really any hope for games to just be about having fun again? The signs are there if you look at Nintendo continuing to make games for casual players. But to the extreme gamers, is there a way we can change e-sports to take out the aggression and make people have fun, winning or losing? That is unclear as that is a battle that has been going on in sports since the beginning. Competition almost always brings out the worst in people's personalities but it can also bring out the best in their abilities.

Without competitiveness there is no desire to get better, and with no desire to get better you can't possibly improve and go above your current rank in life. We simply need to find a way to make competitive events fun for the people in them so that we can remove the anger. If we can do that, it should help people grow much faster and become even more amazing.

What do all of you think about this? Do you think there is a way to make everyone happy/having fun and still maintain the competitive nature of some video games or do you think people are simply doomed to rage every time they pick up the controller?

How can we change the world?

2015-11-07T14:16:00.002-06:00

I have found that many people don't really like their life and don't really like the world that we live in today. In that regard, I wonder how we can help. Have you ever wondered what drove someone to do some of the horrible things that we see in the news these days? In modern times we have massive shootings, random violence, and all forms of cruelty.

Oddly enough, in a world so full of hate and aggression, we also have an abundance of sadness as well, people are hurting every day.I would like all of that to stop but it is a group effort and we are all going to have to pitch in to stop it. I've thought about it for a long time and I don't think some things are avoidable but I do believe some things can be stopped before it happens.

So how do we change the world? The answer is simple, be kind, gentle, caring, compassionate, and understanding. Now you might be reading this and thinking "well I already do all of those things". If you are saying those things my question to you is, are you doing those things to strangers or just people you know? There is no limit to the kindness that we can share towards others, even complete strangers.

Imagine some of those people who felt lost, alone, and forgotten. Imagine what they went through and how they felt before making a most regretful choice. Do you have a picture of that in your mind? Now imagine being that person, and then you show up in their line of vision. How would you react to them? Would they be just another person, would you greet them with a smile? Or would you simply walk on past and not even notice they were there?

How would the way you acted in that small moment of time change the fate of the person who feels like they have hit rock bottom? Can you imagine the amazing feeling of having someone come up to you and treat you like you matter when you feel that down? You could save a life, you could change the outcome of a tragic event. Just be kind to everyone and when you see someone who looks like they need a hand, do your best to smile and show them someone cares.

Keep smiling and show the love you have for others every day that you can.

Why do I suck

2015-10-06T21:19:00.001-05:00

Why do I suck.

This is a question that has often haunted the best of us. It has haunted me for a long time and still bugs me even to this day.

I'm sure that even the best of people just have that "I suck" mentality sometimes. It's not really anyone's fault, it's just a pause in positive thinking. Something went wrong, things just aren't the way you want them to be. Eventually... You blame yourself.

While it's definitely okay to accept blame, also understand that beating yourself up will not help you at all. Accept what has happened, learn from your mistakes, and move on to bigger and better things.

Remeber: next time you start thinking negatively, just reverse it and say "I'm awesome. I can beat this, just watch me". If you outwardly express victory, you will automatically start thinking of ways to make it happen. Never let your negativity dominate you. You are the master of your emotions, it is not the master of you.

Type of person you wish you were.

2012-11-04T06:00:00.000-06:00

What is the kind of person we wish we could become? Is there anyone we idolize because we wish to be like them? If there is someone like that how well do we know that person? Are they really someone we should dream to be like?

When you think about what you want to become, the type of person you want to be, do you ever reflect on your past dreams or goals? I do, all the time as a matter of fact. I hope you do as well. While we can't change our past it is important for us to see how much has changed from one time in our life to another.


The story of my life

11 years ago when I first started getting into programming I never thought I would become a profession programmer, it simply wasn't my intention. I had a love for technology back then just like I do now but I never thought about exploiting my ability as a programmer to live a life filled with the technology I love so much.

My dream now is to become a professional bowler by using the money I make as a programmer to go around the country and enter bowling tournaments. I'm a very lucky individual in the sense that I was able to find a way to have all my dreams become possible. Most people have to give up their dreams to make something they want become reality.

Reflecting back on all of this though I wish I was able to find a way to market my abilities sooner so it wouldn't of taken so long for me to have a chance at becoming a professional bowler.

How much do you have to give up to allow yourself the ability to have a dream though? Sometimes the sacrifice is too great for people to be willing to go through with it all.

Depending on the dream you might have to give up friendships, family time, possibly even a social life in general. You could also have to move around a lot which isolates you from your familiar scene of home. But for those of us that are willing to do anything to make our goals come true those sacrafices are worth making.

But for those who can't give up those things to make their dreams come true they have to give up something else just as precious, the dream itself. They have to change the kind of person they want to become, compromise themselves, to keep something important to them.

Giving up on everything you worked for is never easy though. Changing your life plans just because you realized you had to make more sacrifices then you would like seems too difficult for a normal person to do without even further pain.

I feel that if you do something like that you will always be faced with the question "what if" in the back of your mind and it is possible you will never be able too look at the things you enjoyed most without thinking about what you gave up to keep them.

Being filled with regrets is no way to live in my opinion and if I lose friendships or family over chasing my goals and dreams then those people were never my friends or family to begin with. I will follow the path I feel is right to the very end and I truly believe that is how people should handle things if they want to live without regret.

HTML Basics: Inserting CSS

2012-11-03T06:00:00.000-05:00

When dealing with HTML you are going to naturally encounter CSS if you want to make your website look remotely decent. CSS itself is easy enough to learn and will be explained throughout this tutorial but the first real step to using CSS is knowing how to combine it with your code.

But first what is CSS? CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet. It is, as the name implies, a way to write styles into your HTML to give it a certain look and feel. In the past, websites were designed with nothing but tables and frames, now it's rare to even find a site with a table on it.

So, now that we understand what CSS is how do we use it? It's very simple really, CSS has three ways of combining it with your code, all three have different purposes and uses. These are external, internal, and inline.

The first one we are going to discuss is external. An external style sheet is most commonly used for CSS that is going to be reused on other pages. This is most easily demonstrated by looking at my background. It is the same on every page and is displayed with CSS. It is stored in an external style sheet.

You can create a style sheet in any text editor such as notepad. For Windows users I personally recommend using notepad++ as it will color all of your code which will make it much easier to spot mistakes. I use Linux GEdit which is the default text editor for Linux users.

A basic external style sheet would look something like this:

style.css

body {
    color: #000000;
    width: 960px;
    margin: auto;
}

This would make the font color black and the width of everything in the body tag 960 pixels. "margin: auto;" makes the content on the page automatically align to the center based on the browser size. For better understanding of this all you have to do is look at my blog right now and notice that all the "content" is in the center and only 960 pixels wide.

Having the CSS file alone doesn't really do you any good though if your HTML files aren't using it. The way to make your HTML see it is very simple though. You simply do this:

htmlFileName.html

Make sure your embed code is within the head tag of your page. You can name your css file anything you want as long as it has the .css extension, it's just most common to name it "style.css". You MUST embed the style sheet into every html file you wish to be affected by it.

Now that we have covered external CSS let's talk about internal. Internal style sheets are good for when you want a specific page to look unique compared to the rest. Using our previous code as an example here is some internal css:

htmlFileName.html

<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css"> 
<style>
body {
color: #333333;
}
</style>
</head>

This could be used if you want a specific page to have a different font color while still maintaining everything else that was used. The reason this works is because internal style sheets has priority over the external style sheet.Whatever the internal style sheet has set is what will be used for that page and the external style sheet just fills in the gaps.

Now for the inline CSS. This is most useful whenever you only have one tag that you want to be affected by the CSS but it is still recommended that you use external or internal for future reusability if things ever change and you do want to use it more then once.

An example of inline code:

<p style="color: #FFFFFF;"> This font is white </p>

This would make everything inside of the paragraph tag white regardless of internal or external style sheet settings. Just like how internal css has priority over external, inline has priority over everything. Using these three ways of implementing css at once will result in a very nice design and feel for your website.

HTML Basics: How tags work.

2012-11-02T07:19:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone, in this tutorial where we will cover how tags actually work in HTML, this is a very basic tutorial assuming you know nothing of HTML or programming.If you are an more advanced programmer please check out later tutorials. With that said let us begin.

So what is HTML? HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language used to design static websites using an assortment of tags.

So, what is a tag in HTML? Well to put it simply a tag is something that is surrounded by <> an example of this is the universal <html> tag that surrounds all HTML pages.

To put it simply, you have an opening HTML tag and a closing HTML tag, Everything in-between these tags are affected. So what is a closing tag? A closing tag is the exact same as an opening tag except for a / behind the < symbol. For example;

If you have a <p> tag (this is called a paragraph tag) then you would do something some this.

<p>This is a simple paragraph. This is a simple paragraph. This is a simple paragraph. This is a simple paragraph. This is a simple paragraph. </p> This is not part of the paragraph

And it would appear on a page like this:

This is a simple paragraph. This is a simple paragraph. This is a simple paragraph. This is a simple paragraph. This is a simple paragraph.

This is not part of the paragraph

See how the text outside the paragraph tag isn't part of the paragraph? Simple isn't it?

So now that we have a basic understand of how tags work let's look at a basic HTML page layout.

Okay so I know what you're thinking "Woah James, head tag? title tag? body? what are these?" Don't worry I'm going to explain them all one by one.

Okay so the first thing we see is our <html> tag, this is the tag that as you can see here, surrounds all my other HTML tags.

Now for the <head> tag. This tag surrounds all your special code like javascript and css but we will worry about that a bit later. It also encases out <title> tag.

Our <title> tag is the text for what appears in the top of our browser and in our tabs. For instance my title tag is <title>Philosophers Home</title> and that is what you read when you look at my tab or the top of the page. It is also what appears as the main link in Google search results.

And now for the <body> tag, this is where you put everything that you want to visually show on the website itself. For example, the paragraph tag <p> we used earlier would be inside of the body tag like so.

<body>
<p>This is a simple paragraph. This is a simple paragraph. This is a simple paragraph. This is a simple paragraph. This is a simple paragraph.</p>
</body>

With that hopefully you have the very basic understand of HTML tags and how they work, in later tutorials we will reach out to making the most out of HTML tags to do some cool stuff and combine it with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to add that visual appearance that you want.

If you have any questions or have things you would like tutorials on feel free to leave a comment and I will definitely work to answer any questions and fulfil any request.

Five reasons to not get a roommate

2012-11-01T21:51:00.002-05:00

This is one of those times where a lot of college students or people simply moving out of their parents house consider looking for a room mate, but is that really wise? Here are a few reasons to consider otherwise.


This might be your fate.

A good friend does not make a good roommate.

Just because you can get along with your friend for a few hours on the weekend doesn't mean you will be able to handle being around them and living with them. When you live with someone you have to put up with their life styles and habits that would otherwise not really concern you.

Your roommate might not pay the rent.

In times where money is hard to come by it's a very sad fact that some people will simply not be able to pay for the rent and once you lose your room mate you risk losing your apartment as well.

Household appliances being shared.

This is a rather simple concept, depending on who you are you might need to share a stove, dish washer, microwave, or girls might want to share hair dryers, curling irons or something of that nature. The one question you have to ask yourself is if you can even handle them moving stuff around or being irresponsible with stuff you also need to use.

Sharing a fridge.

This can't be a really big deal right? Wrong, There is nothing more frustrating then storing something in the fridge and coming back with it hidden behind hundreds of drinks as well as other things you would otherwise never store in a refrigerator.

Different sleeping hours.

I know what you're thinking, "there is no way his final argument is when they go to sleep". Yeah, it is. Here is why. This is just one of those times where you have to look at the person and ask yourself "is he/she loud when they are awake?" if the answer is yes and they also stay up really late when you need to get up really early this could cause extreme problems.

Obviously everything here is strongly based on each individual but this list is meant to be a simple concept of common issues when trying to live in an apartment with someone.

Compliment everyone

2012-10-31T12:21:00.002-05:00

Why do people avoid giving compliments so much? Why can't we just compliment everyone? It doesn't seem like a bad thing to simply give everyone praise when they deserve it.

Even when someone didn't do anything spectacular they would still like to hear compliments and know that someone cares about how they look or how well they did a task.There is nothing wrong with telling someone they did a good job on something. It takes nothing from your time and it lets them know they did a good job on their task.

This kind of thing is simply something that doesn't happen enough, if people are told they did a good job then they feel their time went to a good use. It's really easy to become discouraged at anything if you aren't sure what people think about the things you do.

It's so easy to question everything you do and wonder if the people that you worked for liked it or not. How could you possibly know? You can't read that person's mind, so please, if you are ever in a position to tell someone "good job" don't let them sit there and expect them to know, simply tell them so they know they are appreciated.

There are also the more simple times when it comes down to complimenting a random stranger, what is wrong with that? Why don't more people do it? People aren't afraid to criticize strangers but when it comes to saying good things about people they seem to hold their tongue like their life depends on it.

There is nothing wrong with telling strangers something good if you truly believe it. It's mutually beneficial, it makes them feel good because someone actually pays attention and it makes you feel good because you put a smile on someone's face.

The darkness in us all.

2012-10-31T11:58:00.001-05:00


We all have a little darkness in our heart.

All of us have darkness in our heart, a voice that misleads us, destroys us, takes away the things we care about. We are all humans and we all make mistakes but what happens when those mistakes cost us something important?

It's hard to ignore the voice in our head that is constantly casting doubt in our heart, after all, so many things go wrong in life why should we expect something to actually go right? It's so hard to believe in ourselves and others, so very hard. But we must trust others, we must believe that everything will turn out for the best.

If we doubt everything then how will we ever move forward in time. Being scared of everything makes you run from everything as well. It's true that a part of us is destructive but it's everyone's choice if they act on those instincts or not.

A lot of the times our doubts are foolish doubts that we cast in fear, and it manifest itself into something that can drive you crazy. Learning to control these things is very hard for anyone. Some people have less problems then others but for some it's enough to make them want to bash their head into a wall to make it stop.

For some people they think about things like this and they fall to the voice, they believe their doubts over what they want to be true. It just seems more likely too them, but that itself seems a bit sad.

So what can we possibly do to avoid this trap we have set for ourselves? It's rather hard honestly, you have to do many things to avoid those negative thoughts. The most important is believing in yourself and the people around you.

There is no reason to ever doubt yourself, you will never betray yourself so you never have reason to have self doubt. The people who are close to you have been close to you for a reason, if you have let them get close then why are you doubting them. Trust them, and believe they will always be on your side.

What it means to grow old

2012-10-29T06:00:00.000-05:00

What does it truly mean to grow old? Most people probably think of people with wrinkles. Some probably think of becoming wiser, and some sadly think about the brittle bones of an aged body.

But does any of it really hold true? There are people who are old who look young and people who look old and are young, what caused that? Why were those people different?

While it is true that with age comes experience that experience means nothing to someone who refuses to use it to learn. Wisdom only comes from those who learn from life. There are those who are youthful who seek to learn many things.


Old but dancing beautifully.

As for aged brittle bones, there are old people who can out run me and dance with the best of them. I don't think that brittle bones comes from age as much as bad management of your body over time. Not taking care of yourself well enough adds up after 60 years, it's only natural after being abused your body would turn to dust.

I prefer the saying "You're only as old as you feel" because there are elderly people doing amazing things for people. They are living life to the fullest even at their age where most choose to simply relax. I found this photo gallery that just shows you everything I could never put into words.

If my stressful days don't get the better of me I will definitely be an elder man who is constantly running around like I'm 20 again. I don't ever really plan on stopping where I am in life. How things are now is really fun and I don't really care to stop. My job is fun, my friends, family, and girlfriend are all great and really supportive. The only thing I actually lack in life that I want is a house to call my own and a German Shepard. But if that's the worst of my complaints I think I'm doing pretty good.

Child Metality, how we can help.

2012-10-28T22:52:00.002-05:00

Child mentality is one of those things that is talked about when children are abused, I want to talk about the more broad subject of children's way of thinking without influence.

With that said let us take a quick look at the mind of a child. A child is typically very naive and innocent to how things in our world operate. I know that might sound like a bit of a cruel way of saying it but that's what it really boils down too.

It isn't their fault though, they can't help that.We all learned things through experience. A child doesn't understand the pain of being burned until he puts his hand on the stove, then he never does it again.

With that said, I think we can all agree it is our job as adults to guide them to a more direct path where they don't have to experience as many bad events to learn. Lack of knowledge is never a crime, it's simply the lack of will to use the knowledge you have that is unjust.

Putting a lit match on a puddle of gas is obviously going to cause a fire, but for those who don't know that gas is flammable it's not really their fault if they just mindless chucked a match in a puddle expecting to put the match out. This is a rather extreme example of how lack of knowledge isn't the same as doing something dumb but it is also very good at showing you a mindset that a child might have.

So, with that, considering how a child's mind works is it really okay to get mad at them for something they did that they didn't know would result in such an event? It's true, punishing them teaches them not to do that again, but at the same concept teaching them fear instead of understanding doesn't seem like an effective way to keep them from having similar incidents.

For example, imagine that we light a candle and throw a scarf on it, big fire right? We get in trouble and typical parental response is a smacking, but does that really teach him anything? Typically speaking you could argue that it teaching him if he throws a scarf on a candle he will get hurt, but what if he throws a shirt on a candle?

See how that can happen now? If you don't teach him that the problem isn't in what he did as much as the result of what he did (causing a big fire) and how to prevent such a thing from happening again (not throwing stuff on a candle) then it is easily very repeatable and explainable for a child to do a similar thing with just a slight difference in how he does it.

Teaching a child responsibility and teaching a child knowledge are two very different things, it is the job of the parent to try and explain things in the level of a child so he can understand it and keep from doing it or similar situations again.

However you also have to be careful of how you explain certain things to a child because if you make something broad seem negative and also make it sound like his fault then you can cause issues where he will make the wrong decisions later to avoid such events from happening.


Rewards can be sweet

For example, what if he just started throwing things around the store, how could you explain the problem here? The true problem is that it is causing a mess and you will have to replace anything that gets broken, but replacing stuff on a shelf doesn't seem like a good excuse to a young child who sees it as magically being there anyway.

So what do you do in this situation, well I was personally profound to find a typical response of the parent is either screaming at the child (really not going to help, sorry, you're just scaring him and drawing even more attention) or telling him a lie to prevent him from doing it. What if you tell him something to induce fear again? Bad idea and here is why.

What happens if the lie is something like "because everyone will make fun of you" or "everyone will think badly of us" well then, what happens when they get to school? They become very easily influenced by the slightest peer pressure. Drug use and rebellion are right around the corner.

Well that didn't work, so now what? What if we try something magical? "Because Santa won't visit you if you act that way." Okay that's cool, teach them self control by using Santa, this too can backfire though. When they get older and forget Santa they might also forget their self control.

They could have replaced Santa with something else to keep their self control in check but it's highly possible they didn't. So honestly what is the right solution to this problem? Teach them responsibility in the closet way to how the real world would, have him do chores equivalent to the amount of damage he caused. Have this as a possible money value, this teaches him that if he ever does anything that destroys something he will have to pay money for it.

There are a ton of similar situations like this that happen every day. We wonder why the generations are getting so rowdy but I honestly believe that it is the way parents are handling punishment. I'm not saying they are bad parents, I know good people who have crazy kids, it's simply their lack of knowledge as to a good way to approach a situation that causing the bad outcome. It's not really their fault, they just didn't know any better.

I'm really interested in anything that anyone of you readers would like to add to this or similar experiences you have had in the past.

Money talks and people listen

2012-10-28T06:00:00.000-05:00

Yes you are reading this right, when that little green piece of paper starts having a voice, people start opening their ears. But what really happens when money talks? From my experience mostly bad things happen.


This is your wallet.

Cash has this funny way of saying "haha you don't have enough of me" a LOT and it's really frustrating. You know why rich people still don't think they have enough? It's because even though the money quit talking to them they are still hearing it in their head, they were scarred by the voice mocking them.

Crazy right? I know. But really, how many times a month, a week, a day, do you just wish you had a little bit more dough on you? I think that way every day, If I had enough money I would fly every day. Now you know why I'm broke.

What about that saying that people always use? "People who don't need money always get it." Isn't that how it goes? Things like "The rich get richer" only happen because they never stop doing what they have been doing the entire time to make money. They have been driven by it the entire way and will probably be that way their entire life.

Just like they keep doing what they are doing most people in life keep doing the same things over and over again in life expecting a golden egg to just drop in front of them without any effort in their part. Go to work, get home, do nothing, go to sleep, wake up, go back to work. This is a really common pattern I have seen constantly throughout my life.

It's a constant problem with people that they just blame something else, it's so easy to put the blame on something and look away right? When that one dollar bill starts mocking you for not having a hundred you just turn to the first thing you can and blame it for your problems. Trust me, blaming something else doesn't make that one into a hundred any quicker, I have tried that.

I'm an avid believer that for any good change in your life to happen you have to change yourself first. Nothing ever comes to you just for you breathing air. Anything good in your life you have because of something you did, because after all, we are born with nothing.

Halloween candy: good or bad?

2012-10-27T13:37:00.002-05:00


Trick or Treat

Halloween, that really cool holiday where kids dress up in costumes and go out seeking their candy by saying "trick or treat" about 200 times in one night. And for some, a night where ticks are the preferred gift of the darkness.

But is it really such a good thing for kids to be retrieving so many sugar coated gifts in one night? The is a holiday feared by dentist. Cavities don't scare children though, why should it? It's hard to fear something just because someone tells you to, especially to the innocence of children who haven't learned of the cruelty of the world.

So how do we control such a thing? Who do we blame for the worst of all cavities? Do we blame the gift givers who's goal is making children smile and be happy? Do we blame the parents who let their kids trick or treat all night and eat half their candy before morning?

How can we really blame anyone for such things, it seems weird to think about but this is a real problem. Halloween serves a few goal purposes for children. It lets them dress up, this if fun for all kids, they get to become their favourite thing for one night without anyone judging them.

It gives them a way to show off their costumes in the event of trick or treating where most people who do give candy will also compliment their costume. This can help raise self confidence within children.

The act of receiving sweets is to persuade them to keep going on which is highly effective and lets them have a lot of fun.

So how do we continue this ritual where we can continue giving kids an amazing night without giving their parents and dentist. Honestly I haven't been able to think of a proper solution to this problem, candy is cheap so many people can participate in giving away candy which is what makes it so effective.

Candy also knows no difference in gender, if you made Halloween a day where you give away toys it would be a lot more expensive and there would be an issue of what you do with the stuff you don't give away as well as many other problems.

Looking at it from this perspective you can really understand why things are the way they are and haven't really changed, but I still feel not all ideas have really been thought of when considering this problem and would love to hear from you all about this and see what you think on the issue and possible solutions.

Happy to be alive

2012-10-26T18:41:00.000-05:00


Do you feel the same?

That isn't something we feel we get to say very much, being happy to be alive. How did it come to be where people simply didn't care or people treated life like it didn't matter to them anymore.

How can we as humans continue to hate everything about what we do in life and still live it. What if I told you there was a way out. What if I told you the only thing from keeping joyous feelings from overcoming you is yourself.

I promise you it's true. But I know what you're thinking too, cause I thought that way too. "Yeah right, we really just don't want happiness." Sarcasm is your worst enemy here I'm telling you. Turning something serious into a joke is the first step to ignoring the problems in life.

The first thing you have to accept is to change the things causing you pain and sorrow is that you have to change yourself. Hence why I say you are your own enemy. How many people here hate their current lifestyle?

How many of you who answered yes do the same things over and over again? Here is just something to really thing about here, how do you possibly expect the things around you to change if you stay the same?

How many of you don't spend much time with your kids? How many of you that answered yes say so because you don't have time because of work? I don't want to hear it. One of my best friends works 80 hours a week to pay for the apartment, food and everything else for his child but guess what, there are 168 hours in a week.

Even working 80 hour weeks that leaves you 86 hours. Assuming you're an average person and sleep 8 hours a night that still leaves you 24 hours of time to be awake. What the heck are you doing with those extra 24 hours if you are wanting too spend time with your kid? He makes time for it between all his housework that he has to do, getting food, and everything else in his life.

I dare anyone who doesn't work more then 100 hours a week to blame their job, no, it's your fault. You are unhappy because you choose to spend the time you had doing something you didn't want too do instead of spending it with your child.

You could make the argument "Well I have to do dishes and cook ect." Yeah and your point is? Why not ask your kid to help you. If they truly love you they will help you out knowing how busy you are and will love to spend the extra time with you even if it's doing chores. "What if they don't?" Then it sounds like you need to patch a relationship and try to talk too them to figure out why they don't like you.

My point is people always go around complaining about unhappiness and saying stuff like "why can't I be happy" it's because you're too busy crying about little things and not thinking about how to fix the problems in your life. You give up before you even begin. That simply shouldn't happen. You can't let yourself fall into that trap or joy will never find you.

Color: How everything we see isn't real

2012-10-23T15:09:00.000-05:00

Have you ever thought about what we see, or better yet, how we see things? I have, many times over, probably too much for my own good. How about the colors we see? have you ever thought about all the things we see and how boring they would be in just black and white?

How boring would your life be if you didn't have any colors to express some kind of emotions. If there was only black and white then everything would look the same, flowers would lose their magic, clothes would lose some of their representations on our personalities.

But here is where things become odd, look around you for a moment, take in all the colors you eyes see. Now realize that they are all fake. None of the things we see are colored the color we see them as.

To understand this you must understand how we see colors. We see colors as a reflection of light. This means that the colors that are absorbed by the object are never shown to us, only the colors that are reflected.

If everything is simply a color reflected to us you could kind of thing of it like a mirror when you shine a colored light on it. If you shine a read light on it then it reflects the light back at you, letting you see red.

When looking at it like this you can conclude that everything you see is actually the opposite of reality. This is a really interesting concept for the simple fact that we never really consider things that are part of our day to day life and it's something fun to think about. Consider what the "true" color of the things you're looking at are next time you have free time and let me know what you come up with.

Love and Relationships, how and why we are involved

2012-10-22T19:46:00.000-05:00

From the perspective of a normal day with normal people with normal marriages, what is a relationship? Really, how do you define who you love and want to marry and who you just want to hang out with on the weekend.

It seems really strange the way we as people think about some things like that. The human mind is very interesting in the sense that we all think about relationships differently.

People marry for different reasons, some people marry because of safety, the person they are with makes them feel very safe and secure. This could be because during their life they never really had anything stable and it makes them feel comfortable to finally have that feeling.

There are also people who marry others who are completely different from them for the very reason that they are different. They like being around someone who isn't like them or their friends, someone who can be refreshing in their life and someone they will never tire of.

Yes, there are those who marry for money, but honestly I'm not going to discuss that because that's not a real marriage or love, just greed. Those people aren't good subjects to talk about when discussing real relationships and will be avoided. Though if you are one of those people you are free to give your opinion on the subject of course. :)

Then there is just that perfect couple, the two who married just because they clicked. There is nothing that they don't agree with and they are always having fun together and love their life every second of the way.

But how do people find that magic, the part of them that they want to spend their life with forever. That too is different for everyone.

Some people go out to singles meetings which is a cool idea. If you join a singles group for something like hiking because you like going hiking then you are already put in an environment with people who have a similar interest too you. If this sounds like your way of doing things I strongly recommend looking around google for a local group that you can join.

Some people just go to places like bars and just "play slots" almost with people and just see if one of them will go out with them. I personally don't see this as a very effective way to find a "loving" relationship because you are most likely selecting people based on appearance and that seems more like a lustful relationship instead of a loving relationship plan. But that is obviously just my opinion, you might think otherwise.

A lot of happily married people I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking with however, met through pure chance and accident. To rely on such an accident to happen to you is unrealistic because it's a random encounter, but maybe that is part of the magical moment. This is something that can only happen if you are open to talking to people you encounter, being closed off will lead to knowing no one, and knowing no one will lead to loneliness, not just in a relationship but in friendships as well.

Our life and the happiness we seek.

2012-10-21T01:46:00.000-05:00

How many times have we said we were going to do something and never really done it? How many times have we set goals for ourselves just to push it off and say we will do it next time.

These type of events occur all the time for almost everyone but the problem is when this becomes a habit when time for us gets lower every second. Why do we allow ourselves to be absorbed in this crazy society where you are tricked into believing you have to have a lot of money to be happy.

What if getting that kind of money makes you miserable and by the time you actually obtain it the things you wanted to do with it become impossible. What happens when you put other things before your own happiness.

What happens when you decide that you are willing to give up everything you have for some greater good that isn't all that great. "there is always tomorrow" is something I hear people say sometimes. I couldn't disagree more. People are never promised a tomorrow so why would you ever put off something you want to do when you may never get a chance to do it again?

Unfortunately following our goals and dreams take a lot more then that though. The biggest problem is knowing what we really want in life. Comparing what we want with what we "think" we want is sometimes a very difficult thing to do. What we want is true happiness, what we think we want is something that will only bring us a temporary happiness.

So how does one become happy? It is my belief that the first step that is universal for everyone to becoming happy is to remove all the negative, angry, sad, or depressing influences in your life. It is very difficult to be happy when you constantly have people or things in your life that are trying to bring you down.

If there are people in your life that are always negative or complaining you should probably just never talk too them again because they are not contributing to you at all. I'm not saying to ignore your friends when they are going through hard times but if someone is just constantly negative you really shouldn't be around them.

The second step to becoming happy in my opinion is to find things or people who make you happy and surround yourself with them. If you like reading then make a habit of visiting the library every so often. If you like swimming find a public swimming pool and go there every so often. If you like something like bowling which cost money just go to the bowling alley from time to time and watch other people, spend some time at the local pro shop. Just do anything that gets you a little closer to the things you like.

"I don't have time" or "I will do it later" aren't good excuses. No stop it right now, don't do that to yourself. Everyone has time, they just feel like laying dead in front of a TV when they finally get it instead of doing something that could lift their spirits. Saying you will do it later is like saying you are never going to do it. What defines the word "later" for most people? What is to keep you from not just saying it again tomorrow?

Don't put off things for a tomorrow that isn't guaranteed. Don't say you don't have time when time is all we have in life. Our time might be short but all the more reasons to make it worth every second we are alive.

Even good dreams are nightmares.

2012-10-14T03:08:00.000-05:00

Tonight I am writing this with the idea of pleasant dreams. Have you ever heard someone say that and actually thing about something nice? It seems kind of silly to me really, why would you want someone to dream something nice? Shouldn't you wish them something more productive? Like finishing the project for their job or something? Wishing good dreams, a fantasy, just seems silly.

With that point stated I have to say that even good dreams are nightmares to some people. I mean, what could possibly be worse then starting off the day waking up from the best dream of your life to continue your normal boring routine. You feel disappointed, sad, ready to go back to sleep. You don't feel like working at all.

Good dreams are only good for the moment when you're asleep, they distract you from everything after that point though. Some people don't ever think about their dreams after waking up so for those of you reading who are like this you probably think that is silly but some people really think about their dreams.

I can't think of a good dream I have ever had that I was happy to wake from, though this could be very dangerous for someone easily influenced because they are unhappy with their normal life. They would dwell on their dreams and try to sleep as much as possible. This is a terrible way to try and live, living in a fantasy is not really living.

For me personally I would much rather start the day waking up to a bad dream, waking up to a bad dream makes me relieved that it's not true and I look forward to the normal day more. But what do you think? Would you prefer to wake to a good or a bad dream?

National vodka day, wait... this exist?

2012-10-04T21:34:00.001-05:00

If any of you are like me you are wondering why is there a day on our calendar to celebrate vodka. This is a very confusing thing to me and one thing that I wonder is that if the vodka companies are responsible for it.

This is all just a thought and all of us can obviously think of a thousand different reasons why this exist but let's talk about some, discuss them, and wonder what could be true.

While the origin of the holiday can't be tracked we all know it is there, a day to celebrate a drink, a day to encourage drinking, and a day to forget about tomorrow. Sounds great right? While I don't really endorse the idea of drinking it is very interesting to me how something like this could become a holiday so I would like to talk about it.

Back to my earlier point, I think this could of been something related to the day when vodka became the most popular spirit in North America. This is only a sound thought if the holiday started after it became popular.

Another Idea would be to think that the vodka companies declared it a holiday a long time ago to raise the popularity and increase sales of vodka similar to how stores increase sells for Christmas. This isn't completely impossible.

My final idea for what could of happened is that a group of people simply declared it "vodka day" for them, their friends, or family. This could of simply spread to many other people as well.

Since the origin of the holiday is unknown the real reason for it may never come to life but it could of been anything as silly as a bunch of people starting a tradition to a company trying to make an amazing profit.

What about all of you? What do you think is the source of national vodka day and how do you think it got started?

Why do we judge?

2012-10-03T23:42:00.000-05:00

Why do people judge others? Why do people find it necessary to judge others? Have we forgotten that we are all humans and should be treated as humans? I think some of us have indeed forgotten this important fact.

Let us think about this logically for a moment, starting with the most common judgement that some people make. The judgement based on race. Think about this one for a moment, and I mean really think about it. How dumb is it to judge someone based on skin color? Something they have no control over.

You have never met this person, and you see the color of his or her skin and you instantly have an impression of the kind of person they are. How is something like that even relevant to who they are? They didn't choose what their skin color was when they were born.

There are plenty of stereotypes that people judge others on unjustly. Appearance doesn't matter, what we know, what we are capable of, how we act, these are the things that matter.

Let us take a simple example real quick to prove a point. There might be a homeless man somewhere who knows the best construction tricks in the trade, only reason he might be homeless is because the company he worked for went under because of the economy. I can already hear the criticism on this comment, "If he was so great why didn't he get another job?" If people aren't hiring then they simply aren't hiring, it doesn't matter how good you are, to some companies that would even be bad because they know you would want more money.

After that person loses everything it becomes even more impossible to find something because he is homeless, a company will typically not hire someone who doesn't seem very reliable and someone without a home or way of transport wouldn't seem very reliable. From that point any preset skills he had wouldn't even matter to the company.

Another popular argument would be "they can't discriminate who they hire, it's illegal." Maybe not but I promise you that if they don't like you they will find even a very tiny reason on your job application or resume to turn you down.

So again, the question remains, why do we judge? There are a lot of good people that could of been the best of friends if they didn't judge each other. There could be a lot of amazing people working in a lot of different fields if they weren't judged for things outside their control. This world could be even more amazing, if we simply didn't judge others unjustly.

No one wants to talk to guys.

2012-09-16T12:16:00.001-05:00

Okay so I promised a friend I would do a post on stem cell research but this is the thought in my head right now so that can wait.

Guys, strangers never want to talk to you just to talk.

Girls get approached by guys who hit on them, girls who compliment them, ect. But really, when were any of you male readers talked to by someone you didn't know where they said something first?

Was it the girl at the bar who really just wants to prove to herself that she is attractive? Was it someone on hard times trying to borrow money? Or was it simply someone who needed to vent to you? Why did people stop wanting to talk just to talk?

I think the biggest cause of this is just the general idea of how guys are, even in the idea of other guys. The world is just sexist. I know that is weird but think about it, really think about it. Crazy right?

Ladies, you have no idea what I'm talking about, and while I'm sure it's annoying to be hit on a lot, in typical guy fashion I think we got the worst end of the deal.

Making money on the internet, do they get too much?

2012-09-01T10:57:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone, how have you been? Today I would like to talk about people who make a living on things they do on the internet.

For me this is a great way for someone to make money especially since the economy is the way it is and it's harder to find a job now. But what I want to address is, are people getting paid too much?

It has been something I have been thinking about for a while but when it comes right down to it people on youtube are just making videos, some of them very simple videos. These people are getting paid a really good chunk of money to do it as well.

Mind you all of them that get paid a lot, get paid through advertisements which means they are getting paid solely based on their popularity encouraging great content from them, but this doesn't really change that they are getting paid to post youtube videos.

Now the counter argument to this would be obvious "they spend their time and life developing those videos and it's their only source of income so why shouldn't they get paid for that kind of dedication?" Yeah, true, they are doing that. But my argument to that is, getting paid enough to live, and getting paid enough to live luxuriously are completely different.

Let us look at facebook for a quick moment to prove that point, they have an expected revenue of 5 billion dollars for 2012. This is a simple social networking site, that, just by existing is expected to generate 5 billion dollars, that is a absolutely ridiculous sum of money for a website.

Now before anyone chooses to bite my head off for the "simple" comment about facebook, yes I know they have multiple people working on it and they are constantly updating and ect. I'm saying that as a fellow programmer I understand the amount of work it takes to do something like that, and while it would take a large amount of time the coding aspect of it is rather simple by itself.

What I mean by that is simple, you don't need a group of professionals to make the site work, just a group of mid-high level experienced web programmers. The proof to that I suppose would be the ton of facebook clones that exist, though there is never any point in making a clone because people aren't normally going to jump shift for a site that is trying to be exactly like facebook with nothing new.

But I end my arguments there, what do you all think about it? Think certain people or sites make too much money? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Formalities, what caused them to disappear.

2012-08-28T21:47:00.000-05:00

When you look at formalities what are the first words that come to your mind? For me it's sir and ma'am.

Holding the door open for strangers, being polite, saying thank you, all of these things seem like a lost art.

Everywhere I go I continue to see rude, stuck up teenagers with no respect at all. I'm not saying all young people are bad because that would be bashing myself (I'm 20 for anyone wondering) but the majority are definitely a lot ruder then they should be.

What is to blame for this behaviour though? Has America just generally changed what they find acceptable and the youth changed with it?

I think one of the key problems in the world right now is that not enough people think about a very key saying anymore, "lead by example". So many people don't consider that kids watch them trying to learn from them and forget to be good role models.

I think another issue is that people are constantly being exposed to violent, immoral content. One of the cruellest things that has become true because of TV and the internet is the simple fact people are more exposed to the stupid crap that goes on around the world.

As a programmer it's really a conflict of interest for me to be bashing technology but in all honesty it's the truth. Whenever you talk to older people a lot of the times they will say something along the lines of "the world was a lot better back 50 years ago." But that's not really the truth.

The issue isn't that people weren't crazy 50 years ago, humans haven't really changed all that much, what we have has changed but we as creatures haven't really changed at all.

The reason people believe things were better back then is because even when crazy stuff happened they just never knew about it, they were ignorant to what was happening and sometimes ignorance is happiness.

Ways to transfer news was very limited back then and it was simply a matter of people not knowing what was going on. Today we get to hear it all, most of the time a LOT. News casters have a funny habit of talking about the most depressing stuff 6 times a week and then only slightly depressing stuff the rest of the time.

An example of this is the batman shooting, if you were on the east coast that would of never reached your ears, you would of gone your entire life not knowing about it.

Same with most of the things that happen in the middle east that don't directly affect America, while I know it sounds bad to say this, people are better off not knowing about stuff like that when they have absolutely zero power to change any of it.

I simply believe that a combination of the extreme exposure of the reality of this messed up world along with the poor role models in society have truly just made people forget how to treat each other.

What are your beliefs on the matter? Regardless if you agree with me or think I'm crazy I want to hear what you think about the subject so please leave a comment with your thoughts.

Why money ruins people.

2012-08-27T11:33:00.001-05:00

We have all heard the saying "money ruins people" and most of us have experiences the snobby rich person stereotype. But how does someone who you once considered a decent person become that way?

It's obvious to you that the only thing that changed was the amount of money in his pocket so you conclude money did it.

What I'm about to suggest might seem odd to you, you might even disagree completely. That's fine, but even if you disagree please read until the end.

What if the money itself didn't ruin them? What if the task of getting all the money is what ruined them. The constant thinking of how to get more, the length they went to get that money.

Now consider this thought process, what if they were truly always the way they are now but they simply never had enough money to be their true self.

Or maybe they saw it disadvantageous to act like themselves while they didn't have enough money to support themselves on their own.

Or, just maybe, all the people sucking up to them while they were being pricks gave them the impression that the way they act didn't matter.

I mean honestly, how would you react if you punched someone randomly and people still sucked up to you? That would encourage a lot of people to keep acting that way with the thought "I punched someone and even more people came to suck up to me".

So where is the real issue here? Personally I believe it is an issue with morals, people have become desensitized to violence and simple don't care or they applaud the outburst.

Look at celebrities for example, people applaud celebrities when they have outburst. It simply gets them a bigger following, so why wouldn't they continue acting that way? Gets them more money so why not, right?

This isn't to say it doesn't get them in trouble with the media at times, but their fans generally go wild about it.

So what are your thoughts about all of it? Do you think that money is the real thing that ruins people or do you think there is more then meets the eye?

How does anger affect us?

2012-08-26T12:58:00.000-05:00

This is a more in-depth thought process behind anger and how it affects us in different ways and how we handle it.

So, everyone experiences anger at some point and time during their life, quite frequently for a lot of people. But what causes it and what are the side affects for us?

For me specifically, anger makes me really sad, I tend to turn anger into self hatred. I don't like expressing anger towards people who don't deserve it so when I can't handle it then it turns into a self targeted attack on myself.

This type of anger can very easily cause depression in people because they are always attacking themselves with all their negative feelings and don't have a proper outlet. But what about people with external anger?

People with external anger tend to express whatever displeased them right away and target the source of the anger, this is a very quick release to the anger and mentally probably the most healthy, but the issue is controlling the level of that anger.

If you get too angry, or become overly expressive towards something people would consider minor, it could really ruin relationships or make people who saw the outburst think a lot less of you.

Anger overall is generally nothing more then a negative emotion, no positive feelings really ever come from anger. I'm not saying it's not possible for something positive to come from getting angry but anger itself generally is very negative.Have you ever had a positive angry feeling? Leave a comment if you have, I'm really interested to hear what you have to say.

But what about what causes anger? This again is very subjective to the person in question. For a lot of us we generally have a set of rules on how to live and what angers us is generally anything outside the scope of those rules.

Here are a few simple examples that can be commonly seen in public: Bringing a child to a restaurant, to a lot of people, is extremely annoying if the child is really loud.

Pets, seems strange but some people are just outright against people owning pets, and some people just don't like pets because of the general amount of work when taking care of them.

What really annoys me and makes me angry sometimes is when people mess up my food, I'm a bit of a food fanatic and love to eat so when my food is wrong it completely ruins the experience. I logically tell myself that mistakes happen and that it's not their fault and I shouldn't get angry and time moves forward.

Another thing that bothers me is when people smoke in a public place, most restaurants and other places have banned smoking but for the places that still let people smoke inside. Just seems a bit insensitive to me that people don't care how much it bothers the people around them when they smoke.

What makes you angry? How do you deal with it? Why do you deal with things the way you do? Have you ever thought about it seriously before? Leave a comment, let me know what you think.