The Groundhog Day Challenge

Sick and tired of never sticking to your New Years Resolutions? Well quit trying so hard, and have fun with yours. I invite you, and anyone you wish to join me in what I have dubbed it, The Groundhog Day challenge.

It all started with a friend of mine telling me, "Man if I could wake up everyday to that song for the rest of my life, it would rule."

Which gave me a daring idea. What if for everyday for 2008, I woke up with my CD player alarm clock to the same song. No matter what. It reminded me of the movie, Groundhog Day, and I was having trouble picking the song I know I would hate. In spirit of the movie, and title of the challenge, I chose the first song that Bill Murray's character hears every morning.

"I've got you Babe", by Sonny & Cher.

Now I would like to extend this challenge out to anyone who so desires to join, and I'd like to keep a list of everyone who starts, and mark you off as you lose out. Leave a comment with your name, and I'll add you to the list.

Get ready. The new year is just around the corner.

Connecting the dots

click on the image to zoom in.

Bandaid Logic circuit

Why I sleep comfortably at night.

The Truth

Intelligence. All of my life peope have told me I am intelligent. For awhile I beileve it, and then all of a sudden one day, I just changed my mind. I "woke up" in the real world. Nah, they just said it to be nice. Everyone says it about their own kids, their own students, and any other mediocre person they were trying to look nice too. So then I started to test myself. I'd try to do rediculous things just to see if I could do them. No need to state them here, most of you should know me well enough to know some of them. So then I took the ACT, aka the Intelligence test. The whose who of anywho you're trying to impress. I scored a 25. Not bad, but if you told someone got a 25, I wouldn't call them intelligent. I never studied for it, just showed up for the test that saturday morning when I much would have rathered sitting on my computer probably reading waste of time websites. I took computer Science. It just looked interesting to me, honestly that was why I tried it. Infact it scared me. A branch of computers I've nevever touched, what the hell am I thinking? I don't want to lose my sweet Haxor street cred. So I took it anyway, and ended up making my way to the group of students in the class who were in the top 5% of my graduating class. You know the kids who use the random feature on wikipedia as a trivia tool....for fun. I didn't get it. I thought the class was easy, Iearned the current classes concepts by working on something we wouldn't "get around to" in the class. I stayed with that group for the remainder of the yaer, and ended up being one of 3 who actually went into computer science as their field in college. I had proved my teacher wrong on a concept, and in doing so won the "program of the year" award at the end of the year, which in itself suprised me becuase I didn't even go to the awards ceremony, a friend of mine told me. I had friends who struggled through assignments that I would complete within the time it took the teacher to explain them. In a field teachers twice my age said was for "geniuses" (whom which I had and did fairly average in their classes), my only exlpanation was that it just came easy to me. I think the average ACT score for the rest of my Computer Science group was easily above a 32. The kind of scores you get when you go to harvard, when you go to school for free, scratch that, when you are paind to go for free. Stuff that doesn't happenw hen you go to a local college with a 25. |||So then continued the tests. i'd get bored and try to perfect something, sit and figure out lock combinations. Minesweeper, A 98 seems high, but I've only met 1 other person to ever do it in person. Sure the world record is like 39, but the one person who could keep up with me isn't exactly a social butterfly (not saying I am, but I do actually like people alot), went to a private school for the last two years of her high school career, so I'm cool with that. Bowling, i was the team captain after only bowling for a year on my own. I dunno, I guess I just pick up on stuff easily. Same with countless other games and activities, they just kind of clicked, and then one day I met the rubik's cube. Another challenge? Why not. It's something to do right. It might be the metaphor of nerd, but I never said I wasn't. I'd like to think I'm not, but who am I to tell anyone what I am. Oh the Irony. So how did I handle the cube? After 3 days of figuring out it on my own, I managed to solve 2/3rds of it using pure logic. Being the impation person I am I looked up how to solve the last layer using a "formula". eww, gross, a formula. Cheating? You could say so. So I "perfected" the cube to my standards. A toy that has been out for 20 years or so, and after 4 months, I consistently solve it in about a minute. Granted the record is something rediculous like 10 seconds, but the average learning curve for the rubik's cube didn't exactly include me. So I moved onto a new challenge, the 5x5x5 rubik's cube, the Professors cube. I made 1 rule. no strait up formulas. None, nada, nein, uhh-uhh. When I bought it, the store owner told me that the 3x3x3 is cool, but if you can solve the 5x5x5, that is something to be proud of. I took me 3 weeks of near continous train travel, but with the technique and no formulas, I solved all but 2 pieces. For the first time in a long time, I was proud of my self. I bought the 2x2x2, and the 4x4x4 and solved both in less than 48 hours. Sure, people say you are intelligent if you can solve the 3x3x3, but after accomplishing more than that, my reasoning says exactly the same. "If you look at it logically, its not really that hard." I don't feel smart, shit just makes sense to me. I made a rule that I can never walk and solve a rubik's cube, so I don't look like a nerd. As much as ive gotten into Rubik's cubes, I've stuck with that rule. I went to Europe with 3 people I didn't know. Now 3 weeks in, 2 of them ahve bought Rubik's cubes, and I'm teaching them how to solve it. I don't agree with them on a personality leve, but they are cool and we get along well enough. One of them got a 30 something on the ACT and we differ greatly with our viewpoints. Is he more intelligent than me? Am I than him? Whose to decide, and if you decide what do you base it on. He's got me with the numbers, but I was teaching him the nerd toy. I'm one of the more random people you will ever meet. Just gon a half our car ride with me when I have all of my music on me. Metal. Pop. Folk. Rock. Jazz. Lounge. Rap. You'll hear it all, and not in blocks... compeltely randomly, and its not becuase I don't care because you'll also find out just as quickly, I am a music nazi, of the himler variety. I will insult your musical taste, just to see how you will react. I'll turn the cube just to see how the pieces will move. One by one until they fall into place. But not just any place. my place, where I want them to go. On a long enough time line you can grasp any concept. This essay has been one strait stream of consciousness, and I'm not the best at grammar, I just don't erally care. So I'm going to leave this esssay as is without having the polishing period to straigten all of my lines and make sense of all these passing thoughts. I'll leave it to my natural intelligence, so I don't fake a word. So the big question, Am I intelligent? you decide. Who'se to say anything I said is mroe intelligent than say washing your car, becuase I'm not about to. That would be inconsiderate.

Tonight is one of those nights
where you feel like a dock floating calmly
above the rocking waves as all of the ships rungs slip untied.
Everythings great, but you can see whats unraveling infront of your eyes.
The boats all slowly drift away in their own directions.
Too many ships to catch.
Too little time to try.
Ize.