I pass on a joke I’d heard from Kevin and Theresa…

Mike D: RYAN SCHENK!
Ryan: Yo.
Mike D: What’s orange… and sounds like a parrot?
Ryan: Pyrilia aurantiocephala
Mike D: oh.

I’m currently reading ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel García Márquez.

It’s a strange book. I’m only 10% through, but I’m already finding it a unique read. It follows the lives of a family in a small town and has such remarkable color to it. At times, the lead character seems to be pursuing futile goals like alchemy and elixirs of youth, while suffering from impossible plagues and mystical curses. It’s written in such a way that makes you wonder if it’s all in the insane mind of the characters… yet the author keeps the reader in check by actually describing working wonders like flying carpets - is this book suppose to take place in the real world or is it fantasy? It’s this mix of fantasy and reality that adds a sense of color and wonderment to the reading. This fictional town has a very potent vividness to it.

Again, I’m only 10% through so it could turn into a bundle of unreadable crap - but at the moment I am very impressed with the quality of the reading.

I checked Wikipedia to read their introduction to the book. They describe it as a book which developed the “postmodern literary style.” I find this interesting as I’m reading another book about postmodernism right now and, so far, I don’t see any real parallels. We’ll see - perhaps there’s a whole new degree of interesting in that last 90%.

I recommend this book.

I’m not big into TV or movies, but I recently decided that I wanted to explore Battlestar Gallactica. I’ve only heard good things. Still, shows are always better if you have someone to watch them with, so I asked roommate Shaun if he’d be interested in watching as well. He was not thrilled.

BUT, I got him to give a thumbs up to Battlestar by first agreeing to watch an Anime show of his choosing. I was not really stoked about watching Anime, but after the first episode of Death Note, my opinion pretty much did a 180. The plot is absurdly good. It is a story of a high school student who finds a notebook that was dropped by a god of death. The main character finds that the person whose name he writes in the book will die moments later. He decides to aggressively use the notebook. Developing a god-complex, he kills off hundreds of criminals and trying to change the world for the better. The police pretty much instantly realize something screwy is going on and put their most intelligent detectives on the case.

The show is an interesting mix between a commentary on justice and good/evil, and an ever surprising game of cat and mouse between the main character and his pursuers. I strongly encourage you to give this show a chance. We’re about 25 episodes into the 34 episode series, and I’m completely hooked.

Once this ends, Battlestar will be next.

I had an issue with my online bill pay a few months ago. It stunk. I got late fees added to every single one of my bills because of some weird screw up. In any case, I thought I’d had it all figured out… but just today got a letter in the mail saying that my auto insurance had been canceled because of a missed payment.

Oops.

I’ve been meaning to check out Geico, so I hit up their website first and, just like that, had car insurance not 25 minutes later. What was especially convenient was that the policy starts tonight at midnight, so I won’t have any time uninsured. Neat.

Thanks Geico!

All things Mike D… some updates.

1. I received my Kung Fu sword. Pete has offered his services in taking some sweet photographs of the weapon with his fancy-shmancy camera. After photos are taken, you can rest assured that they will be posted here. I’m also thinking that if I can somehow take the coloring and match properties to the current banner, perhaps I’ll update mikedidonato.com’s look.

2. I’m working on a sizable mikedidonato.com project. It’s going to be a research paper of sorts that explores some geekery. I’m very excited about it, though it will be weeks, if not months, before I have amassed satisfactory amounts of knowledge to post the results. Still though, get pumped that fun geekery is in the making. It will appear in the feature section.

3. Did I tell y’all that I got a promotion at work a few months ago? I leveled up from Mechanical Engineer to Engineered Systems Product Manager. OSNAP! Look out!

4. Climbing is going very well. On Sunday, I led Broadway (5.8) at Ragged Mountain without fault. It was ridiculously smooth. This is exciting because, so far, I’ve only ever successfully led 5.8’s under the burden of heavy stress and nervousness. Being the leader can be rather stressful. Perhaps I will soon be able to begin working 5.9’s without getting too wigged out and failing miserably.

5. I got the new eating well magazine and will be trying a melon soup this week. If it doesn’t explode with summery tastes and flavors I will be sorely disappointed. Stay tuned for reports of success or failure.

There’s a hidden theme in today’s post (probably obvious to some). Can you find it and identify all the instances?

With the passing economic dooms, my company has limited the purchase of non-essentials, including but not limited to: pens.

As one would expect with basic economic laws, with this reduction of supply the value of the pen has gone up dramatically. Co-worker Shaun joked about having a stock pile at his desk and charging fellow employees for them… really, not that bad of an idea. Yesterday, I foolishly left work with a pen in my shirt pocket and this morning I found myself without a writing tool. I headed upstairs to talk to our administrative assistant.

Mike D: “Karen! Do you happen to have any pens?”
Karen: “I might have one or two really cheap pens under my desk here…”

She reached under the desk and pulled out a whole box of pens.

Mike D: “Whoa.”
Karen: “Don’t get excited. They’re really cheap pens.”
Mike D: “A cheap pen is better than no pen!”

It was an Office Max pen and the moment I laid pen to paper the tip jammed backwards through the pen and the conical tip support piece split down the middle. Weak.

It turns out that a cheap pen is not necessarily better than no pen.

Last night was pretty fun. I got home from work and immediately hit up kung fu where I got a good dosage of sword. At some point as I practiced, the cool factor of “I’m learning how to fight with a sword” kicked in and it felt pretty awesome.

After form work, we had a sparring class which was tough. I got to fight a dude who’s training to be a Navy Seal. Unsurprisingly, Navy Seals really are alarmingly awesome. While there are some who could probably compete with him, I was no challenge.

After Kung Fu, I left and headed to the climbing gym. Upon arriving, I realized that I left all of my equipment at the House of Rock. Instead of calling it quits, I borrowed a harness and figured I’d experiment with shoeless climbing. I started with a 5.8. There were a few moves that hurt the toes, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I had expected. I tried a 5.9+ after that and it was, as expected, more painful than the 8. Though still not unbearable.

Next up was a 5.10 and a 5.11. Interestingly, I fell on the 10 not because of pain but because my feet started sweating and slipped off the holds. I tried to apply some chalk to my feet but still met my match on the 11. I got to the last move which required a serious push off of a thin hold and just found that I could not put the needed force through my foot.

It was a really fun interesting experiment. I’m glad that I gave it a shot, perhaps I’ll do it again.