abunchofrandom. joshua conner's weblog. - January 17th, 2005

After some thought, here are my resolutions. I am posting them here so that - if you're reading this - you can keep me honest. Please do so. I resolve:

• To send out thank you and Christmas cards.
• To stop caring whether people think the jokes I make are funny.
• To keep better in touch with friends and family.
• To take better care of my teeth.
• To be gregarious as much as possible.
• To lose 10 pounds of fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle.
• To remember people's birthdays.
• To be patient and trusting.
• To, the next time a telemarketer calls, pretend to be "Amy Conner."
• To remember that everything - everything - is a choice and feel less helpless because of that.
• To get enough sleep.
• To say "gets the party crunk," "drop it like it's hot," etc., as often and as ironically as possible.

AND

• To get more than one rad t-shirt.

Happy 2005.

UPDATE: After reading about Uberlists, I've decided to try and create one for myself. I'm giving myself through the end of January to finish the list (I'll add items as they come to mind), and then I'll close it off and start finishing items (and crossing them off). Wish me luck!

1. Finish my uberlist.
2. Get an apartment/house with some friends.
3. Get rid of 10% of my stuff.
4. Buy a laptop.
5. Buy a watch.
6. Throw 3 parties at said apartment/house.
7. New cell phone.
8. Go on 5 dates.
9. Call my family more often.
10. Hike more.
11. Camp more.
12. Go to Las Vegas.
13. 4.0 semester GPA.
14. Take pictures of all my friends.
15. Invite people over for dinner 4 evenings.
16. Play music more.
17. Get a drum set.
18. Shave more.
19. Get my website going.

More to come! Suggestions welcome!

Easy, you're saying, just use the search bar on the main page.

Yes, you *could* do that. But anyone who's been an NAU student for long knows that NAU's search appliance is pretty bad. But there is a solution! Google offers a university search service for almost every university in the country.

NAU's is here. If you don't go to NAU, you can see the list of all schools here.

Rejoice! Now those who are looking, for example, to figure out how to connect their Playstation 2 to Resnet can find what they're looking for with Google.

Because Lord knows they won't with NAU's search.

Many of you may know that I've been considering going nocturnal for some time this semester. While the idea of going nocturnal was very exciting to me - I'd have more time to do the things I want (like hang out with my friends, succeed in school, exercise, and - let's face it - blog) and I'd spend less time doing the things I'd rather not do (like sit around and be bored) - it made me a little nervous.

After all, I'd been bombarded my entire life with "information" like "normal people go to bed at 10pm and wake up at 6am," "the best sleep that you get is before midnight" and, worst of all "sleep is for lazy people." But after reading this fine blog post on fact and fiction about sleep cycles (thanks, Boing Boing!), I feel a lot better about the whole thing:

I see some striking parallels between the way this society treats sleep and the way it treats sex. Both are sinful activities, associated with one of the Seven Deadly Sins (Sloth and Lust). Both are associated with the most powerful biological needs. Both are supposed to be a taboo topic. Both are supposed to be done in private, at night, with a pretense that it is never actually happening. Education in sleep hygiene and sex hygiene are both slighted, one way or another (the former passively, the latter actively opposed). Both are thought to interfere with one's productivity - ah, the good old Protestant work ethic! Why are Avarice and Greed not treated the same way? Raking in money by selling mega-burgers is just fine, and a decent topic of conversation, even a point of pride. Why are we still allowing Puritan Calvinist way of thinking, coupled with capitalist creed, to still guide the way we live our lives, or even think about life. Sleeping, whether with someone or alone, is a basic human need, thus a basic human right. Neither really detracts from the workplace productivity - au contraire: well rested and well satisfied people are happy, energetic, enthusiastic and productive. It is sleep repressed people, along with the dour sex repressed people, who are the problem, making everyone nervous. How much longer are we going to hide under the covers?

So I've decided to take the plunge; as of tonight, I'm going nocturnal. I'll stay up all night, go to class, go to bed (around 11am or noon) and wake up when I wake up. I'll be chronicling my experiences with this in a series of blog posts entitled - you guessed it - "Nocturnal Emissions."

Look forward to more as the semester continues, and wish me luck!

It's the first day of classes here at NAU, so I did what anyone would do. I wrote some haiku senryu. UPDATE: And then, two hours later, rewrote them.


Good luck on classes!

UPDATE: Thanks to Owen for correctly pointing out that these poems are actually senryu, not haiku. More in the comments.