8 months? Not bad.

First and foremost, I do not approve of the new friends layout. The fuck was wrong with the previous layout?

I just bought a new LCD monitor a couple days ago. I am now kicking myself for not having bought one sooner. So damn sweet. I also just got Skype and am excited to try that out, but alas have nobody to add to it… yet.

Lessee what else. Still workin’ the bouncer job. I have a pretty sweet position right now. I work downstairs which means I avoid the sweaty pit-stank upstairs, the ear-piercingly-loud music, and cretinous alcoholic post-adolescents. Also scary MILFs (MILRAF – mothers i’d love to run away from). Oh and I make more tips. The words boo-ya come to mind…

Also, I’ve been reading the fuck out of the Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher. Not gonna lie, pretty entertaining (if not a little too ridiculous at times). I’m trying to get back into reading to salvage what’s left of my poor atrophied brain.

What else, what else. Well I have a few interesting job/education opportunities on the horizon which I don’t want to talk about just yet for fear of jinxing it. I’m feeling a lot better than I was eight months ago, too. More motivated. More… doing things. Less… being a lump. It’s a slow process but, well, I’m not constantly depressed anymore which is a great feeling. Freedom. It feels like freedom.

I’ve recently developed an interest in astronomy and astrophysics as well. Nothing too deep, mind you — yet. It makes me feel good to learn about the planets and the Universe. When I was younger I used to believe in things like spirits and aliens and shared consciousness and soul-mates and magic. I was sad for a long time as gradually it occurred to me that all of these things were just a fantasy. It made the world lose a bit of its brilliance. Seem a bit more bland. It felt like I was consciously losing my childhood innocence. Over the last few months, though, I’ve discovered a new kind of magic. The magic of science. The magic of a Universe that would take 70,000,000,000 years to cross at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. The magic of a Universe that expands at faster than the speed of light. The magic of dark matter and the Fibonacci sequence.

I discovered recently that we’re trying to map out the human brain, braincell-by-braincell. Each braincell requires a supercomputer with 10,000 processors for adequate emulation. To simulate a single human brain would require an entire football field filled with supercomputers. Implausible now, but the rate of improvement in processing power doubles every four years (and has increased by 1,000,000,000 times since the first computer) and shows no sign of slowing – logical, given that as our technology advances so does our ability to perform research. Computers that match or exceed the abilities of the human brain are not only within our grasp, but may be on our doorstep in a matter of decades.

That’s enough magic for now.