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Olympics

I’ve been pretty into the Olympics this year.  Much more than I have been in the past.

As everybody already knows, Michael Phelps has kicked some serious butt this year winning 8 gold medals–the most anyone has ever won.  He seems like a good guy.  Not cocky like somebody like that could be.

Gymnastics has been pretty cool, too.  I was just thinking how it different Gymnastics is from so many other sports.  They have to rely on the judges’ scores.  They can’t beat each other directly.  They can’t just run faster than someone else to prove they’re better.  They need to score higher–not be better, per se.

I bring this up because the other night I saw Nastia Liukin get the exact SAME score as a Chinese gymnast.  I then saw her get 2nd because of the judging algorithm they use.  This got me riled up for a couple reason.  One, Nastia’s on the American team and I was pulling for the Red, White, and Blue. Two, Nastia’s kind of sexy.  Three, the commentators (and I) thought Nastia did better than the Chinese girl. It just makes me think how the system leaves so much room for error and prejudice for or against someone.

I haven’t watched a stitch of track and field and I might not.

Changes In Life

I’ve had a weird few weeks.  I won’t go into too much detail, but I’ve learned more about myself, where I’ve been, and where I want to go.

Somebody told me recently that if you want something in life you need to be willing to go after it.  In some areas of life I excel in that.  In others, not so much.  I tend to have more trouble with it when the consequences of failing are bigger.  While it’s good to measure risk and reward, I’ve come to realize that I do it too much.  I tend to overanalyze.

So, I’ve decided that if I’m lucky enough to know what I want, then I need to be willing to give it whatever it takes to make it happen.  You could apply this to a lot of things in life.

I’ve also come to realize that there are always going to be some things you don’t like a whole lot about yourself.  Some of these things you can change, and some you can’t.  The best you can do is change the things you can and own the things you can’t.  If there’s something you don’t like about yourself and you can’t change it, all you can do is go with it.  Getting down on yourself over something you can’t change will get you nowhere.  You have to own it.

And, you also have to not let the couple things that you’re not fond of cloud the reality of the things you do have going for you.  People come as packages–nobody is perfect.

So, I’m changing my outlook on some things in life.  Hopefully for the better.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, you can’t do the same things and expect different results.  So, you have to try to some different things to get different results.

New Idea

I can’t really talk about the details, but I’m putting the finishing touches on my latest big idea.  I never really know how stuff is going to do, but I have a good feeling about this.  It could revolutionize the online ecommerce world.

Big Weekend

I had a pretty big weekend.

Friday I went to see Boyz II Men with Darren and Lisa at Live off the Levee.  It’s this free concert series that St. Louis had all summer long.  This was the only one I went to, though.  They did a lot of covers, but they did do pretty much all of their big hits.  I was worried that they might not sound very good live, but they did.  The bass player doesn’t perform with them anymore because of back problems.  They haven’t replaced him on tour.  I respect that.  They put on a good show.

Saturday I watched  a couple movies.  Harold and Kumar Guantanamo Bay.  It was pretty good.  Surprisingly graphic, especially the bottomless party.

Today, I played guitar in church.  And, we had band practice after church. Then I cut grass, took a nap, and did some important upgrading on Prime Modeling billing.

I was thinking how to take advantage of new API functionality on my billing stuff, and I piece together a way to fully automate the billing.  For awhile, I was thinking that at it grows, it would be hard to keep track of memberships and that everyone gets billed properly.  But, though some sweet integration ideas, I figured out a sweet way to do it that will scale effortlessly.  Every once in awhile, I amaze myself with my programming and ideas.  Pretty amazing.

Not to mention, I’ve had my latest big idea.  I think with what I know now, it could be as big or bigger than Prime Modeling, and less work.  I’m not going to get into details about it now, but I might later on.