One of my favorite television shows is The Big Bang Theory. The theme song is written by Barenaked Ladies which is one of my favorite bands. For the longest time I could not find the song on iTunes which was very frustrating because it's a catchy little jingle and I wanted it. Well somehow I managed to find it a week or so ago and have been listening to it a lot, to the point where I've memorized every word.
And the part in the song that goes "it's expanding ever outward but one day, it will cause the stars to go the other way..." is just mind boggling. First of all, if space is expanding, what's it expanding into? If the universe didn't exist before the big bang what was there before? Assuming that whatever was there before is what the universe is expanding into then that sort of answers one of our questions. But still, what is it?! The other question that arises is, if it will suddenly stop expanding and stop contracting, why? Will it hit a wall? A wall in space where it can't go any further? Whats the wall attached to? Is it really a big gigantic building another bigger universe (sort of end of Men In Black style)? Baffling.
All this thinking reminded me of reading the first chapter of my Intro to Astronomy textbook my freshman year of college. In this chapter it explored the creation and expansion of the universe and how planets formed and how starts formed and died. Also, that looking into space is really like looking back in time because of the speed of light. That what you see in space is not whats currently out there. A star you see now could have died years ago but the light of it not being there hasn't reached us yet. One really mind blowing piece of trivia is that even with a strong enough telescope (that doesn't currently exist) that because of the speed of light, it is impossible to see past the center of the universe. This is because the light from the other side of the center of the universe has not yet reached us and because of the rate of expansion of the universe based on the speed of light it never will. So theoretically, you could witness the big bang occurring with a strong enough telescope but nothing on the other side of the center of the universe because it... hasn't... happened.... yet. WHAT?!?! I know, ridiculous.
Really makes you think about the possibility of life on other planets. Because let's be honest, why would there be billions of stars which each have dozens or more planets revolving around it, and our little blue sphere be the only one that can support life? And if it is... then why are we so special? But even if we are the only living planet in the universe what purpose do we have? What purpose do I as an individual have? Why does one little argument I have with a friend or family member upset me for so long when really in the grand scheme of things it really doesn't matter! Now I'm not saying this to make you go "WHOA! Life is unimportant I'm going to drop out of school or quit my job and just do whatever because nothing matters!"
No that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the next time you break a plate on the floor, or have an argument with someone close to you, or fail a test, or whatever minuscule problem that isn't life threatening to not sweat it. Don't worry about it! You can get over it quickly enough and move on with the rest of your life and it won't mean a thing. By the time you're 35 you won't remember that math test you failed all the way back in 4th grade. And how many times did you have an argument with a friend and you were mad at them for weeks and then when you finally talk to them again neither of you can remember why you're fighting. DUH! Don't let little things like that wear on you. It's not worth the aggravation and stress! Just walk around and take everything in stride with your head held high and a smile on your face. That's my lecture for the day. Take it or leave it. It's just something to think about, and quite mind boggling if you take the time to really do it.
Before I leave you, let me show you one of my favorite clips from The Big Bang Theory (it's the least I could do after embedding the theme song):
It's a scary thought, knowing what goes on in my head. But like it or not, that's what you're going to get. With a heavy focus on sports we'll also look at movies, video games, and whatever I want to talk about. If there's a topic you'd like to see, let me know. But most of all, ENJOY!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Finally Found a Problem
After three years my beloved PlayStation 3 kicked the bucket (much to the pleasure of my XBox 360 owning friends). My system happened to be in the less than half of one percent of the systems out there to receive the YLOD, or Yellow Light of Death. The YLOD is considered the PS3 equivalent of the 360's Red Ring of Death (RROD). For those of you unfamiliar with what the YLOD looks like, there's a standby/power light on the front of the system. Standby is red, power on is green. Mine would go from red, to green for a second then beep three times, turn yellow, and blink red until you turned off the system. Uh-oh. After much Googling I determined it was mostly hopeless. Apparently this is caused by long term overheating and it melts away the solder on the GPU and/or the CPU chip on the motherboard. I tried a few "safe" tricks to try and revive my system but nothing worked and I'm nowhere near competent enough to try and solder the chips back into place. Worst of all, I had a game stuck in there (NBA 2K11, in case you were wondering). So now what?
Sony's policy is that their systems are perfect and never break and they will vehemently deny that the YLOD or the problem it's caused by exist. Interesting, considering that they are the ones that would have had to program the system to show the yellow light in the first place. But here's where it really sucks. Unlike Microsoft who decided that since so many systems were dropping like flies all the time and therefore have a more or less free replacement service (plus you keep your hard drive) Sony... doesn't. Sony apparently makes you pay upwards of $150 to ship your system back in its entirety (wires and all) and then they send you a refurbished system instead of fixing yours. And if you have a game stuck inside it? You can get it back... after months of phone calls and emails and begging. This is all according to the online forums and previous PS3 owner's experiences. I decided that I would just avoid the headache and put my 80gb system to sleep and go buy a new one.
I went out and purchased a brand new 250 gb PS3 Slim (I wanted the 320gb but Target was all out and everywhere else was closed and I didn't want to wait). It was the Toy Story bundle which was kind of cool. I got the first two movies on Blu Ray which went to the family and then I kept the Toy Story 3 game. Now that I officially had a new PS3 I didn't have to worry about what I did to or with the old one. I needed to get my game out of the console which meant surgery. I peeled back the "do not peel" sticker that violates your one year warranty (of a three year old system - I think I'm safe) and took the system apart. It was kind of cool and I meant to take pictures to show you but I couldn't find my camera (sorry). The disk drive was staring me in the face and after I unplugged it from the motherboard I could see that further unscrewing would be needed. I removed the necessary screws and opened the first case. Now I could see part of my disc, but it was still under another inner shell. Once again I grabbed my screwdriver and four screw later I could retrieve my game! There was only one more obstacle left.
I then set off on the quest of trying to retrieve my saved game data from my old system and put it on my new system. Should be easy enough right? WRONG! My guess was that Sony would have designed their hard drives much like XBox, where you can unplug yours from your system and put it in your friends system and play your files on his system. Makes sense right, basically makes your hard drive a really big memory card like we had for the PS2. So I took the hard drive out of my old system, took the hard drive out of the new system and immediately noticed something wrong. The two hard drives were oriented in the opposite direction, one length wise and one width wise. Not having and engineering skills at all I didn't even bother trying to see how to remedy this and set off on Plan B. Plan B was to find a working older version PS3 that I could use to put my old hard drive in and do the easy data transfer outlined on the PS3 Slim's box. But where to find one of those? It helps to have a neighbor who has one. So I gave him a call and he let me borrow his system and I took it home and was all excited and switched the hard drives and plugged it in to get the thing going and.... uh-oh. In order to allow my hard drive to work in his system I had to format it to his system because apparently Sony didn't go the Microsoft method. So now I have all of my information on a perfectly good hard drive forever stuck in cyber space.
While I still would buy a PS3 99 times out of 100 over an XBox 360 (that one other time I'm assuming that every store is out of PS3's and I don't have another choice) I am rather disappointed in Sony for taking their time to release their system in order to make it "perfect" and then still have that problem malfunction irreparably. I'm confused as to why, when the 360 had been on the shelves for a full year before the PS3 that they didn't look at the 360 and say "wow interchangeable hard drives, there's an idea!" and do it! So while my brand loyalty to Sony still exists, it's a little shaken. Here's to hoping the PS4 will be even "perfecter."
Sony's policy is that their systems are perfect and never break and they will vehemently deny that the YLOD or the problem it's caused by exist. Interesting, considering that they are the ones that would have had to program the system to show the yellow light in the first place. But here's where it really sucks. Unlike Microsoft who decided that since so many systems were dropping like flies all the time and therefore have a more or less free replacement service (plus you keep your hard drive) Sony... doesn't. Sony apparently makes you pay upwards of $150 to ship your system back in its entirety (wires and all) and then they send you a refurbished system instead of fixing yours. And if you have a game stuck inside it? You can get it back... after months of phone calls and emails and begging. This is all according to the online forums and previous PS3 owner's experiences. I decided that I would just avoid the headache and put my 80gb system to sleep and go buy a new one.
I went out and purchased a brand new 250 gb PS3 Slim (I wanted the 320gb but Target was all out and everywhere else was closed and I didn't want to wait). It was the Toy Story bundle which was kind of cool. I got the first two movies on Blu Ray which went to the family and then I kept the Toy Story 3 game. Now that I officially had a new PS3 I didn't have to worry about what I did to or with the old one. I needed to get my game out of the console which meant surgery. I peeled back the "do not peel" sticker that violates your one year warranty (of a three year old system - I think I'm safe) and took the system apart. It was kind of cool and I meant to take pictures to show you but I couldn't find my camera (sorry). The disk drive was staring me in the face and after I unplugged it from the motherboard I could see that further unscrewing would be needed. I removed the necessary screws and opened the first case. Now I could see part of my disc, but it was still under another inner shell. Once again I grabbed my screwdriver and four screw later I could retrieve my game! There was only one more obstacle left.
I then set off on the quest of trying to retrieve my saved game data from my old system and put it on my new system. Should be easy enough right? WRONG! My guess was that Sony would have designed their hard drives much like XBox, where you can unplug yours from your system and put it in your friends system and play your files on his system. Makes sense right, basically makes your hard drive a really big memory card like we had for the PS2. So I took the hard drive out of my old system, took the hard drive out of the new system and immediately noticed something wrong. The two hard drives were oriented in the opposite direction, one length wise and one width wise. Not having and engineering skills at all I didn't even bother trying to see how to remedy this and set off on Plan B. Plan B was to find a working older version PS3 that I could use to put my old hard drive in and do the easy data transfer outlined on the PS3 Slim's box. But where to find one of those? It helps to have a neighbor who has one. So I gave him a call and he let me borrow his system and I took it home and was all excited and switched the hard drives and plugged it in to get the thing going and.... uh-oh. In order to allow my hard drive to work in his system I had to format it to his system because apparently Sony didn't go the Microsoft method. So now I have all of my information on a perfectly good hard drive forever stuck in cyber space.
While I still would buy a PS3 99 times out of 100 over an XBox 360 (that one other time I'm assuming that every store is out of PS3's and I don't have another choice) I am rather disappointed in Sony for taking their time to release their system in order to make it "perfect" and then still have that problem malfunction irreparably. I'm confused as to why, when the 360 had been on the shelves for a full year before the PS3 that they didn't look at the 360 and say "wow interchangeable hard drives, there's an idea!" and do it! So while my brand loyalty to Sony still exists, it's a little shaken. Here's to hoping the PS4 will be even "perfecter."
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Hollywood time vs. Real World time
Picture this... you go to bed at night and know that you need to wake up at a specific time the next morning so you set your alarm. But you don't like the sound of the alarm so you set it to go off on your favorite radio station. You go to sleep with no other concerns. After a (hopefully) restful sleep your alarm clock goes off. Now, tell me what you hear. More than likely it's the middle of a song or the middle of the morning drive banter. You wake up, hit snooze, and get up and go about your day.
Now picture this. You're watching your favorite TV show or movie, and the main character is lying in bed. The camera focuses on the alarm clock next to their bed. It usually says 6:29 or 7:59 or something just at the bottom or top of the hour. And then it always flips over to the half hour or the hour and the radio goes off. The main character wakes up to the morning DJ saying "Good Morning! It's 8 am and its a brisk Tuesday morning out there so bundle up." When was the last time you heard a morning DJ say Good Morning in the middle of his/her show? They certainly don't do it EVERY hour or half hour.
People often wish their lives could be like movies: the action, the romance, the general awesomeness. But I wish my life was like a movie so that when I set my alarm for 7:27, the morning DJ is sitting around waiting for me to wake up so he can greet me with a "Good Morning! It's 7:27..."
Now picture this. You're watching your favorite TV show or movie, and the main character is lying in bed. The camera focuses on the alarm clock next to their bed. It usually says 6:29 or 7:59 or something just at the bottom or top of the hour. And then it always flips over to the half hour or the hour and the radio goes off. The main character wakes up to the morning DJ saying "Good Morning! It's 8 am and its a brisk Tuesday morning out there so bundle up." When was the last time you heard a morning DJ say Good Morning in the middle of his/her show? They certainly don't do it EVERY hour or half hour.
People often wish their lives could be like movies: the action, the romance, the general awesomeness. But I wish my life was like a movie so that when I set my alarm for 7:27, the morning DJ is sitting around waiting for me to wake up so he can greet me with a "Good Morning! It's 7:27..."
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Quick Little Rant
Hello again! I realize I have more or less neglected this blog for the last (ahem) months, but I'm back! You're just going to have to deal! Anyway, I've been working in the seafood department at my grocery store lately and haven't been enjoying it to say the least, mood affected means no blogging (sorry about that). But anyway, I only bring this up because there's not too many people to talk to in seafood seeing as I'm the only one that works behind the counter on my shift, so there's a lot of time to think. And one random thought that came to mind is "why is doing a bad job considered 'sub par' and a good job 'above par?'"
Think about it! It doesn't make sense! I realize many words have multiple definitions and par is one of them. But let's be honest when I say the word "par" the majority of you would more than likely think of the sport of golf. In which case wouldn't doing a "sub par job" be the best thing you can do? In golf if the hole is a par 4 and your goal is to shoot par (4) or under(sub) par (3 or less). So why, when working in the real world would you want to do an "above par(?)" job, that, technically, speaking is bad.
So next time someone tells you your performance is "sub par," look at them with a smile on your face and say "thank you!"
Think about it! It doesn't make sense! I realize many words have multiple definitions and par is one of them. But let's be honest when I say the word "par" the majority of you would more than likely think of the sport of golf. In which case wouldn't doing a "sub par job" be the best thing you can do? In golf if the hole is a par 4 and your goal is to shoot par (4) or under(sub) par (3 or less). So why, when working in the real world would you want to do an "above par(?)" job, that, technically, speaking is bad.
So next time someone tells you your performance is "sub par," look at them with a smile on your face and say "thank you!"
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