the great outdoors

some people take the great outdoors for granted. it is easy to do if you live in a small town like i do. you will hear people complaining all the time about the wind blows too hard or we don't get enough rain (which is true, but don't whine about it). i love being outside. it is by far my most favorite thing in the entire world. everything that i enjoy takes place outdoors (minus movie watching and video game playing) and that makes me soooooo happy. today was such a beautiful day and my dad and i took the time to pot some plants for our back porch. they look spectacular and it was awesome to just be outside planting plants and listening to the radio together. i wish that people would take advantage of being outside more often than they do. i was in a large city called denver over spring break and it was an awesome place to visit but if i had to live there i am pretty sure i would die. ok not really but seriously it is not a place for someone like me who has grown up on a farm his whole life on the oklahoma panhandle plains. sure there is green spaces for you to get your outdoor fix in the city but nothing compares to what i have grown up around. the moral of the story today is to get outside and make some memories that will last a lifetime. :)

landscape architecture

sorry it has been so long since i have written a blog. i have been a busy body and had many other things on my plate. i decided to talk a little bit about my major today. today was the due date for an internship application for this summer and i am glad to have that put behind me. now all i can do is wait. internships are hard to come by this year due to our poor economy so i feel privileged to even have the opportunity to apply at all. it is kind of funny how i stumbled into this major. i had just finished my freshman year in college and was on track to becoming a veterinarian and then i realized how much chemistry i had ahead of me and how much i did not enjoy that subject. i then began searching around for a new major. i knew that i love to be outdoors, plants, and computers. two of these things go hand in hand, but throwing computers into the mix did not fit so well. that's what i thought. i was wrong and upon doing lots of research i found out about a profession that i did not really know existed. LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE!!! i am so happy that i jumped into this major. it has opened my mind up to being more creative and i really have a greater appreciation for nature and everything in it. i am now in my third year of the program and on track to finish within the time specified by the department heads. it is definitely the most challenging thing that i have ever taken on and it takes up most of my time, but it has been the best experience ever. well i better get back to watching some basketball. hopefully i can come up with a great topic for tomorrow....

feng shui

so today and for the next couple of days we are going to talk about a topic that i feel like helps me and can help you.  it is called feng shui.  feng shui translates directly to wind-water.  it is stated in some ancient chinese book that qi rides the wind and scatters, but is retained when encountering water.  what that means i have no clue, but i do know that for someone that can not handle clutter all around that feng shui is an amazing way to keep happy and clutter-free.  i will give some examples of feng shui in your bedroom.

1.  do not have a tv, computer, or exercise equipment in your bedroom.

2.  open the windows in your room often to let fresh air in so that you have plenty of fresh oxygen.

3.  have several sources of light in your room or use a dimmer switch, so that you can adjust the lighting according to your mood

4.  use soothing colors in your room.  colors range from white to a dark chocolate brown.

5.  choose the images, that will hang in your room, carefully.  it is important to have images that give off a positive energy.  the best images are ones that you see yourself in or that are happy

6.  follow the basic guidelines for bed placement.  they are have bed approachable easily from both sides, have to bedside tables (identical is preferred), and avoid having the bed in direct line with the door.

7.  keep all of the doors in your room shut at night, these include closet doors, bathroom doors, the bedroom door, and any other doors you may have.

8.  do not store anything underneath your bed.  any object under the bed can obstruct chi from flowing freely around the room and therefore causes unwanted tension.

these are just some basic tips for the layout of your bedroom.  there are so many things that you can do to make your room more feng shui.  to learn more about these you should check out a book on it.  upon getting my new apartment i will definitely be organizing the entire place according to feng shui principles, because where i live now does not allow any of these principles to happen.  i feel very tense and even grumpy sometimes from being in my room and it is quite possibly due to the negative energy and clutter in my room.  until next time...adios

go with the flow

"go with the flow" i try to tell my uptight girlfriend that believes we have to have plans for everything.  haha.  i am just not the type of person that gets too worked up about anything that involves doing something.  i am a huge fan of flying by the seat of my pants and not caring where i am going and how long it takes to get there or even what i am going to do when i get there.  we are going to the rockies for a few days and i am so care free about all of it.  i don't care where we stay or eat or shop or anything like that.  i am just there to have a good time and enjoy the mountain air.  i just love being outdoors and that is enough for me.  heck i could sleep in my truck and be ok, but that is not ok with the g/f.  she says we have to have a hotel room that has the door inside.  what difference that makes, i have no clue.  all that i know is that i am not going to be the planner of all of this bc i really don't care about any of the extra stuff.  i am just ready to be away from school, in my favorite place and with my special person in life.  i am super stoked and can't wait to blog all about it whenever i return.  just remember, it's not about the starting or ending point, it's about the journey.  :)

square root day

happy square root day!!!  this is an exciting day in many people's lives, including mine.  it happens nine times in a century and today happens to be one of those times.  it's square root day.  i am sure that if you are able to get to this site then most likely you have some type of brain in your head, so i don't think that i need to explain it.  the date today is 3/3/09 so there you go.  go out and have a brew today celebrating this special day because you have 7 years before the next square root day comes about!!!

mac vs. pc

before i begin this post i want to give a disclaimer. i am not trying to persuade anyone to believe that a mac is better than a pc or that a pc is better than a mac. i am just going to give my personal preference and opinion. first off we will talk about operating system. i used a pc my whole life up until i came to college and it was time to a new computer. all throughout high school i was always curious about using a mac and wondered why more people did not use them. i have now come to realize that a mac did not used to be as compatible with a pc as they are now and that is a big deal since most of the business world uses a pc with windows on it. in my high school we had a yearbook class and i was fortunate enough to be the "yearbook aide" during my senior year in high school. this was my first experience with the mac operating system and it was something that i am glad that i was able to experience. these macs were from the early 90s and pretty outdated compared to the pc's that most of the yearbook layouts were done on. nevertheless i was able to play around with it enough that i decided to look into getting one for myself for school. the operating system is in my opinion easier to pick up on for someone that has never used a computer before and is just overall more user-friendly than windows. next i will discuss viruses. this is a touchy subject and if discussed with a pc or mac fanboy then you will get mixed stories. a mac fanboy will look at a pc user and degrade them for using windows because it's 1. not cool and 2. virus prone. a pc fanboy will look at a mac user and 1. call them stupid 2. tell them that in the "real" world it will be hard to find a job where they company uses mac and 3. macs can and have as many or more viruses than pc's. these statements from a fanboy or not are all personal opinion. if you are a designer then the chance of you using a mac in a company are pretty good. if you are an accountant then the chances of you using a pc in a company are pretty good. the only real issue that i have with any of these statements is the one about the macs can have or do have as many or more viruses than a pc. i have a "friend" that is a pc user and has tried numerous times to tell me that my mac is no more safe than his pc and that it is actually less safe than his pc. his facts came from a blog run by pc users (therefore biased) and the statistics were about the number of vulnerabilities in the windows operating system and the mac osx operating system. the mac had nearly three times as many vulnerabilities than the pc so he thought that he had proved his point. my defense to this is that vulnerabilities do not equal exploits. my honest opinion about this is that sure there may be more vulnerabilities out there on the mac osx but hackers are not going to waste their time developing a virus that will affect only 7% of all the computers in the world when they can attack a much larger 85% of all computers are pc's. i personally do not want everyone to make the switch to mac because then the mac users will have the same problem that windows users have at the present time. i know that this has been a long drawn out post but it is something that has been on my mind recently and i wanted to talk a little bit about it. if you want to know about this ongoing struggle between microsoft and apple then do some extra research. there is a plethora of information out there on the web. and guess what? it doesn't matter what you have as long as you are happy with it. remember don't be a fanboy. :)

fanboys

everybody knows at least one fanboy but you may not have ever heard them called that.  a fanboy is a person that believes that something that they use, do, or like is the end all be all of everything and will do everything in their power to make you believe them. I will count down the most annoying types of fanboys according to me....

6. fangirl

the fangirl is a female that is obsessed with something in an attempt to be as cool as one of the guys. one of the most recent outbreaks of fangirls was the release of the movie Twilight. it seems as tho every girl and their mom saw this movie and are now obsessed with vampires. fangirls are not the worst type of fanboy tho. there are many that are worse.

5. nintendo fanboy

these are the guys or girls that have always secretly loved nintendo but since the wii's success they are coming out of the woodwork to rub it in 360 and ps3 owners faces that the wii is the best selling console in the world.

4. xbox fanboy

the guy that plays halo 24/7 and swears that microsoft is the best company in the world and will buy every little thing that they put out. these guys also refuse to believe that the red ring of death exists. they also believe that they are the best selling console in the world because the wii is more of a "toy" rather than a competitor. as long as they are ahead of sony in the market share tho they will still be happy.

3. sony fanboy

ps3 and blu ray lovers that still believe that they are the more "elite" console because they have exclusive games to the ps3. (microsoft is doing this now too) funny thing about this is that microsoft is starting to pull some of those sony exclusive games away and port them onto the 360 and pc. blu ray snobs are the ones that say that all along they knew that blu ray would beat out hd-dvd and that it was ridiculous to even think that something could compare to the quality of blu ray.

2. comic fanboy

the guys that have jumped onto the comic bandwagon due to the popularity of recent movies such as iron man, the hulk, the dark knight and the soon to be released watchmen. these fanboys act like they know so much about everything in comic books, when in fact if you asked them how long ago they began to take interest in a particular comic such as iron man you would get a answer that would most likely be a lie. most of the comic fanboys have become interested in a certain comic only after the release of a movie.

1. mac or pc fanboy

this had to be obvious that this was coming. these are by far the worst fanboys that you will ever come across. they are the most mudslinging fanboys of them all and will do everything that they can to make the other one look bad. this may be in the form of commercials such as "i'm a mac" and microsoft's lame attempt at combatting these commercials with their own type of "i'm a pc" commercial. the mac fanboy thinks that all the artsy programs that a designer might run will run so much better on a mac and that there are not any viruses either. they think its such an easy decision to get a mac and that if you don't have one then you suck. as for the pc fanboy they do nothing but attempt to find ways to prove the mac fanboy wrong and often make themselves look like idiots in the process. whatever the case tho, you should steer clear of these maniacs at all costs and if you run across one then you should run for your life and never look back.

hopefully this has cleared some issues up for some of you that have wondered why some people are so defensive or cocky about a particular product they own. until next time...adios