My Journey To 30, Part 1

Next year, on Aug 12, I'll turn thirty years old. After I turned 29 this year, it didn't affect me at first. Shortly after Labor Day, however, I began to feel a sort of..."panic".

Had I accomplished everything I wanted to since I became an adult? Did I have a plan for the next five, ten, twenty years?? More importantly, how am I going to celebrate this milestone???

After moving back home for a year and a half, I recently came back to the city. While I enjoyed having seemingly unlimited time with my partner, I learned a lesson. This blog will focus a lot on some of the lessons I've learned:

LESSON 1: No one person can satisfy your every need

This isn't cynical. I love my partner more than anything else in this world. But humans are social creatures. We need to interact with other people. So the past month, I've been searching for adventures and experiences that the city can offer. Being a student, I started at the University.

My first attempt was the University's Outdoor Recreation Center's Bike Ride. The program was meant to promote their free bike rental service. The notice made it seem like a big group would be taking a tour of the campus via bicycle, led by an experienced cyclist.

What we got instead was an event nobody attended, and a first year student who knew less about his way around campus than we did. We still rode around campus, but it was not the experience I had expected or hoped for.

Last night, we opted to go on a Moonlight Canoe trip. The park was just down the road from us. I should have known better when I saw it, too, was sponsored by Outdoor Recreation. Again, we pictured a group being led by an experienced member of the organization. Instead, there was a bunch of 18-19 year olds, who pushed you off into the darkness without even a flashlight.

There was a better turnout, but the other canoes quickly disappeared from sight, the full moon being hidden by clouds this particular evening.

This, along with my partner's fear of alligators lurking about in the dark, caused us to cut our trip short. But, my search for adventure continues!

If you have any ideas or suggestions for pre-thirty adventures, post them in the comments section!!

Wellness Wednesday: Those Gay Chicken-Eaters

Last week, the President of Bolivia claimed that the hormones put in chicken are turning dudes gay.



President Evo Morales was speaking at a climate change conference, when he apparently had a bout of dementia and forgot about the ozone layer and made this comment:

"The chicken we eat is loaded with female hormones. So, when men eat it, they tend to deviate from their manhood."



That damn estrogen. I'm telling you, it's the source of all the world's problems. From PMS to Pregnancy (Unwanted) and now Pole Smokers!



I'll admit, I don't know much about Bolivia. I assumed it just had chickens walking down the dirt paths they called streets? Little hens and roosters, just waiting to be beheaded and cooked. I mean, Prez Morales did say that he only eats "organic chicken".



Then again, the streets of Key West are full of wild chickens and it's one of the gayest locations on the planet. It's against the law to hurt or kill them any way, so maybe if they were a little more lenient against the chicken killers, perhaps they would butch it up a little bit down there?

Media Monday: Calling Shenanigans on the Stolen iPhone

A story developing over the past couple weeks has had me skeptical from day one: apparently some dude found the next version of the iPhone in a Silicon Valley Bar, and sold it to the Gadget Blog Gizmodo for five grand.
And today, the latest twist: A task force raided the Gizmodo editor's home searching for evidence of possession of stolen property.

I call shenanigans. SHENANIGANS, I SAY!!

The suspension of disbelief in this story is just too great. It requires us to accept too many unlikely scenarios:

1. The iPhone 4G prototype could just be taken out of the Apple building.
No way. I am not familiar with Apples' mode of operations, but I'm pretty sure you can't just "borrow" a prototype for any gadget for the night the way a video game store employee would. Especially when said prototype would be as hyped as a new iPhone. And even if it were possible...

2. The person who took it out wouldn't be so careless as to just leave it in a bar.
Steve Jobs looks like an executioner. Tales of his temper have been whispered for years. The person who would be allowed to take such a thing from the Apple offices probably isn't the type of person who goes and gets plastered and tells all his friends. And even if, even if we accept the above two, it's still highly unlikely that...

3. The inebriate who stumbled upon it on the floor of a bar knew what it was.
It was said that the phone was disguised in an iPhone 3G case. In a time where half the douchebags on the planet own an iPhone, how would this schmuck know that it wasn't what it seemed? Even if he was a Silicon Valley techy nerd guy, did he really comprehend what he found?

So I have two theories: either that phone was taken illegally from the Apple premises by some embittered employee (although, I would think he would want more than five grand for risking his job), or this is all some elaborate marketing ploy to drum up interest in the months before the release of the device. Perhaps Apple is feeling the heat of competition from Android?

Media Monday: Cell Phones Go To The Grave

Back in the day, people were buried with some sort of memento...something that the loved ones of the deceased placed in their casket, such as a photo, a certain favorite piece of jewelry, or perhaps a favorite hat.

As we have moved into a society that defines the person by their possessions, burial procedures have gone from the personal to the absurd. People get buried in their cars. And now, people want to be buried with their cell phones.

There's just so many reasons why this is wrong. Or at the very least, just plain stupid. The article speaks of people calling the phone, knowing very well there won't be an answer, but it's a source of comfort to them. Maybe they should just try prayer?

It also talks about people who are connected to their phones all day everyday. I love my phone, but it is no subsitute for real life contact. And most people who walk around talking to air with a glowing bluetooth in their ear are most likely douchebags anyway, and the only reason they're remembered fondly is because they died before people could catch on to that fact.

Maybe I'm biased. I happen to think nothing of value should go six feet under. There's plenty of other things you could do with it, like allow ME to inherit it for instance. I promise I would treasure it...until it sold on eBay.

Wellness Wednesday: The Christian Alternative to Health Insurance

The 2,000 page Obamacare behemoth includes lots of little interesting tidbits. One of the lesser-known ones is that people who enroll in a faith-based medical co-op are exempt from the mandate to purchase insurance.

Health care sharing ministries have been around for quite some time, but when word of the exemption starts to spread, they may end up becoming a lot more popular. The premise is that the members pay for each others care, whether directly to the person in need, or into a fund that is managed by the ministry. Some pay as needed, others pay a monthly fee.

Requirements vary based on the group, but generally the members must attend church regularly (with proof signed by a pastor), and vow to practice the tenets of the religion (most of these are Christian-based ministries). The groups can be small local affairs, or large organizations that cross state or even country borders.

The benefits can be huge. Patients have talked of massive bills being taken care of with not a single issue. Avoiding the bureaucratic entanglements and hoop-jumping that some insurance companies are known for is another. Members are able to directly negotiate prices with providers, and may receive discounts for paying with cash.

The downfalls are that not every group may be prepared or skilled enough to negotiate and the danger for misuse of funds seems high, even for a religious group. Though the ministries have to meet with very specific guidelines for their members to be exempted from the insurance mandate (for example, the co-op must have been in existence at least ten years, and must undergo annual audits), once word gets out that an alternative is available, people may start flocking to them.

And that is where the real danger comes in. While more members in a co-op means more available money, it also means more people trying to get a piece of that pie. A signature saying you went to church can be forged.

When you don't pay your insurance premiums, you lose coverage. Would a group of people operating out of the goodness of their hearts be able to make such a firm stand? What if multiple members become catastrophically ill? Would the funds have to be divided? Would a tough decision have to be made for who received the assistance?

All hypothetical questions to be sure. The MSNBC article paints a very rosy picture, but that's under the current standard. The bigger something gets, the more likely wolves are to hide amongst the lambs.

Media Monday: ChatRoulette--I just don't get it.

I try to stay up on social networking. Recently I made the difficult decision to terminate my MySpace Account, which I had used for five and a half years. It had become a hub of spam friend requests and infrequent contact with actual people, most of whom are also on my Facebook.

While Facebook has happily filled the void, and FourSquare has provided me with new entertainment, I'm still open to whatevers out there. So I decided to give ChatRoulette a try.

ChatRoulette, for those of you who aren't up to speed, is a random video chat site. There's no registration process, no info you have to give. You just need a webcam. Mine happens to be built into my laptop.

The appeal is supposed to be the randomness of the people you get to chat with. The way it works in reality is you end up with an endless series of 14-24 year old guys, most of whom are looking for women to take their clothes off.

And there's also the masturbators.

Seriously, approximately 1 in 5 Chatters are guys pulling on their pythons. For women, apparently, given the fact that they click "Next" if you have any appearance of male-ness. They do this despite the fact that no woman I know has any desire to look at some internet troll beat their meat.

The site says you must be 16+. But since anyone can get on the site, and there is no identifying information, you could literally witness a murder on live webcam, and have no way to do anything about it, except click a little button that says "Report". And by the time you managed to do that, it would be too late.

I don't love ChatRoulette. I haven't completely written it off yet, but until the site gives me some people I can actually do the "Chat" part with, I have little interest in watching the NakedDudeRoulette.

Wellness Wednesday: Google "Tries" To Help The Suicidal

Within the last week or so, Google has implemented a new result for when people search for suicide methods:

The phone number for the "National Suicide Prevention Lifeline" is a new feature, based on some random person's suggestion. While suicide is certainly a serious issue, and not one I will treat lightly here, one can't help but notice the other links that the search result brings up.

Of course, it's not 100% Google's fault. The search engine is an automated algorithm, and it basically shows the sequence of words that the user types in. However, one has to wonder how often someone uses Google for such a purpose. If it's often enough to warrant posting a hotline, is there no way to re-direct the user to other articles and links that might prove helpful to them in such a dire time? At the very least, couldn't Google prevent any search results from popping up except the hotline?

I'm no computer scientist, but it seems like, in this case, Google is simply making a token gesture, and simply trying to protect themselves from any lawsuits.