experiment: a week's free time without internet research

i'm a victim of the internet.

god bless you, internet, for providing instantly assloads of information regarding nearly any subject imaginable. wikipedia, you've been a great friend in fueling nights of curiosity binges for this trivia whore; everything from C macros leading to the design history of Objective-C, to the Danger Doom discography leading to the next planned Deltron 3030 album, you make it so easy to dive into your many information rabbit-holes and play for hours on end.

but i've burnt out. i've heard it called "information overload". i like to think of it a symptom of "jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none"ness. i have plenty of interest, and the wonders of the wired make it trivial to gather more and more information on any of them, then (attempt to) stuff all that info in my head for some later use.

one problem of course is, if i don't use it i lose it, so everything i put in, if i don't do anything with it it just fades away as if i never learned it in the first place. the other danger is that i tend to use this "research" as distractions from actually accomplishing stuff, or from discovering, delving into, refining, and clarifying my own deeper personal thoughts.

so my resolve this week: no internet research outside of work hours.  i can't survive a complete internet blackout though. i need my wired to comunicate with everyone i care about and who care about me (a week without katie is torturous enough). aside from that, this week's after-work free time internet usage i'm going to limit to downloading games so as to rediscover some of my classic favorites (starting with zelda: a link to the past), discovering or rediscovering music and movies, looking up guitar tab to get more songs under my fingers, and more frequently spilling my thoughts and confessions onto this here blog.

shit, i don't know what's gonna happen. i don't even know if i can make it.

no more idle research, spike. do. or do not.

transition from meager dad to rich dad

quite suddenly i've found myself, out of all those in my immediate family, to be making the most money. "don't be surprised, spike", you may say, "that's what that fancy computer science degree gets you". yeah, it's true, all those years of hard work in school and later in the workforce has finally started paying off, and in a big way. it's just a little strange, making more money than my old man, the one man i think so highly of and can never surpass. it feels odd.

and it's hard not to feel that it has all come so suddenly. just this time last year my contracting gig had no tasks for me and i found myself again without work and without income. not six months i was crashing on a homey's couch in san francisco, banging out code in his basement, thinking life couldn't get much better. these days i'm back at a stable office job, complete with my own desk, health insurance, and the biggest paychecks i've ever seen signed over to me.

my life seems to be on the verge of transition from meager dad to rich dad. i've tended to live my life in a pretty modest fashion so far, but i can't continue with my overly modest ways if i am to break out of this modest existence. time to start doing what rich dads do.

there's the big question. never being one myself, i can only make guesses what a rich dad does. here's my first incomplete stab at it: what does a rich dad do?

• a rich dad doesn't have outstanding student loans
• a rich dad puts away money for his kid's college fund
• a rich dad helps out his parents and sisters when they need it, just as they helped him when he was in need
• a rich dad helps out those friends in need who in the past propped him up when he was down and out
• a rich dad loves the town and house in which he dwells
• a rich dad dresses well (a combination of a shopping spree with raych and a shopping spree with katie should spruce up my wardrobe quite nicely)

this transforming into rich dad status certainly won't happen overnight. i've certainly a backlog of things to handle and take care of. i just need to start laying out a path, however vague, in which to follow forward.

did i leave anything out? am i totally off base? dear reader, won't you leave a comment?