So it skyrocketed up to 83°F (28°C) today.

And I think I somehow managed to catch a cold.

Either that, or the combination of vacuuming my room and turning on the air conditioner for the first time since last fall ended up releasing so much dust into the air that I can’t stop sneezing and blowing my nose.

In other news, as a follow-up to the note I posted back on March 30, 2011 about random people coming to visit me in my apartment:

Standing outside my door saying “Adam? … Adam? … Come on man, open the door … Adam?” will not increase the chances of me opening my door. If anything, it will decrease the 0% chance of me opening the door, because I don’t answer my door at all anymore.

So stop trying and wasting your time.

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #87: Imagine you get a magic gold ticket that lets you travel through space and time to grab any band, or music act, living or dead, together or broken up, and transport them to play live at a venue near you. Who would you pick? Why?

This band selection might sound funny to everyone who doesn’t know what type of music I prefer to listen to (which essentially mirrors what type of music I prefer to perform), but if I would be able to bring back a band, I would bring back Fall Out Boy.

I realize that most other people would name really old and famous bands that have made musical revolutions, but I don’t really know many of these bands and I honestly don’t really care about them that much. For example, Michael Jackson was an icon in music, and everyone thought his death was a tragedy, but I couldn’t really care less and was annoyed by the fact that people were so emotional about his death. The only reason I ever listened to a Michael Jackson song was because Fall Out Boy did a punk rock cover of “Beat It.”

For those of you who aren’t aware, Fall Out Boy split up in February 2010 without any intention to come back together. The members stated that they’re not sure of Fall Out Boy’s future, and the decisions they make for the future will all be for the right reasons.

From my perspective, this was more tragic than Michael Jackson’s death – I like literally every single one of Fall Out Boy’s songs (which is rare, there aren’t many bands where I like literally all of their songs). So, if I were to bring back a band, it would be Fall Out Boy. If my decision keeps them together in the future, that’s great, otherwise, I’ll be someone that was at their last concert.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 24

Number of times I did my own laundry: 3

I took my philosophy exam today, and now I’m done with exams until final exam week. Even better, instead of having all my exams on the week of final exams, I have two exams on their regular final exam days and two exams the week before on the last day of classes.

The exam I took was surprisingly easy compared to the amount of reading that we had to do. We had two sets of essay questions with two prompts in each one, and we had to pick one essay from each set to answer. There were two decently-sized books that we had to read, but I think I could’ve done perfectly fine without even looking at the books and just writing based off the material we covered during lecture and discussion sections.

So if you happen to be a philosophy instructor, you should probably make your exam questions inclusive of out-of-class material as well as lecture and discussion material, or else your students might not actually read the books you recommend (what a surprise).

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #86: If you could script tonight’s dream, what would would the plot be? There is a concept called lucid dreaming, where people are able to have some control over their dreams. Have you ever had a lucid dream? Would you want one?

If I could script tonight’s dream, I would probably script it so nothing happens and I get a full night of comfortable rest.

Normally, I would probably say that I would script it so I would be reviewing my notes for an exam, because dreams generally act as a way for your body to prepare for theoretical things that could happen in the world. If I keep on practicing taking the exam and studying the material, I would have a stronger grasp on the material for when the real exam comes around. However, I have no high-priority academic stuff to worry about right now, and there’s nothing else that I need urgent practice for, so I would probably benefit most from a night of good sleep.

I generally don’t have any lucid dreams, but I would like to train myself to have lucid dreams. I’m curious what is contained in my subconscious mind, and I think that with a combination of lucid dreaming and interpreting other uncontrollable things that happen in my dreams, I can find out what I am actually thinking subconsciously, and discover what my hidden worries may be, if I have any.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 21

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

It feels nice to have nearly a full day off (except for going to two classes).

I’ve done pretty much nothing productive all day (which probably isn’t a good thing, because I have an exam in my philosophy course tomorrow).

I’m gonna go eat some peanut butter sandwiches now and take a nap.

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #85: How do you recover lost trust? In a person? In an idea? If someone lets you down or betrays you, how do you learn to forgive? And can you possibly learn to trust them again? Why or why not?

Being an extremely cynical person, I generally don’t really trust anyone in the first place, so I don’t place myself into situations where I could potentially be betrayed or lose trust in someone else. If someone were to betray me, it would be nearly impossible to recover that trust because I believe strongly in the subconscious mind’s influence on the conscious body’s actions, and if the subconscious mind is there with the desire to perform betraying acts, then it will most likely overpower the conscious mind again in the future.

I have lost trust in ideas before when I have thought up of a plan and, after thinking about it some more and playing it out in my mind, realized that it had some sort of flaw or would leave open a vulnerability. Fortunately, I don’t treat ideas like humans, and I can comfortably go back to ideas to try and find out what the problem with the idea is. I usually think of solutions for the areas in which the idea is lacking and attempt to make it a better and more reliable idea.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 21

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

Someone asked me today if I was going to participate in BEDA (Blog Every Day in April).

Really?

Have you not yet noticed that I’m already blogging every day of the year 2011 as a part of WordPress’ Post a Day?

-.-

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #84: If you could master any skill instantly, what would it be? In the movie The Matrix people could download any skill for use inside the virtual world. Is there any skill you think would be impossible to download? Why?

If I could master any skill instantly, I would pick the skill of memory. That way, I would have complete control over my memory, and be able to remember and forget things at will. This would help me succeed in pretty much anything academic, because I would only have to read through the course material once and be able to remember all the specific details. This would obviously not only help me succeed in exams, but would also help me remember important information to apply it to my life later on.

I noted that I want to master memory in general and have the ability to forget rather than mastering the ability to remember everything, because I recall seeing in some sort of documentary once that people who remember everything due to a mental abnormality (I think they’re called savants) actually suffer from their condition because they remember so much. So, I still want to be able to forget irrelevant things that I don’t need, such as the color of shirt my co-worker was wearing three weeks ago.

I don’t think that there would be any skills that are impossible to download. Assuming that downloading a skill means providing your brain with enough information about that skill to perform well in it, there isn’t anything that you can do that cannot theoretically be forced into your brain. Skills generally take knowledge, talent, and practice. The knowledge can be stored as memories, the talent can be stored as talent itself that each person has, and practice can be stored as the reinforcing of particular actions in your brain (meaning your brain would gain the experience that practice would give it).

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 21

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

Do you know what I hate? Businesses that are impossible to find.

I got a free $10 coupon for a random smoothie shop called Red Mango in Madison, WI, USA. I looked it up on Google Maps and pinpointed the location, and even looked at it via street view so I could tell what it looked like from the front.

Today, when I was going to work, I got off at an earlier bus stop so I could stop by Red Mango on my way to work and use my $10 coupon. The only problem was, Red Mango disappeared off the street.

I ended up walking and looking and walking and looking and kept walking and looking until my workplace showed up. I went in and frustratedly said “Where the hell is Red Mango? I walked an extra two blocks so I could go there and the building evaporated.”

Apparently, according to a co-worker, it’s still there and I’m just blind.

Tip of the Day

If you ever choose to take a very quick nap in a library, make sure that you position yourself so you can breathe freely. Or else you’ll be like me, there will be six people in the section of the library where you were when you fall asleep, there will be nobody there when you wake up, and you’ll wonder if they all left because you were snoring.

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #83: What’s the most on fire you’ve ever been? Figuratively, literally, whatever.

I have no idea what “on fire” means figuratively. I generally don’t know what any phrases mean in their figurative form, and I hate sayings that don’t make any sense literally because they’re confusing and a waste of my hippocampus to memorize all of them.

I have never literally been on fire. I’ve held my hands over a fire before to warm them up, but they never caught on fire, and they never even touched the fire in the first place.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 21

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2