mental manifestations

Sometime during May 2006, I randomly decided to watch Yu-Gi-Oh. I developed some interest in it my late senior year in high school and kept regular track of it into my second year of college. By that time, I stopped watching it since it had gotten so repetitive and drawn-out. Anyway, as I was waiting for Yu-Gi-Oh to come on, I was flipping through the various Saturday morning cartoons. Most of them seemed drab and unentertaining to me. Then I started thinking about all the cartoons I had watched during my childhood and even late into my adolescent years. The amount of cartoons I had watched steadily decreased the older I became. I compared these new cartoons to the ones in my past viewing experience and deemed my past better than the present.

My mind wandered to other topics such as music. Songs that were popular in 1996 (and some of which I still like listen to occasionally) are no longer played on the radio (except for very rare instances). That really made me feel old. 10 years ago I was in the sixth grade and was 12 years old. I thought about the video games I used to play and compared them to today’s games. It’s hard for me to evaluate today’s games by today’s “standards” since they are so different now. It’s easy to see the evolution that has taken place, but I find it difficult to keep up with it. As a result, I dismiss mostly every game and gamer child (anyone born in the 1990’s and later) as “bad” since they are nothing like the “old days” of my youth.

I am only 21 years old. I am still young in some respects, but just thinking about that viewpoint made me feel so old. I really understood what the generation gap was and what it felt like to be “old” and how today’s current generation is so different. I hope in time, they will come to realize the same thing. I personally have never thought that I would reach such a conclusion, but I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. It is our past (particularly our younger years) that are so formative and developmental in who we are today. Once that ground foundation is set, breaking apart and starting over is a really hard thing to do. I guess this is all part of becoming an adult.

Every time that I pick up an interest in the latest hardware — mice, keyboards, motherboards, graphics cards — I always browse around the Internet and find reviews of the product. Every review I read always has the same setup: introduction, specifications, comparisons, testing, benchmarks, and conclusions. I’ve decided to stop reading any kind of review. The hardware review format has become so banal that every review (and reviewer too) loses all meaning. There is no point. If you read one, then you have read them all.

Isn’t it obvious that new hardware will always outperform other hardware? This is so commonly done with graphics cards that it’s just a waste of time to benchmark them. Of course the new hardware is going to be fantastic! Anyone with a lick of hardware sense can just pick up on it immediately. I know I’m being overly general here (not all new hardware is the greatest), but the basic idea is just too prevalent.

A new, faster processor is coming out? Wowza!

What I propose is that hardware reviewers post a review after using the hardware for an extended period of time. Nearly all reviews out there are too immediate. You could test a product in a day, write a quickie review, and then forget about it. Reviews are nothing more than advertisements to make a profit for the manufacturer. The problem with testing hardware over time is that the planned obsolescence will come in and take over.

So back in March 2006, I purchased a Razer Copperhead gaming mouse since my old Logitech MX1000 died (the battery reached the end of its charging life). I was happy for a while until my mouse died only two months after use. I’ve contacted Razer tech support three times about the issue and they have not contacted me back at all. It’s not exactly fair to say that my hardware failure is a result of bad hardware reviews, but I want something more than fanboy enthusiasm full of hypothetical claims.

When I first moved out of the dorms and into my apartment, I suddenly became responsible for feeding myself. That was when I started to learn how to cook. Just a few months after moving in, I decided that it would be kind of neat to throw a dinner party for a bunch of friends I had met in the dorms. One of the reasons for doing so was to have a small reunion at the beginning of the school year. Another reason was to have a housewarming party for me and my roommates. The last reason was to see if I could actually cook for a large group of people.

The whole idea of cooking for a dinner party came from my mom who would cook oodles and oodles of food for my extended family whenever we would gather together for birthday parties or holiday celebrations. My mom had always started cooking in the morning. I tried to start as early as I could (as class would allow), and I spent a few hours over the stove just preparing and cooking everything. I had some help too in making some of the dishes, but the whole process from start to finish required constant attention. I had lots of things being done in parallel.

Eventually, I managed to get everything done not too long after the last few guests showed up. I certainly had a greater appreciation all those years when my mom cooked food for everyone. She used to make many different types of dishes and for a lot more people than I had at my party. That night was a pretty substantial group of people to cook for by myself even with the help I received.

During the later months, my roommates and I would occassionally have smaller groups of people (thereby making the amount of cooking more manageable) plus we had become slightly better in our methods of preparation and cooking. I have always wondered what it would be like to be a chef and work in a restaurant. From what I’ve read and seen, the restaurant industry appears extremely demanding. The night I had my dinner party gave me a small inkling of what it was like to do that.