Programmers

Posted by jtman

The whole concept that you can put some 1s and 0s together and get an amazing experience that allows you to escape from the world for a moment, blows my mind. That’s technically speaking what video games or any computer programs are, lots of 1s and 0s in a specific order. I think that the people, who can visualize new worlds in those terms, are like modern day wizards. By the way, they like it when you call them things like that, Jedi works to. So, here’s to you programmers, the things you can do blows my mind!

 This is a typical conversation between me and a programmer, this happens all the time, trust me:

Me: Wow! Good job, those 1s and 0s are pretty amazing.

Programmer: No, that isn’t just a bunch of 1s and 0s. It’s actually a guy named Mario jumping on top of a turtle thing while eating a mushroom.

Me: Of course it is! Why didn’t I see that before?

Making useful stuff out of dirt or stuff in the dirt.

Posted by jtman

You get up in the morning, stumble down the hall, grab that favorite coffee mug from the cupboard and get yourself some Folders in that cup. But, don’t forget to grab that shiny spoon out of the drawer to stir in some of that sugary French Vanilla goodness. Refreshed, you walk a little lighter down the cold, dark marble covered floors. You get ready for the day, a smile on your face, especially after you admire the glittering piece of perfection on your finger that a special someone gave to you, not so long ago.  Looking good and smelling the same, you hop in your fancy new car and ride off into the dawn of a new day, a new adventure that spans the endless horizon.  

Well, admittedly I got a little carried away there in the end. Really, I wanted to highlight just how good dirt and rocks make our lives. Or to be more specific, stuff that you can make out of dirt and rocks. Since the beginning people have found incredible ways to use the things both on top of and under the earth.  We can make things that are not only useful but amazingly beautiful also. Think about all of the incredible sculptures, jewelry, and ancient architecture. The fact that they are found in the dirt or rocks doesn’t make them any less incredible, I think that it actually makes it more so. We just take them for granted because we have never been without them. The amazing things don’t stop with art either.  Take for example all of the seemingly average things in the story above including the coffee mug, spoon, marble floors, diamond ring, car, and the fossil fuels to power the car. All of them come in some way from the dirt and all of them are blowing my mind.

Cars

Posted by jtman

Can you imagine if you took someone from the distant past and brought them to the present?  I think they would be going out of their mind taking everything in. However, out of everything else in the modern world, there is one item that they would be completely speechless over. Is it the buildings? Nope they have those. Is it the amazing road system? Nope, they have those to. Is it electricity? That’s a maybe. If I had a guess it would probably be the cars (cheater, you looked at the title). When you look at a car it seems to be a big hunk of metal and glass, on wheels, miraculously moving all by itself. Actually, that’s pretty much the truth. The only thing to add is that a car doesn’t move all by itself silly, it’s propelled forward by highly flammable gasoline, continuously exploding  two feet in front of your body, true story. Oh and did I mention that the explosions are started by a tiny piece of LIGHTNING!

Cars are amazing, powerful, miracles of science that can take us wherever the roads of life may lead. Next time you get sick of driving that so called “hunk-o-junk” take a second and look at things from a different angle. Let it sink in, and blow your mind.

The people that harnessed electricity.

Posted by jtman

Back in the day, people were of a different breed. They laughed in the face of safety.  Fear, it wasn’t even defined yet. They were people of action that survived by the work of their own two hands. I think that the greatest of them were the men who liked playing with lightning. That’s right, the people who harnessed electricity. This is how the whole electricity thing played out, trust me...

Benjamin Franklin: Let’s fly a kite during a lightning storm to see if it will get struck by lightning, while I hold it. If it does then we can eventually learn to create lightning on our own.

John Howard: Well then, now that I can create continuous bolts of lightning let me shoot them through this metal cable and not die while trying to plug stuff into the other end of it.

Thomas Edison: Since that worked, let me send the lightning bolt through a tiny piece of metal inside of this glass ball. That's safe, right?

Friends/Family: Good Idea (cue sarcasm and eye rolls).