Wow

I just realized that someone born in 1990 is now old enough to vote.

That just made me feel like an old man.

Hillary?

Really Florida? are you serious. Oh well, FLA doesn't count for the Dems anyway.

Good job McCain.

And what's up with Ron Paul?

IF you are in Florida

Go vote. No excuse.

DUDE

Is this commercial awesome or what?

Bummer

I had quit the Robotics team.

It was too much. I feel really bad, but school and work are taking up most of my time.

Stuck doing homework

So on Tuesday I freaked out, why? I opened up my UF inbox to find that a Homework had been posted, I said to myself, cool! my first Grad-School project...well, that sucker was six pages long, just to explain what I have to do, and to top it off, I had to read it a couple of times to comprehend just what the hell they were asking me to do. Basically I have to write a program that simulates multiple tasks running at the same time, kind of what happens when you have multiple windows open in your PC.

My problem is that I stress out about this things, when I look at a problem and I don't know what to do about it, I get restless, this whole week I've had this homework in the back of my head and today I am resolved to getting it done, it was so bad this week that I actually had a dream about it. In my dream I am teaching Anthony how to program Java so that he could do my project while I'm at work,

ME-"Anthony, you have nothing to do all day, here, let show you how to implement Intrinsic Locks and Synchronization"

ANTHONY-"OK Daddy"

ME-"Great, Mua Haa Haa Haa(evil laugh)"

I woke up alarmed at myself, but I actually considered it for half a second...but nah, he's too young, and I don't want to raise a little hacker anyway.

So this is Saturday for me folks. Just me in the Monkey House doing some homework.


J.V.

Little pearl brought to you by the web

As those of you who've seen my facebook profile know, I am a big fan of aphorisms, you can get me to read any random disparate rant if you just put it in a list. But enough about me, I found this list of tips from someone who just turned 50, I really liked it, so I will post it here.

"50 things I've learned in 50 years, a partial list in no particular order"

Good Bye Bill

Back to school again

Well, it had to happen, my vacation days are over, and I'm back to school, after a year hiatus I felt the familiar pang of my first day of class, only that today, there was no long drive to campus, no hassle looking for a parking spot, no rush to get to class to get a good seat. I am a distance student at the University of Florida, the good ol' FLA Gators (which they sucked this year in football btw...lose to Michigan? really? come on!) Anyway, so today I had my first lecture as an official Grad student. It feels no different than my two years ago to be honest. I got a little anxious when I heard that I had to write a research paper. I thought to myself...shit! I forgot about those! I was never good at writing those things. Oh well,

ROBOTS!

My favorite thing about writing software...you guessed it, I get to play with Robots.
I get to mentor a local high school team to design, build, test and compete with a Robot. Here's the competition kickoff video:




We are going to go to Orlando, New Jersey and Atlanta to compete against some very smart people. It's going to be a lot of work to get a robot to do all those things, but it's fun work. I look forward to it.

The Fam

Anthony is getting so big so damn fast, he's pretty smart for a two year old, but so far he uses his wits to get his way, I can tell that we are going to have our hands full with that one...where does he get all that stuff? I've got to wonder..was I that bad? I don't think I was as crazy as him.

Gaby rules the house with an Iron fist. I think she's so spoiled, but I can't help it. It's easier for me to discipline Anthony, but it's going to be hard to do with my daughter, good thing that Martha is there to balance things out, I know that Anthony is always going to be Mama's boy. And that's ok, I still have so many things that I look forward to doing with him. I have about 11 more years until he's a teenager and then things will get rough. Hopefully if we do things right the first years, puberty and adolescence won't be so bad.

Good books

Right now I am working on War and Peace. Little by little I'll get trough it, I got it for Christmas and I didn't think I would have the time to read it, but I could not help myself and I started it. If I had more time I could read it in a month, but since I am kind of busy I am reading it at the leisure pace of roughly 15 pages per day, at that rate I will done by late April, just in time for finals.

Over the break I read The Idiot, excellent tragedy by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Also I read an interesting book about the Bible: Misquoting Jesus.

Well, it's back to work tomorrow.

So long.

I'm on vacation!

Well, relatively speaking, I am not at work, so by default that means I am on "vacation" ha ha, vacation, that's funny, that word implies rest, peace and tranquility, well, I sort of remember what that used to be like, the year was 1995 and I had a peaceful day, well, back to reality, I am sitting at home, Anthony is trying to take over the laptop, he just tried to attack me with a pen, Martha yelled something but I can't really make it out, I have her tuned out with my Ipod. let's see, where was I...oh yeah, so I am on vacation.

On Thursday we came back from vacationing in Orlando. It was good, we went to Epcot, Magic Kingdom and Seaworld then we went to Kennedy Space Center in Cape Cannaveral, I must say the latter was my favorite, but I really like going to Orlando, there's something about those parks that make you feel like you are somewhere special. The NASA trip always makes me wish that I worked there. I bet those Engineers really like their job. Maybe someday...

Anyway, last night Anthony was a little sick, now, that's something, I don't have the stomach to see sick people, but when I see my own son not doing well, it feels like some hidden paternal instincts kick in. I wanted to do whatever it takes to make them feel better. Well, everybody understands that. So he had a little fever last night, but he's doing better now.

So that's my vacation so far. The beginning of next year is going to be a little busy. I start Graduate school in January, also, I am participating in FIRST, a high school robotic competition sponsored by Motorola, I am really excited about that, I really want to encourage local, American talent to get interested in Science, Engineering and Technology, we used to be the world's most technologically advanced country. Now days the majority of high school grads can't find Iraq on the map. I want to help change that.

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm spending Thanksgiving day at my parent's house. This should be interesting.
More later.

J.V.

Two lives blurred together by a photo

I feel for this guy, another casualty of PSDT. Read the full story here.

J.V.

November 10, 1775

Happy 232nd Birthday to the United States Marine Corps.

Semper Fidelis.

Kamran

My good friend Kamran gets a year older tomorrow. Happy birthday old man, I love you like a brother.

Miami

The weather is so nice down here, this is my favorite time of the year, it's nice and mild, today it was in the 60's... absolutely gorgeous.

Work

I wrote some code that turned evil and is making the Radio do bad things. I've been looking for the bug all this week, the only good thing I can say is that it's been a learning experience. Reality: it's work, but I still like my job. Very interesting work, good people to work with.

Family

I love those monkeys more than anything in this planet. They make me laugh everyday, but damn, they test my patience as well. Raising them is going to be a challenge, I already think I made a mistake somewhere, Anthony is so rough with other people, I don't know what to do. But I think it will turn out ok.

Book I'm reading

The Oral History of Buster Casey. I used to like Palahniuk, Fight Club and Invisible Monsters were good read, but his later stuff feels like more of the same, although the plots vary, the formula feels the same: confuse the hell out of people and at the end everything comes together to reveal some grotesque fact that supposedly shocks you or something. I'm bored.

What's on my head

Ever since I read the book The World is Flat, by Tom Friedman, I've been interested fascinated by India. I am setting out to learn more about this sub-continent.

Interesting Web Article

The web is full of good stuff (like this blog...ok, no more bad jokes) I found this article very interesting.
It's called "An Economist walks into a bar and solves the mysteries of dating". It talks about an experiment done at Columbia University about the statistics of attraction. Good read, it confirms and busts some stereotypes that come up when it comes to that.

Radiohead

OK Computer (1997)
The Tourist

It barks at no-one else but me like it's seen a ghost
I guess it seen the sparks, a flowing no one else would know
Hey man slow down, slow down, idiot slow down, slow down

Sometimes I get overcharged that's when you see sparks
You ask me where the hell I'm going at thousand feet per second?
Hey man, slow down, slow down, idiot slow down, slow down

Hey man, slow down, slow down, idiot slow down, slow down

I wish I could explain how much I can relate to this song. I can't.

Just a random thought, do not read too much into it.

My Day

Today Anthony almost choked to death on a Halloween candy, Martha was at the store, he just got the damn thing stuck in his throat, I don't know, I just froze up when I saw it, he stuck his hand in his mouth and cleared it up, made himself throw up, and I was just sitting in there shocked, I gave him a bath, afterwards, (he managed to get puke all over himself), so I washed him off and 10 minutes later it's as if nothing had happened. It's amazing, how often do we have a brush with death? or tragedy? It's crazy how fast life can change, right now I could be mourning my child instead of sitting here blogging. But thank goodness he's fine.

Speaking of Anthony, he is growing up, he lives up to the "Terrible Twos" stereotype, but he cracks me up so much, with every new thing he says or does, he makes me laugh.
I need to be more strict with him, so far Martha is the authoritarian, but I'm noticing that he thinks he can get away with murder when he is around me, and that can't fly.

So that's my day, I went to work early, wrote some code, went to lunch with friends from work, then I worked some more, I get home to a nice dinner and then my son almost chokes to death, you know, just the usual. Oh, we watched a movie afterwards,
let me tell you what happened, we were watching Reign over me with Adam Sandler, it was kind of a strange movie, it was weird to see Adam Sandler playing a serious role, anyway, In the move Sandler has post-traumatic syndrome, I could not help myself, I started to think about the guys I went to Iraq with, how the war affected each and every one of us in some little way, some more than others, the whole thing makes me sad, so many of us come back all fucked up from that shit. How many of our guys are going to need help the rest of their lives? How many lives will never be the same? And for what? Damn, I wish this war would stop soon. Oh, so what happened you ask?
I was crying during the movie, yep, crying, now, I am not the crying type ok? But I could not help it! I kept telling Martha that no, I was not crying, but it must have been me releasing all the stress, it was that kind of day.

Ok, I think I am going to bed now, thanks for stopping by, be good to each other.

J.V.

Kamran has a new blog.

And it's pretty good, I might add.

Congrats to Froyd

Froyd just published a book. The movie will come next, and the fame and glory.

Since the last time I wrote a post:

I had my 10 year high school reunion
I celebrated 10 years since my Marine Corps Boot Camp Graduation
I went on vacation to Costa Rica

...and much more, I missed out on a lot of opportunities to share with the blogsphere many interesting thoughts. I can say that I've been busy, but, I've always been busy, in fact, I was busier when I was going to school full time, but I still managed to post in this blog, so what happened?

Well, the first thing was that I got discouraged, I felt as if I had nothing interesting to write, so I stopped writing. Also, I started to write some stories for a book, but I decided I did not want to write about Iraq anymore, I wish I could erase it from my memory sometimes, not because I think it was so bad, it's just that I don't want to bring up the subject, I can't help it in this blog, but in real life, I feel uncomfortable with it.

Speaking of other things, I downloaded the latest Radiohead album "In Rainbows" it's freaking awesome.

Can't believe that the Red Sox did it again.

I've been playing Brain Age 2 in my Nintendo DS, it's really hard, much harder than the first one. Two thumbs up.

Library cards: use 'em. I've decided not to buy books, unless I absolutely can not wait. i.e. Froyd's new book.

Books of note:

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Great Read, I could not put this book down, I read the first three pages by chance at the public library (I was looking for something else) and I could not put it down, four hours later I was in my bed reading the last page, and thinking about Pakistan. The next day I went back to the library and checked out Moth Smoke, another great book by the same author.

That's all I have for now, I love you all. Be good to each other.

J.V.

Just finished watching the movieCrank I want those 87 minutes of my life back. What a disappointment, generally I like Jason Staham's movies.

Oh well, back to my Saturday afternoon.

Anthony is going to wake up from his nap soon, so long....


J.V.

Wow

Being a parent is hard, I don't know how Martha does it.

I really appreciate your hard work.

-J.V.