American 543 Welcome to Dade

Good morning readers! Happy hump day. Instead of taking a nap this Wednesday between classes I've decided to write. So here I am.

I've recently gotten re-addicted to ATC-sim. It's a game/simulation program on atc-sim.com where you take on the role of an approach/departure controller at any airport across the world. It's amazing, but it's fucking stressful. Like pull your hair out, raise your blood pressure type stressful. But then I start to get used to it, and start enjoying it, and then when I'm doing like 3 operations a minute and everyone's doing exactly what they're told and it's working out I just throw my hands behind my head and lean back in the chair with that 'fuck yeah' feeling.

I bet real controllers get that feeling all day long. Especially at places like ORD, ATL, JFK, LAX, MIA etc. Imagine just driving to work, sipping some coffee on the elevator up 20 stories to your beautiful office looking over a Class-B active airport. With your headset on, you feet up on the desk, there's got to be a constant feeling of accomplishment as you solve a never ending puzzle just so hundreds of thousands of greedy travelers can get to their vacation on time. "American 543 cross CIMBA at 2,000ft speed 240 cleared visual 8L aproach contact Miami tower on 123.9 good day welcome to Dade."

That would really be the life: Welcoming pilots into your airspace and clearing them onto your stomping grounds. There's not many occupations I can think of to top Air Traffic Controller, except of course for the airline pilots on the other side of the radio. Instead of drinking coffee from the control tower, I'd rather be on approach in the cockpit drinking my coffee at 2,000ft. Instead of mastering the domain of the airport, it'd be even better to master the domain of the aircraft. I'd be the one getting welcomed to every city just before landing.

There is just nothing better than being in a plane while it's nearing the end of the arrival, and the beginning of the approach. Whether I'm in the cockpit flying or in the cabin looking out the window reluctantly turning my Beats off at 10kft, a good arrival is always a treat. For the longest time, sitting in the plane has been nothing but down time. Playing cards, listening to music, sipping on a hearty cup of your favorite beverage; the time ticks by slowly and blissfully for hours upon hours.

Until FINALLY the engines sputter down from 80% to about 30% and the airplane gently begins settling down to Earth. The excitement of landing in a new place begins to stir, and so does the cabin as it tosses through the turbulent cloud layer. Those with a fear of flying begin to pray while the crew turns on the seat belt sign. Outside the window, visual hints of civilization begin to come into view as the cabin continues to bounce around like a boat in rough seas.

The better the destination, the better the view. Into LAX you cross the Santa Monica Mountains and immediate see an endless sea of buildings and roads, revealing the intense sprawl of the LA basin. Into MIA you cross the everglades for almost an hour. There's nothing to see but swamp and reeds until the national park ends and the city of Miami begins. If you're lucky you get a quick view of the skyline with the big blue Biscayne Bay in the background. You can't fly into Las Vegas without seeing the Strip and you can't fly into San Fran without seeing the Golden Gate Bridge. Wherever you're flying your approach yields a unique and awe-inspiring view to enjoy. Then after ten short minutes your mains touch down and you're within the limits of the fine city you've been admiring from above.

I want to experience that 3 times a day for the rest of my life. Which is ultimately why I'm here...whatever you already know that, I say it like twice a week on this blog. Anyway I'm running out of things to talk about for this blog post. Here's some stuff going on this week:
-Dennis (friend from SimAirline) is coming up and planning on chilling sometime Friday.
-Date party with Karen, this will be my first party in like a month if the Idaho trailer park party doesn't count.
-Jill and Kevin are coming with my parents to watch the UK game. That should be chill.
-I'm pretty stoked to go to Europe/Africa. Needless to say I am NOT at all prepared. Much needs to be done.

Well I'm gonna play some atc-sim until it's time for class. I hope you enjoyed my vivid description of what flying on an airline is like. Until next time...

Deck of Cards

Good afternoon everyone! Happy Monday! I don't mind Monday's as much this semester as I used to. I only have like 45 minutes to blog today, so bear with me. Hopefully this doesn't turn out to be too short.

For those of you who aren't keeping count on their own, we have 86 days until our departure for Morocco! I'm starting to get more and more excited for it. I bought a deck of cards at the corner store last week. Whenever I have a big trip I always select a deck of cards that pleases me. Then those cards serve to entertain me when I have downtime until I leave on the vacation. Then on the long million hour flights I use the deck of cards again for entertainment. They serve as like a totem if you will, which harness the energy of the vacation. Then the cards go into my bedroom in Louisville, on the top shelf with the rest of my vacation totems. It's what I do, I dub certain random objects (wings, deck of cards, shot glass, nail clippers, etc.) as little trinkets to remind me of something happy. In fact a lot of people do this, and it's called essentialism.

I used to not understand why I got so much enjoyment out of revering certain objects. It basically comes from an unknown logic flaw in our minds as we develop. Essentialism is MUCH more prevalent in children, but some people hold on to the habit. Under this way of thinking, a deck of cards is not just a stack of 52 cardboard or plastic sheets; within the completely unique arrangement of the atoms and quarks of that deck of cards is a stored identity that makes that deck different from any other decks. That identity is changed by the interactions the object has with the environment.

This may seem a bit complex for the thinking of a 5 year old, but it makes sense. It is the inherent reason that children love and care for their own stuffed animal; but when given an identical stuffed animal, the kid doesn't give a shit because it's not his stuffed animal. Even if the two stuffed bears are exactly the same, the kid knows that the new bear hasn't been altered by it's environment in the same way as the original. You could say the new bear hasn't been through the same experiences.

So as a result, people like me attribute objects to experiences. Collectors do the same thing when they buy a signed souvenir. Like a shamanistic totem, our mind makes sense out of the arbitrary and infinitesimal atomic arrangement changes and turn it into meaning. In my case this is a memory. For a child it's companionship. For the collector it could be a piece of the talent of whoever signed his souvenir.

Using my deck of cards example, I will take that deck of Aviator brand cards to Spain and Morocco with me. I will open up the package in the Miami terminal and let's say three cards fall to the floor. Before I can pick it up; bacteria has jumped onto my cards, organic material like dust has attached itself to pieces of the plastic coating, and somewhere on the three cards that fell will be a very very very small dent. For the rest of the deck's existence, effects from me dropping the cards will always remain. And because I dropped the cards in the Miami airport, in my mind the deck of cards will always contain a piece of my favorite place. Even if that is a dent that's 10^-15m deep.

Fast forward to when I'm in Morocco. Let's say in Rabat Karen and I decide to go to a cafe and play poker. While playing, a gust of wind blows sand into my eyes causing me to take a few moments to rub my eyes and tear up bit. Well those dust and shell particles also blew the deck of cards. The particles rubbed against the cards causing friction, and several of the molecules on the edge of the cards to shear off. Once again, for the rest of the deck's existence it will be altered. And even though the mass of the cards has changed to an extremely minute degree, they will always contain the remnants of Africa.

So then when I get back home to Louisville and put the cards back up in their hiding spot on the top shelf, the deck will not be altered by the environment much. The identity of the cards will always be the same as the identity of the cards I took to Africa with me, and that can be proven by the extremely small structural changes. But in my mind, it will be like storing part of the Miami airport, part of the Atlas Mountains, and part of wherever else the cards go. Just like magic.

So now on my top shelf I have...
-About 20 airline safety cards, each storing a piece of Boeing, Airbus, Delta, O'hare, etc.
-2 decks of cards, both storing pieces of cruise ships.
-A folder of bible stories, storing strong-hearted families of Honduras, dirt from the rainforest, and probably salmonella
-And a lot of other stuff but I'm running out of time and have to class.

Sorry if that was boring! I wish I could expand that list more cuz I totally got wrapped up in thinking about that! Anyway I have to go to class, until next time...

93 days

Good afternoon readers, happy Monday. It's about 1:00p, just sitting in my castle enjoying some freshly brewed coffee. I'll be heading off to White Hall in not much time here but I decided a writing break would be nice. So here I am. Once again I have nothing really planned to write about, I'm just going to start writing and see where it takes me.

I went to Scott AFB this weekend for an airshow. I wasn't expecting it to be as much fun as it really was. I had the opportunity to sit in the cockpit of both a C-17 and Delta 757 so I could juxtapose the two. Long story short, C-17 is better. It's bigger, cooler, has more gadgets and gizmos, etc. It's extremely calming to me to sit in the seat of my potential future office and just look around.

It really grounds me in the reality that I possess the ability to get up and fly on of these things one day. I sat in the left seat just eyes open looking at the different panels. Hydraulics, Electric, Engines 1-4, etc. I felt like an artist sitting on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a beautiful landscape just . It's where understanding meets the unknown in a stirrup of knobs and instruments and glass LED monitors. Much like an artist would in a canyon; I looked all over the place, head on a swivel, as I tried to take as much of it in as possible. Being in the cockpit of a plane is an experience of wonder and the surreal, only to be rooted into reality by miles of wiring, terabytes of reading, and lists of procedures that never seem to end.

Bottom line, flying is cool as shit. In a single engine prop it's cool enough, but then when it gets up to the REAL feats of engineering like the C-17 I don't know how I'll remember to breathe when and if I get the chance to fly it.

Switching gears here, I get to go to Morocco in like three months now. Three months. And since I'm so focused about this "college shit" I haven't really gotten myself hype for it. Do you remember when I made this blog? Yeah, way back in October of 2010? TWO years ago? Well I made it to get hyped up for my Spring Break trip which was 172 days out. That trip was almost SIX months away and I was sitting there getting myself stoked. Now we're all grown up and in college and only 93 days out and I still don't give a fuck.

If you read back through this blog (which I don't advise you do) I had my full week-long vacation planned out to the hour by 150 days out. It was ridiculous. Now I have a 2.5 week-long vacation and other than the powerpoint my father made, no planning has really been done. Maybe for fun I'll start making checklists and to-do lists and shit. Maybe I'll blog about it for the fuck of it. I mean I'm finally going to Africa! But regardless college has my in a vice at the moment.

Oh well. This blog post is done. I hope you enjoyed! Until next time...

On my way up...

Good morning everyone. It's Thursday right before my fortnight of ROTC training so I'm relaxing to some coffee, music, and writing. Unfortunately I don't have anything planned to write about, so I'm just gonna freestyle this one and see where it takes me.

So what's going on? Let's see. I got paid today, it's Air Force payday; so along with millions of other officers, airmen, and NCO's alike a good looking number goes right in my bank account for being awesome. It always feels pretty good to get a text message from my bank saying "Good morning Decker, America paid you this morning." Then I get to dress down in Airman's Battle Uniform and walk across campus to my friendly detachment for some friendly training.

Training sucks. In an ordinary setup, making a mistake isn't a huge deal. You can either correct it when able or you can just live with the fact that you made a mistake. Sometimes it's so trivial you don't even 'count it' as a mistake; you just move on. In a training environment, this changes dramatically. The purpose of training is to tailor an individual into a mindset where ZERO mistakes are made. It takes a while to get to the point where you never make any mistakes, like over a year. And it takes persistence. By persistence, I mean that every single mistake (no matter how trivial) is corrected. And if the same mistake is made repeatedly, then certain types of 'mental coaxing' are used to help convince the trainee to fix the problem. If this 'mental coaxing' comes in the form of humiliation, extreme stress, yelling, etc. then so be it--stop fucking up.

Due to that, training sucks. Because naturally, humans make mistakes. We make a lot of mistakes, and it takes a lot of fucking up before we reach that super-human level which we stop making mistakes. So it ends up that during training, there's a lot of stress and getting yelled at involved. And a lot of people can't handle it.  If I had to guess, 99 out of 100 people will never experience any sort of real life 'training', and there's a reason behind it: it's hard. So I'm now knee deep in a swamp of Air Force training and yeah it's hard and yeah it sucks. But there's something good about training. Something REALLY good about training: the outcome.

Yes, after this year and a half or however long of training it eventually ends and you have been trained. And you are a superhuman. If you've been trained well, then you'll make zero mistakes without even thinking about it. Your ability to do things like plan ahead, never be late, communicate, etc. will be at a prestigious level. Usually, it's worth all the training.

This isn't the first time I've been trained. Although it wasn't through the Air Force, I actually have been through pilot training. The pilot training yielded a pilot's license and that training is the reason I wear wings. Private Pilot Training is usually not that hard, especially for a quick-witted and spatially-oriented mind like mine. However, I was taught by another quick-witted, spatially-oriented super pilot who wanted to 'train' me a little harder than most students.

My instructor went pretty hard on me. He had me correct the tiniest details of my flying, if I was just one degree too nose-low on climbout I would get snapped at and quickly pull the yoke back to get the nose perfectly on +8 above the horizon. He had me plan ahead so far out that I was literally unable to correctly predict the conditions to plan off of. And when the conditions changed, he would have me amend my flightplan mid-flight to adjust.

This type of high-intensity flight training (that wasn't all necessary for a private pilot's license) became less and less overwhelming as I grew into my role as a distinguished pilot. Then I took my exams, passed, and got a license. The training was over. And the outcome was very favorable to me. The result of it all is my ability to keep my plane right where I want it all the time. Unfortunately, most private pilot's didn't get the training I did and still aren't able to do that.

The superhuman skills you gain from training are too valuable to refute. So hopefully I'll be able to keep up the willpower to get through this training and come out one of the best pilots to ever live. I set the bar high, but I'm on my way up.

So yeah I had no plans to make this a blog post about the before and after effects of training but it's where it took me. In other news, it's free tanning week at Sun Tan City. So I might as well get my bronze on today, tomorrow, and maybe Sunday. Then Saturday is a Thunderbirds airshow I'm going to. So that'll be a day packed full of Air Force Pilot fun. Anyway, I hope this weekend is a good one. Until next time...

Castle Life

What's up loyal readers? I hope everyone is having a productive Tuesday afternoon. I sure am. For me, the past three hours have been spent trying to understand the abstract concepts of Calc II. This is the hardest class in the world. I do not think I can do it without help. Perhaps I've met my match as far as college classes go.

It's very stressful. And when I find something I don't even almost understand, it really crushes my moral. So in order to calm down a little bit, I'm sipping cup of coffee number 2 and writing a little in this blog. I wanted to blog about the Castle Life.

Since I've become an RA at the Foreskin Fortress, you may have heard me refer to my domain as a castle. Not just any castle; THE castle, and more importantly MY castle. There's a few reasons I think this way. One being the layout of Haggin remarkably resembles that of a castle (or prison, but we're going with 'castle'). The second reason lies in my imagination and my silly habit of using it.

Think about how awesome it would be to live in a castle! It'd be nestled on top of a mountain, surrounded by dense and dangerous forests, a lake with a resident sea monster, and just at the foot of the mountain is the capital city where all the citizens carry on their lives. But I'd be just fortunate enough to live in the castle governing the land with my best bros and girlfriend.

The castle would be huge and majestic! There'd be hundreds of different lavish rooms and secret hallways; and only my friends and I would know the castle well enough to navigate it without getting lost. We'd have access to all the private rooms and dining halls, and be able to treat our guests with the utmost priority and luxury for meals and events. We'd have staterooms with massive bay windows, massive wardrobes and filled with furniture. In my stateroom I'd have a different desk for different days of the week and a large four post bed. We'd have all the power and privileges of the castle due to our executive staff status. And we'd use it, relaxing in the private quarters of the castle where the townspeople wouldn't bother us.

After long and taxing days of work governing the empire, we'd sip from our royal cups and meet in the royal lounge and play royal ping pong and simply enjoy time relaxing in our castle. Imagine sending out messengers inviting your friends to the castle for a night on the grounds. On a Friday night we'd throw massive royal parties in the party ward of the castle for all of the town to enjoy! And after we have a nice time, we'd kick everyone out--I mean check out all of our guests and return to our massive staterooms scattered throughout the expanses of the massive fortress.

The townspeople would of course be jealous of our positions and possessions in the castle, but that wouldn't bother me. I would have earned my spot in the castle just like everyone else, and the townspeople simply haven't made it to that level. However, I'd of course be welcoming to the townspeople whenever they wish to relax in the château with the rest of the royal staff.

And when the castle isn't doing it for me, I'd hop on my trusty steed and ride off towards the plains and farmlands in the shadow of the city. I could get away from it all for as long and as often as I pleased, but I doubt I'd want to very often.

Yes, living in a castle with all your bros would be a first-class life, despite all the work required to secure the position. Regardless of how much work is required during the early morning hours long into the evening, it would always be justified by the relaxing long walk passed the balconies, down the spiral stone steps, into the courtyards, and through the double doors into the Rec Hall each night. My fellow staff and I would sip royal beverages from our royal cups and wager on cards. We'd spend time telling exciting stories of the days adventures dealing with the townsfolk, perhaps a drug bust went down that week. The entertainment would be plentiful well past midnight, until everyone has had enough fun and is ready to go to bed to work through another day. And every night we would sleep soundly in our four post beds, in our spacious staterooms, within the secure walls of our castle.

So in case you've made it all the way to this point and still haven't figured out the metaphor I'm making, settle down I'll explain it. The only difference between Haggin and the castle life I just described is the amount of perceived "lavishness". Of course I don't live in some super luxurious dorm room; with silk bed sheets, marble flooring, beautiful mountaintop views. But I do live with a good group of guys who staff the "town" and keep the peasants from killing each other. I take advantage of my rewards. And just like I would in a mountaintop château; every night when my work is done I take my long walk passed the balconies, down the spiral stone steps, into the courtyards, and through the double doors into the game room for some R&R with my fellow staff.

That's about as much as I can throw into this blog post. Until next time...

175,000,000 problems

What's up world? Today is the first real Monday of the semester; so it's the first one without Safecats or Labor day or whatever. Monday's are nice this semester. Plenty of time to get my shit done so I have time to chill.

So Friday I had a nice time visiting the comic book store. Haggin Hall was able to send like 6 representatives to look at nerdy shit for an hour or so. It was a great time going with all my bros and just relaxing on a Friday afternoon. Although, it's been a long while since I'd last been to a comic book store and let me tell ya, I forgot how hard nerds are into their nerd stuff.

I feel bad for nerds; they get an awful reputation. Everything they love involves a broad, open-minded imagination mixed with the improvised mathematics to back up everything they create. When you sit there and think about it the stereotypical "nerd" is quite a genius, especially the nerd CEO's of these nerd organizations. Not only do they create a new universe which differ in economics, ethnics, physics, politics, and everything else in between; but they create new systems of math and logic to define the universe they just created. Not only does that take intelligence, that takes a lot of creativity, enterprise, and will-power.

And it's a lot of fun if you have spare time to look into it all. Unfortunately nerds are taboo in college culture and get the wrong end of the stick as far as social norms go. Of course the stereotypical nerds don't help their situation due to preventable problems like poor hygiene, social awkwardness, etc. (well mainly poor hygiene).

Unfortunately society has written rules which rank people by their passions. If your passions are sports, music (I mean rockstars, not fucking marching band), motorcycles, being a pilot, or something cool, you have a much better chance at being considered cool by your peers than someone who's passionate about, say, Magic the Gathering. And that's just how it is. Sorry nerds.

Changing topics here, I was thinking last night while I was stressed and not sleeping. I thought about maybe just going and buying a few lottery tickets, just to take some of the anxiety off my shoulders. I thought about it a little bit more, and a little bit more today. I came to the same conclusion I've made before. I believe winning the lottery will ruin my life.

What!? But hundreds of millions of dollars! I could by the yacht I really want (61' SeaRay Sundancer)! I could buy the Lamborghini I really want (Lamborghini Murcielago)! I could buy a house in each of the four corners and fly first class twice a week between them! But, I would still have to do everything I'm currently going through to achieve my primary objective of becoming an international airline pilot. Regardless of how much money I am given, I will always have to put in the work to do what I'm put here on Earth to do.

So all the ROTC training that makes my life suck, all the hours of studying to get the GPA, all the early mornings and late nights, all the stress and anxiety, everything I'm doing to earn my wings will still be slapping me in the face everyday. Everything that sucks in my life will still be there, but everything that is pleasurable will be amplified by a power of 175,000,000. That will create a HUGE imbalance.

So if I won the lottery, I could afford a trip to LA with my girlfriend and top bro's over the weekend. We could leave Friday, spend Friday night and Saturday indulging in the LA culture and have a blast. I could do that every single weekend. But that would make the work I need to do Monday incredibly more painful. Spending money ruthlessly that I didn't earn would make waking up for PT and studying Calc 2 absolutely miserable!

My motivation would drop off the side of the chart, and I would have a lot of trouble keeping up with ROTC. I would more than likely drop out of the Air Force. And at that moment I ruin my chances of becoming an international airline pilot, and from my perspective my life will be ruined. I would never earn anything for the rest of my life. The euphoria (serotonin, dopamine, whatever) I used to keep at high levels due to my accomplishments would cease to exist. My confidence would drop and so would my happiness. Those two little neurons connected in my mind are the 95% of the weight that anchors me in reality keeping me moving forward. Without them I would be able to do nothing.

Because then I've lost most of my confidence and happiness, two aspects that make up my entire personality, and are yielded entirely by my accomplishments, I would likely lose contact with who I am. In search of happiness and confidence I'd spend more and more money and potentially reduce myself to drugs. There'd be nothing stopping me at that point, and it'd be the only thing to replace a sense of accomplishment in order to keep an elevated mindset and mood.

Drugs are addicting and without any self-discipline left I'd probably spiral out of control. Spending money on possessions or experiences would by then do absolutely nothing to my moral. My personal beliefs would probably change rapidly. My ability to make friends with humor and charisma would be a thing of the past, and most of my social skills would be forgotten. Within, ehh I'll give it between 5 and 10 years, I would likely be an entirely different person.

Perhaps by the time I'm 30 years old and an oxy addict, I'll remember what my life was like before winning 175,000,000 problems and realize that I'd likely be a successful and wealthy airline pilot by that point in my life. I'd probably (like most lottery winners) realize that I did not want to win the lottery.

However if I did when the lottery, I could of course realize my pending fate and decide to spend none of the money. I could invest all of it to grow and just decide to spend it later and give half of it to charity. But if I decide to not spend it anyway, why even buy a lottery ticket in the first place? I'm doing well enough without $175,000,000; thus I do believe I will not buy a lottery ticket anytime soon. It's not worth the risk of winning. Until next time...

Pizza Planetlanta

Good afternoon everyone! I hope everyone's having a fantastic week. It's already Thursday, which means the weekend is approaching and after a few more classes and homework assignments there will be plenty of room to chill.

So as you know from my last blog post, I had the opportunity to go to the lovely west over Labor Day. I wasn't ready for what Idaho and Wyoming had in store for me. Idaho's a crazy place, I'm lucky I got out of there alive with all the fun I had. And on top of all of it, I got to visit the worlds busiest airport...  Atlanta.

Atlanta to me is one of the coolest places on Earth. It is the central hub for a huge percentage of all airline traffic. Think about that; anyone who calls themselves a traveler knows Atlanta as the command center of the world. More pairs of flights meet in Atlanta than any other single location in the KNOWN UNIVERSE. More people come and go out of those 7 buildings than anywhere else on Earth. There's 500,000 people packed into the square mile of terminal space at any time of the day, any day of the year, consistently. Three huge planes carry up to 500 people are taking off and landing every 45 seconds. 45 seconds... That means in the time you can hold your breath, over a thousand people have just blasted into motion.

Atlanta reminds me of Buzz Lightyear's impression of Pizza Planet in the movie Toy Story. Loud and booming jet blasts are consistently audible from all over the complex; announcements are being made in seven different languages every couple seconds; trains are hauling thousands of people across to connecting flights. It's just so fucking cool.

Inside the concourse, from standing in the middle of the long rectangle-shaped building, you literally can't see the end of the complex in either direction. It's huge. And the wide hallways are crammed full of fast-walking people headed towards one of the 50 planes parked at that particular concourse. And there's SEVEN of those concourses.

And what's perhaps the most impressive aspect of Atlanta, is that in order to transfer a half a million people every two hours, there has to be an army of thousands of workers ensure everything runs perfectly smoothly. The operations involved to have such a spaceport is beyond our time. It's futuristic. It's a marvel of engineering.

And no one but me respects it! Everyone complains and bitches and moans about having to connect in Atlanta! No one seems to realize how much of a privilege it is to get to see such advanced creation of human technology! If we met an islander from a third world country, who's never experienced western culture at all, and  we took him to the Atlanta airport... his head would explode. Zero percent of stressed travelers seem to realize that when changing planes in Atlanta you're experience the peak of human intelligence in attempt to shrink the globe.

If places like Atlanta don't exist, then mankind would have no chance at shrinking the solar system, or shrinking the galaxy, or the universe. After flying across the globe we can learn to fly across bigger things. It's progress and it's not going anywhere. 100 years ago, if we told the president that one day we'd pass 100,000,000 people through a single point in the map every year (and that's only one airport!) he wouldn't believe it. We're living in the future, and it's fucking cool.

Next comes space travel, to which Virgin Airlines begins service in 2014. And in 50-100 years when that becomes the norm (like air travel is today), everyone will be bitching about having to change spaceships on Moon rather than flying direct to Mars. Then a century after that everyone will bitch about space-lag due to the year and date change involved with interplanetary travel. That's exciting. Thank God the dark ages are over and we can use are unnecessarily developed minds for cool shit now.

In other news, tomorrow I'll be heading over to a comic book store to buy some Magic the Gathering cards! That's right, I'm getting in touch with my inner-nerd. I've always enjoyed the works of make-believe and fantasy; my entertainment history proves this to be true, World of Warcraft, Skyrim, etc. So the reason I've seemingly arbitrarily landed on Magic the Gathering cards as a medium of appeasing my imagination is because many of the guys in my dorm are really really into it. And I am not above conforming.

See, a lot of people think conforming is the devil. They think since you are an individual, you should make your own decisions with no exceptions! Those people usually don't have many friends. I'm not one of those people; I'm not above joining someone in their interests. I mean right now quite a few of my RA friends play Magic the Gathering, and it looks like fun. And since they are my friends, I will probably have a lot of fun if I join them. So now I'm excited to go to the comic book store with my friends. Sure I'll probably look like Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, and Raj, spending a Friday night in a comic book store, but I'll bet money I have a blast.

So that wraps up this blog post. Hopefully after reading this you'll never bitch about flying through Atlanta again. I'm off to ROTC class soon, and then I have some homework to wrap up, then I'll hit the gym, then I don't know what else is in store. Tomorrow after my two hours of classes, I'm going for a nice fast ride down Old Frankfort Road through the horse farms and then I'll have time to myself until the comic book store trip. Then it'll be magic magic magic all weekend. #Stoked. Until then...