It's a Good Time to be a Geek

My name is Jason, and I'm a geek (Hi Jason!). Not a nerd mind you, nerds are often smarter than geeks, but are also way too socially awkward. I know what "http" stands for, but I don't live in my parents' basement. I know how to install an internal hard drive and I can repair a computer network, but I've also had sex with women.

A geek has typically been defined as "an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field" but I believe that the modern colloquial use of the term has expanded to include enthusiasm in genres of entertainment which usually appeal to people with expertise in technology. That includes (but is not limited to) online gaming, science fiction, and comic books…Uh, sorry, "Graphic Novels."

To that end, it is a great time to be a geek! Sure there were always TV shows and movies that appealed to geeks, but when you compare the Battlestar Galactica of the 1980's to the BSG of today, there can be no argument that today's version is superior in every way. The same can be said about the current trend of superhero movies. It's not just the special effects that are better, the writing is better. I believe that it is because these movies are now finally being made for geeks by geeks.

An outstanding example of this is last summer's Iron Man. Jon Favreau, arguably one of Hollywood's greatest geeks (second only to Kevin Smith of course) brought Iron Man to life without sacrificing any of what made the character great in comics, pathos.

What many people do not realize when they think of comic book superheroes is that they are no less mythical figures than Ulysses or Odysseus. They are simply the new generation of such characters. Told in a modern medium, but no less timeless. They are cultural icons. Everyone knows who superman is. Everyone dreams about being the ubermensch.

Geeks have also been given better more respect in the social subconscious. Sure, we still adore the All-American ass kicking alpha male hero. But more and more the beta male is gaining recognition too. Where would James Bond be without Q's gadgets to get him out of all those jams? He'd be a stain on the pavement. Alpha males may succeed through brawn but beta males succeed through cleverness and wit. Something it seems that our society is finally beginning the value.

In conclusion, I think we've entered the golden age of the geek. The last president was a wannabe alpha male (and we all know how well that worked out) but the current President of the United States is a geek! The man collects Spiderman comics, and has read all the Harry Potter books…He is a reasoned intellectual who is willing to admit that he cannot carry the weight of the world on his shoulders alone. But more than any other fact, the biggest reason why I know he's a geek like me: he refused to give up his blackberry.

I won't wait until it comes out on DVD...

In the past few years my trips to the theater to see a movie have become less and less frequent. But the new watchmen movie looks so good that I can't resist going to see it on the big screen!

Say Something Positive!

It recently occurred to me that my first instinct in writing this blog has too often been to use it as a platform to complain.

I've used it to detail my experience with poor customer service from specific companies (I'm looking at you U-Haul!)…I've used it to post the names and addresses of ignorant, stupid, or downright crazy people whose attempts to force the rest of us to take care of them, or to think and act the way they do offend me deeply. I've even used it to point out the inherent inequities and inadequacies of our current political system.

But when I do the math, it's clear that I haven't as many positive things to say. That changes now. In addition to my commitment to post once a week, I resolve to make one of my monthly posts unapologetically upbeat.

Today's post is about Kershaw Knives. I love companies that warranty their products for life. It's been my experience that companies are only willing to offer such a guarantee when they make a superior quality product [see also: Columbia, Craftsman, Gerber, Ruger, Teva, & Timberland.]

The only thing better than finding such a company, is finding out that the company is headquartered in your area.

Last Sunday, I finally used the gift card that my parents gave me for Christmas. I got a pair of Timberland trail shoes, and a pocket knife. I should probably mention that I'm always on a quest for something. I pick a thing that I want or need, and then spend several months looking for it. I don't fixate on it or anything, but whenever I'm in (or near) a store that might sell the thing for which I am hunting I swing by the appropriate department…It gives me something to do. My recent mission was to find a light, well constructed, affordable lock-blade pocket knife.

When I explained my list of demands to the guy behind the counter, he suggested this knife. "It's well made," he told me "but the best part is that the factory is about 20 miles from here. If you ever have a problem, they'll fix it or give you a new one." Interestingly enough, I ended up going to the factory earlier this week.

You see, the knife comes with a clip on one side. It is affixed there with two allen-bolts. I have a bunch of precision tools (I work on computers) but for some reason I did not have one small enough to remove those bolts. Unfortunately (for me) something like having a clip on the side of my knife, when I know how easily it can be removed, is the type of thing that nags at me until I fix it.

So a couple of days ago, I drove over to the factory on my lunch break. Not only did the receptionist greet me with what seemed to be genuine cheerfulness, she was more than happy to take my knife, and have the clip removed. She even offered to have it sharpened for me! When she returned a mere 5 minutes later, she brought with her a complimentary precision aircraft aluminum screwdriver key chain with three bits inside the body…one of which is the correct size to reattach the clip should I ever wish to do so.

I am vociferous when I feel I have been treated unfairly a company, but I try to be equally vocal when I am given excellent customer service. You can be sure that I will be a very loyal customer of Kershaw's for many years to come.

How I Learned to Live Without [paying for] TV...

I've decided that I need to post to this blog at least once a week. That means making time for a little creative outlet, which frankly is exactly what I need right now.

This week's entry: Why I canceled my TV & Phone.

Everyone knows that times are tough. We're all trying to tighten our belts a little to help make ends meet. So when I received a letter from DirecTv telling me that they were jacking their rates by an additional $15 a month, it was just the incentive I needed to cancel my TV service.

Let me just say that I LOVE DirecTv! I've been a customer of theirs (on and off) for about 10 years. During which time I've experienced some of the best customer service ever. Add to that the fabulous innovation that is "Tivo" and you can easily see why I'd normally be happy to pay a little bit more to maintain my service with them.

But when I was finishing my graduate work, my wife and I moved to a small apartment in Oakland, and decided that in order to save some money we would not pay for TV. It turned out to be a great decision. In the time that we lived there, we read more, talked more, got out more, and were generally more productive than we had been when we lived in a house with 300+ channels and on-demand programming.

Now you may say to yourself, "Hey, that's great for YOU, but I could never live that kind of lifestyle. I NEED my entertainment!" Well don't be fooled. I am not the type of intellectual snob who sits around in effete coffee houses looking down my nose at the unwashed masses because they watch American Idol (even though I do despise that show, and everything it stands for.) I like to veg out as much as the next American. Which is why I would not have canceled my TV without 2 things:

1. Internet Access – I have a very nice high-speed broadband package from Qwest. Now that the Daily Show and Colbert Report stream complete episodes everyday, you can be sure that I will not miss a single second of these two fantastic shows. In addition to the myriad shows that are available on sites like NBC's, almost every program on television can be downloaded using peer to peer file sharing software. If you are considering watching TV this way, let me know and I'll send you a step-by-step email on how to do this.

2. Netflix – Not only do they provide tons of movies with a very fast turnaround, Netflix also rents entire seasons of TV shows on DVD. And they recently started streaming a good portion of their movies online so that you can watch them instantly. Add to that the fact that monthly membership is a mere $15 (the same price that DirecTv wanted to raise my membership) and it becomes an easily affordable necessity.

That's $50 (or more) a month right back in my pocket. But I started to think that since I don't need to hook my satellite receiver up to a phone line anymore, perhaps I could get rid of my phone line…So I called Qwest, and told them that I wanted to reduce my telephone service to the lowest possible package necessary to maintain my DSL. To my surprise, the operator told me that I didn't need phone service to maintain my DSL!!! I canceled my home phone on the spot. My wife and I already pay about a hundred bucks a month for our combined cellphone package, so why the hell should I waste even a nickel more for a home phone? That was a saving of about $50 a month more for a total of $100 a month.

And that's how I became one of "those people" who doesn't have TV. Just remember that you can watch a ton of television shows without giving your hard earned money to Comcast. But don't think of it as just a financial decision. If you try it you'll quickly see that it's really more of a lifestyle choice…And you might even find that you like it.

My Personal Political Manifesto

I haven't posted to this blog in a while, mainly because I haven't had anything interesting to say. In a recent email exchange with a good friend of mine (whose political allegiance leans to the right) I ended up writing out my philosophy for the first time in many years. I enjoyed the exercise so much I decided to post it here:

First, I'd like to tell you a little about my intellectual evolution over the past 10 years: In Pennsylvania I was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. After moving to California and living in the dessert for a year I was offered a job in the San Francisco Bay Area (right around the time George W. was APPOINTED president by the supreme court). While living in the Bay. I experienced an odd sensation. I found that living in a liberal fishbowl did not appeal to me.

The fact that everyone thought exactly the same way did not inspire intelligent political discourse. In fact, as a gun owner I learned quickly that there is an orthodoxy to the left that is just as pig-headed and irrational as those on the right. My best friend Chad has often said, "you can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into in the first place...most people go with their gut, the problem is that guts are not brains."

So I am No Fan of Nancy Pelosi, or members of her ilk. More than ever, I find myself following the Libertarian tenants of personal responsibility, and choice as the core of freedom.

That is one of many reasons why my wife and I chose to move to Portland Oregon. More than anything else it is a forward thinking progressive [not liberal] place where individuality is valued, not shunned. Oregon is the only state in 50 with a "right to die" law (something I support strongly) and where marijuana is basically legal (something I also support strongly) unlike California, you can own a gun without drawing the ire of your neighbors. Basically, Oregon is the "Leave Me the Fuck Alone" state.

Now, that being said. I was one of the first people I know to posit the theory that we are intentionally fucking up Iraq to destabilize the middle east, and to allow Iran to fight a proxy war with Saudi Arabia. If that is our plan, then I have nothing but respect for those geniuses in the pentagon. We need to sit back and let those bastards kill each other [instead of us] and then have a cold war with the Caliphate that rises from the ashes. We will defeat them the same way we beat the soviets; blue jeans and whiskey...a slow cultural takeover is (IMHO) preferable to a protracted bloody occupation.

But if this is indeed the plan, we have already been there too long, and lost too many American lives. I have absolutely no problem with conservative thought and opinion. The older I get, and closer to having a child (due 8/26) the more I see the wisdom of a certain amount of social equilibrium over tumultuous change. But I am not willing to support that equilibrium at the cost of personal individual freedoms.

Which brings us to my 10 point manifesto. I believe:

1. You own your body. If you want to put drugs into it (like weed, heroin, alcohol, or tobacco) you should be free to do so. And it should be taxed. If you want to sell your body, you should be free to do so. And it should be taxed. Both should be regulated (like the food supply) to ensure public safety. Both should be available only to adults. Also if you want to kill yourself, be my guest. It's your body so it's your decision to leave it.

2. Everyone is free to get married. That goes for a man and a woman, two men, two women, three women and a man, four men and two women, whatever...So go ahead and do whatever the hell you want in your own bedroom, as long as the participants are all consenting adults. Oh, and if being Gay is "against God's will" why does every species on the planet engage in homosexual behavior?

3. Everyone must be provided with basic healthcare. Universal government sponsored healthcare as a baseline is just as much of a necessity for a thriving society as public schools. If you want to purchase additional coverage above and beyond that (similar to sending your kid to a private school) go ahead. But everyone deserves basic maintenance, and these days too many people cannot afford it. You know why the EU banned many more harmful chemicals in their products than we do? Not because they don't have business lobbyists, because the government has more incentive to keep people well than to make them sick. That being said, healthy people should be given tax credits.

4. Church and State must remain separate. One of the biggest problems in this country right now is the hijacking of the republican party by right-wing fundamentalists who are convinced that 2000 years ago the "Sky Daddy" had a baby with a virgin, and for some reason this entitles them to tell the rest of us how to live and what to think. Everyone is free to enjoy their own religion, no one has the one and only true answer...Ironically it is these same people who believe so deeply that god is love, abortion is murder, and turn the other cheek who are the biggest proponents of war and the death penalty.

5. Which brings us to war and the death penalty. I believe that there are some truly evil motherfuckers on this planet who deserve to die. I do not condone attacking a country that had nothing to do with 911, nor do I condone interventionist foreign policy. If Saddam was so evil, why haven't we attacked Kim Jong il? That crazy sonofabitch has nukes!!! Unless someone physically attacks us here on American soil (ala pearl harbor) we should not go to war. But if we do go to war, we need to kick as much ass as is humanly possible. Kill, Maim, Torture, take the gloves way the fuck off! That is how you wage War...This of course, should only be used as a last resort. I also have no moral or ethical problem with the death penalty. The only reason I don't support the death penalty is that I truly believe the judicial system in its current form is too inept to hand down such an irreversible punishment. The number of convictions that have been overturned or exonerated by DNA evidence in the last decade causes me to think that we need to fix the courts before we let them kill people. Have you ever sat on a Jury? biggest bunch of rednecks and r-tards I have ever seen. Those people should not be given the power to execute anyone.

6. Which is why I believe citizenship should be earned. Either through military service, public works service, or foreign service (peacecorp, drs. without borders etc.). Only then should you have the right to vote, sit on a jury, or hold public office. Perhaps if these privileges were earned, they would finally be respected.

7. Politics is NOT a career. Public service is something you do while on hiatus from your regular vocation. You should get elected, serve a term or two, and get the fuck out. Only by adhering to these strict standards can we hope for altruism in our elected officials. Politics is a dirty business and no matter how clean you were when you started, the longer you stay in the dirtier you get. That collective dirt seeps into the gears and inevitably harms the machine as a whole. In addition to serious term limits, we need at least 3 political parties in this country! Having only two has led to a stagnant and polarized system which caters to lobbyists and does not serve the interests of the majority of Americans (most of whom are somewhere in the middle).

8. Take responsibility for yourself and your actions! If you break it, buy it. If you spill hot coffee in your lap, don't sue McDonalds. Learn that coffee = hot and move on! Thus "Loser Pays" [court costs] lawsuits should be the rule, as only those with a righteous beef will bring suit, and it would clean out much of what is clogging the arteries of our courts. Also, we need to do away with the "nanny state." If you don't want to wear a seatbelt in your car, or a helmet on your motorcycle there shouldn't be a law that forces you to...But don't expect the universal heathcare (see #3) to cover your stupid ass!

9. Corporations need to be subject to the same rules as individuals and should be required to maintain "citizenship" in this country in order to do business here. Also, the government should NOT bail anyone out. I don't care if it's an airline, car manufacturer, or a sub-prime lender. If your business goes "tits up" that's the free-market for you! Suck it up and give someone else a chance.

10. Finally, If you don't like what's on the TV or the radio, it has 2 buttons. One to change the channel, and one to turn it OFF. The FCC should not be allowed to regulate content. The only thing they should do is issue licenses to TV stations to avoid a monopoly of media control. News needs to be about information not infotainment. The time was for a TV station to maintain its license they had to air a certain amount of commercial free community oriented programming. In most cases, this translated to news departments that were not for-profit, and that actually told the people what they needed to know, not what they wanted to hear. The lack of the former, and abundance of the latter has helped create an uniformed populace who actually believe what they hear on Fox News (which is neither fair, nor balanced).

In essence, my philosophy revolves around a simple central ideal: True Freedom is the greatest thing a society can offer it's constituents....Oh, and Don't be a Douche.

Moving Your Motorcycle

"My girlfriend and I are moving from Pensacola to Atlanta (about 350 miles). I have a SV650 that I need to move and we are renting a 16 foot truck (no problems, I hope). I doubt that there will be tie downs (like a D-ring I can attach my straps to) in the 16 foot truck for securing the motorcycle.

Can you elaborate on how you tied the motorcycle down, how well it work, and whether there were any problems with it? I'd like to get my motorcycle into the truck, but if I can't I need to rent a trailer now because we will be pressed for time on moving day."

Hey Man. Sorry I couldn't email you directly, so I'll post the response directly here...Screw the trailer, they're a pain to haul behind the truck, unless you have a buddy who can hitch it to his pickup.

Obviously, load the bike first. The key is to wedge the front tire of the bike into the corner of the truck behind the cab at a 45 degree angle. We then used about 4 tiedown straps to secure the front end of the bike, wrapping them over and under the section of the handlebars just above the frame. We secured them to the wall by threading them through the aluminum slats on the inside wall of the truck. There's always something in those trucks that you can slide a rope through.

The bike is heavy enough that with the front end securely fastened, the back end won't move. Used an additional strap (or rope) to lock the front brake in the "squeezed position" Fold or remove the mirrors, and any other breakable or removable parts before shipping.

Keep in mind that I ride a V-Star 1100, which is a larger bike with a lower center of gravity. The SV650 has a dry weight of about 360 pounds as opposed to my 580, so consider having a full tank of fuel (to add weight), and packing the bike in with soft large, objects (like a mattress and a couch) just be sure to wrap the bike in some old sheets to eliminate any grease transfer. This will ensure a safe ride for your bike.

The toughest park is getting the bike out of the truck unscathed. You've spent the day unpacking the truck (you are tired) now it's time to back the bike out and down the ramp. Where it was fun to ride the thing in, it's a pain to get it out. You can't turn it around in such a narrow space so you I recommend walking the bike down with about 4 people spotting you.

Again, you may be lucky because you bike has a better turning radius than mine, so you might be able to ride it out. Either way, be careful.

Please let me know if you have any questions & Good Luck!