Dear Journal

    Hi, it's me, Henry. In my never-ending quest for quality programming on my computer, I downloaded every episode of Doug the other day, and boy do I miss this era of cartoons. It's simple, yet relatable. I didn't remember there being so many episodes though; four seasons! It's going to take me a while to go through all of them.

    Along with Doug, I've also got Angry Beavers and Freakazoid. Hooray old cartoons!!!

Gettin' me down

    So I've been following the story of Mohan Varughese over the last few days. For those who don't know, the 23 year-old was talking to his girlfriend on the stoop of her Temple-campus home, when some punk 19-year old came up and demanded the keys to his nearby motorcycle. When Varughese refused, the little fuck shot him 3 times in the face and chest, and ran away. Like a little bitch. Mohan died less than an hour later in hospital. As sad as that is by itself, the details made it truly devastating: 


    As a former Temple student himself, Vuraghese transfered to Penn State with a major in psychology. He was a mere four days away from graduating and earning his degree when 19 year-old Jeffrey Little decided to kill him in broad daylight in front of his girlfriend.


    It gets better! Little Jeffrey was supposed to be on 6 month house arrest for a previous drug possession charge. The little shit cut his ankle bracelet off and decided he wanted to go motorcycle shopping.


   Can you imagine putting all that effort into your education (not to mention the money), then getting gunned down by some little fuck who thinks he's hard because he managed to get his grubby little hands on a gun, less than a week from your graduation? I mean, come on.


    The true irony is that Varughese had already secured a job for after graduation. What was it? He was going to use his degree to help underprivileged children. Good job, Jeff.


    Jeffrey Little was arrested thanks to an anonymous tip. US Marshalls and Philly SWAT raided the house he was hiding out in, and arrested him without incident. He is being charged with murder. Good. I think he deserves to rot in jail for the rest of his life, since he obviously has no regard for the law, or really any observable decency to begin with. I feel the world would be better without him, and I am absolutely positive I'm not the only one.

  

Jeffrey Little

    I'm not usually one to get caught up in the depressing, fear-mongering news, but this particular story struck a chord with me. It was getting me down all day. Deepest condolences go out to his family, and definitely his girlfriend. Can't imagine what that must have been like.

Just thought I ought to share...

I knew this would happen...

    As I had expected, waking up at 5:30 every morning has shifted my natural sleep rhythm. After looking forward to sleeping nice and late, I end up waking up at 8 o'clock.
    At least I get to sleep in, yeah? Nice relaxing morning in bed was just what I needed. Hopefully these 5am mornings get easier as time goes on.

Week-In Review!

    What a week! I've finally started my CO-OP! Mars Drinks has somehow become my entire life within the span of five days. I guess that will happen when I'm out of the house for 14 hours a day, waking up at 5:30 in the morning.

    I spent the first couple days getting a feel for the company as a whole. Getting oriented by several key players in upper management, guided by the yellow and red M&M characters. Several PowerPoint presentations and lots of paperwork later, I started boxing coffee packets on the assembly line. One thing that has really impressed me is the degree of effort they put into supporting equality, freedom, and fun. Treating "wheredafungo" is something they take seriously. Everyones desks are all in the same room, there are no private offices, no executive parking spaces, no special treatment. I can literally walk 15 feet to the company managers desk and introduce myself, while being greeted with a smile.

    Everyone on the production floor is cheerful, friendly, and helpful. There is an overwhelming sense of camaraderie between machines. When someones rails are running out, the person next to them will refill the hopper, without any expectation of thanks or reciprocation. Tiny details like this make learning my way around the company incredibly easy, and an absolute joy.

   After getting a solid feel for how the packet machines work, I started to get a bit more hands-on. Changing laminate and filter spools, fixing minor jams and lock-ups, and navigating the GUI. Today, the last day of my first week, I started doing quality control testing. Loading a big machine with 5 packets to test how much pressure it takes to break the lower seal. The hot chocolates were being particularly stubborn, as the packets had become notorious for popping open unexpectedly (an obvious safety issue when hot liquids are involved).

    In order to attain the best seal, several factors were considered. The metal plates that press and melt the laminate together had to be tweaked. Two springs of differing tension were compared to each other, a 3mm plate was compared to a 7mm one, and the whole set up was done at several different temperatures. Trial and error was employed along with statistical analysis to determine which specific combination of these three individual factors produced the most consistently reliable seal. By the time my day ended, a conclusion had not been reached, but lots of data had been logged, so its now just a matter of crunching all the numbers. Talk about jumping right into the engineering!

    On Monday I start getting familiar with the aging grinder, so when the time comes to replace it, I have a good working knowledge of it. That I am really looking forward to.

    It's just a damn shame I have to wait so long to start getting paid. Oh well. $15/hr is worth the wait I suppose. Here's hoping for another great week next week!

I am Stoner

As a sort of tribute to my upcoming celibacy from pot, I wanted to post a piece of writing that I actually found pretty inspiring:


We are Stoner.
We go to work everyday.
We've thought about life more than you can understand.
We've values that you overlook.
We are the ones who hold your hair while your poison ejects itself.
We are the ones who can talk to the cop, since you can't even stand.
We are prosecuted by those who are jealous of our zeal.
We don't need help or your opinion, or that new fancy liver.


We are understanding, compassionate and forgiving. If the laws changed tomorrow, we would not hold spite for all the years or harassment.
We are joyous, happy and outgoing. Not only do we love the greatness we have found in life, but feel compelled to share it with you as well.
We are dependable, chivalrous and loyal. We don't smoke too much pot and accidentally screw our best friend's girlfriend.
We are accepting, trusting and doubtless. Ethnicity? Race? Social status? Don't worry about all that; sit down and have a toke with us.


We will not give up. We will survive your trials.
We will endure your lies. And sooner or later, we will win.
We are all together. We all accept each other. We are all one.
We are Stoner.


Beautifully written. Speaks for itself.

(Original writing credit to Tempest on HighDeas - http://highdeas.com/philosophy/I_Am_Stoner)

Things I Want to do Before I Die

In no particular order

• Scuba dive down to, and explore a sunken ship. Doesn't need to be particularly deep or big,  just the experience itself is unbelievably cool.

• Get my private pilots license.
• Fly faster than the speed of sound, as either a passenger or pilot.
• Go skydiving unassisted, after sufficient training of course.
• Travel to every continent, including Antarctica. I've already been to several.
• Get my picture taken with whoever the current President is at the time. Obama would be pretty cool.
• Become fluent in at least one other language.
• Brew my own beer.

More to be added as I think of them.

Television. Can't stand it.

I'm really starting to get fed up with television these days. While there are some shows that I enjoy and stay current with, it seems that every other week there's another one I have to abandon because it's become just the same tired thing every damn episode. Take for example South Park; in it's heyday, it was witty, provocative, edgy, and laugh-out-loud funny. After about season 11 it started getting unbelievably lame. Rather than coming up with new twists and original plots (Red sleigh down, All about Mormons, Make love not Warcraft, etc) they now just regurgitate already-played-out trends in pop-media without bring anything new to the table.

We get it, Apple made a huge thing with the iPad. It's fun to make fun of Apple. What's funny about this? The only funny thing to come from Trey and Matt recently was the episode Créme Fraiche. The Shake Weight bit was actually pretty funny.

    Also, what gives with all this royal wedding non-sense. It's been just over a week and they're STILL playing it and going on and on about this person's take on it, or that person's opinion of her dress, or what this means for the 2012 election. Does anyone give a shit? Can we all just agree to drop this please?

   But it doesn't stop there. Commercials have gotten so sickeningly stupid, that most of these companies have not only ensured that I will NEVER buy what they're selling, but I will mercilessly judge anyone that does. Perfect example is this asshole:

    A company such as Geico that continues to pump out commercials this trashy cannot possibly provide anything close to quality insurance. He is not funny, not clever, and certainly doesn't convey a sense of security and trust in the company itself. 

    Not to pick on Geico in particular, but can you please just pick an advertising campaign and stick with it? You have (let's count): the D-Bag pictured above asking rhetorical questions, the lizard with the accent (who is the only Geico mascot who actually provides some information about the company), the pretentious easily-offended caveman, the creepy stack of money with googly eyes, and the series of poorly-animated shorts that were supposedly made in 15 minutes ("I'm not your daddy, I'm your grandpa!"). What about these is supposed to make me want to put my faith in your product? Beside the fact that I don't have a car, I've gotten the sense that everyone at Geico is either stoned off their ass, or has an IQ hovering somewhere around their shoe size.

    What with the State Farm pedophile that REALLY wants to be my friend, the slew of Geico rubbish, the Progressive lady that tries desperately to be young and hip ("Unicorns and Glitter!!"), and J. Jonah Jameson teaching ignorant Farmers interns what insurance is all about, I'm really not sure I'm ever going to get a car. Too bad that doesn't stop me from being subjected to car insurance commercials. 

   I swear, as soon as they come up with a way for me to watch live baseball and my favorite shows on my computer the same time they're airing on cable, I'm throwing my cable box off a really, really tall building. There's no reason I should have to wait 3 days (or god forbid, PIRATE them) to watch the shows that I actually want to watch, on my computer. Fuck the cable companies and their monopoly over the shit I want to watch.

Fuck television.