Sometimes, reddit turns up a real gem. Just the fact that someone had the idea to put together this kind of website makes me smile.
Here you go. Don't click this link at work, in a coffee shop if your screen is publicly visible, in front of your parents, in front of your SO, or around anyone else who doesn't have an offbeat sense of humor and a liberal view on "adult" material.
You're welcome?
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Hey Bockmed, how ya doin'?
Glad you asked blog. I'm doing pretty good.
It's hard to believe, but I've already been a Hotlanta resident for a week and a half. It's definitely hot. And humid. The weather in July will not be any fun.
I actually haven't had much opportunity to explore the city much yet. So far I've just sort of come home after work and just done my own thing... go for a run in the evening, watch some shows, play some vids etc... And I was out of town this weekend (I'll get to that), so so far I've really only become acquainted with about a 3 mile radius from my house and the highway between here and the airport.
Speaking of driving, there are some differences I've noticed in what it's like getting around by automobile down here compared to what I'm familiar with. For one thing, stoplights suck. You can literally sit at a red light for 5 minutes down here. They need to fix the timing of these things. Also, people drive in a little bit more aggressive fashion. The speed limit on my drive to work is 55. I often drive 70. And get passed a lot. And people honk for no perceivable reason sometimes.
Work is going well. I sit with a pretty cool group. Two of the guys have extensive backgrounds as mechanics and the 4 engineers in the engine condition monitoring/analysis subgroup I sit in are some of the coolest and most experienced engineers in the whole propulsion engineering group. Now that I've finally got a computer and a couple monitors and access to most of the stuff I need, I can actually stay fairly busy, which is kinda nice. It's also pretty cool being at Delta's maintenance center. I've had the opportunity to head over to the hangars/shops to check out airplanes/engines up close, which provides a nice sense of understanding and reality to the paperwork type stuff one does on a daily basis. I also finally got to see the GE90 turbofan engine which is the largest commercial jet engine in the world. The diameter is 128 inches. I could kneel on the fan case, and my head wouldn't come above the top of the center hub.
My housemates are nice, but kind of frustrating at times. While they all speak English fairly well, they are all foreign. The minor differences in vernacular, in combination with having nothing in common leads to only a few short, awkward conversations with each per day. It's a good thing I have the internet, and am starting to make friends with some of my fellow Delta cooperative education students (co-ops).
Which leads me to this past weekend's funventures. In fairly spontaneous fashion, two other co-ops and myself decided to head to Amsterdam after work on Friday. After a whirlwind adventure that involved me misplacing my keys and sprinting half a mile to our gate, literally making it a couple seconds before they would have given my seat to the next person on the standby list, I made it onto the flight to Boston. From there, we flew first class (my first time) to Amsterdam. Not to rub it into your faces, but I'm a pretty lucky SOB. Seriously. Who gets first class treatment for free. Airline employees, that's who. Sometimes I love standby flying.
Since our flight got in at about 5 a.m. local time, we kind of zombied our way to a hotel, where we crashed for most of the morning. Amsterdam is definitely a unique city. The weather was awesome (apparently it usually rains a lot), which made walking the city a treat. The streets in the city can be very chaotic, with narrow automobile lanes, sidewalks, bike lanes, and train tracks crowding each other out and often intersecting in bizarre fashion. Also, locals on bikes and scooters do not slow down if you happen to be crossing their path. They just honk/ring their bell and hope you get the fuck out of their way. One of my buddies managed to get hit by a bike twice. Apparently he doesn't learn very quickly.
You probably want to know about Amsterdam's more risque side. What about coffeeshops and the red light district? Well, I didn't really get the full experience. When we were at the Heineken brewery, we met a nice couple who told us about how a couple drinks and splitting a space cake (hash brownie) knocked them both on their asses (and the dude was a pretty big, muscular guy). With their guidance, and knowing that we had already had a lot of beer in us (Heineken ended up cutting us off. One server bitch didn't like how many free beers we got), we split a brownie three ways, hoping it would be just right. Honestly, I didn't feel a thing, but one of my pals ended up being pretty out of it. Based on this anecdotal evidence, I have to say that coffeeshops are very inconsistent in their baked goods. Maybe we should've smoked. Oh well. As for the red light district, it was about what you would expect, but can never really comprehend until you've seen it, and even then it's still fairly surreal. Amsterdam's liberal, tolerant nature is obviously a big point that draws in tourists. The district at night is definitely something to be seen. Most of the people wandering the streets are just tourists satisfying their curiosity, but at the same time, it's just bizarre to realize that the women in the windows (who were, for the most part, very hot) are indeed actually selling sex. It's kind of weird for a fairly sheltered American boy to be beckoned and propositioned by prostitutes. There are also a couple strip clubs and theatres with live sex shows (what the fuck is a banana show?).
All in all, Amsterdam is a pretty fun place, I wouldn't plan a trip just to see it, but if you're in France, Belgium, or Germany, it's definitely worth a day trip. You can see all the sites (the Anne Frank house, the Heineken brewery, the canals, some museums) in a day and enjoy some clubbing or other debauchery at night if you so choose.
If you've made it this far with me, thanks for reading, I'm doing good. It turns out I locked my keys in my car. Thank goodness I brought a spare set here.
I'll see you next time.
It's hard to believe, but I've already been a Hotlanta resident for a week and a half. It's definitely hot. And humid. The weather in July will not be any fun.
I actually haven't had much opportunity to explore the city much yet. So far I've just sort of come home after work and just done my own thing... go for a run in the evening, watch some shows, play some vids etc... And I was out of town this weekend (I'll get to that), so so far I've really only become acquainted with about a 3 mile radius from my house and the highway between here and the airport.
Speaking of driving, there are some differences I've noticed in what it's like getting around by automobile down here compared to what I'm familiar with. For one thing, stoplights suck. You can literally sit at a red light for 5 minutes down here. They need to fix the timing of these things. Also, people drive in a little bit more aggressive fashion. The speed limit on my drive to work is 55. I often drive 70. And get passed a lot. And people honk for no perceivable reason sometimes.
Work is going well. I sit with a pretty cool group. Two of the guys have extensive backgrounds as mechanics and the 4 engineers in the engine condition monitoring/analysis subgroup I sit in are some of the coolest and most experienced engineers in the whole propulsion engineering group. Now that I've finally got a computer and a couple monitors and access to most of the stuff I need, I can actually stay fairly busy, which is kinda nice. It's also pretty cool being at Delta's maintenance center. I've had the opportunity to head over to the hangars/shops to check out airplanes/engines up close, which provides a nice sense of understanding and reality to the paperwork type stuff one does on a daily basis. I also finally got to see the GE90 turbofan engine which is the largest commercial jet engine in the world. The diameter is 128 inches. I could kneel on the fan case, and my head wouldn't come above the top of the center hub.
My housemates are nice, but kind of frustrating at times. While they all speak English fairly well, they are all foreign. The minor differences in vernacular, in combination with having nothing in common leads to only a few short, awkward conversations with each per day. It's a good thing I have the internet, and am starting to make friends with some of my fellow Delta cooperative education students (co-ops).
Which leads me to this past weekend's funventures. In fairly spontaneous fashion, two other co-ops and myself decided to head to Amsterdam after work on Friday. After a whirlwind adventure that involved me misplacing my keys and sprinting half a mile to our gate, literally making it a couple seconds before they would have given my seat to the next person on the standby list, I made it onto the flight to Boston. From there, we flew first class (my first time) to Amsterdam. Not to rub it into your faces, but I'm a pretty lucky SOB. Seriously. Who gets first class treatment for free. Airline employees, that's who. Sometimes I love standby flying.
Since our flight got in at about 5 a.m. local time, we kind of zombied our way to a hotel, where we crashed for most of the morning. Amsterdam is definitely a unique city. The weather was awesome (apparently it usually rains a lot), which made walking the city a treat. The streets in the city can be very chaotic, with narrow automobile lanes, sidewalks, bike lanes, and train tracks crowding each other out and often intersecting in bizarre fashion. Also, locals on bikes and scooters do not slow down if you happen to be crossing their path. They just honk/ring their bell and hope you get the fuck out of their way. One of my buddies managed to get hit by a bike twice. Apparently he doesn't learn very quickly.
You probably want to know about Amsterdam's more risque side. What about coffeeshops and the red light district? Well, I didn't really get the full experience. When we were at the Heineken brewery, we met a nice couple who told us about how a couple drinks and splitting a space cake (hash brownie) knocked them both on their asses (and the dude was a pretty big, muscular guy). With their guidance, and knowing that we had already had a lot of beer in us (Heineken ended up cutting us off. One server bitch didn't like how many free beers we got), we split a brownie three ways, hoping it would be just right. Honestly, I didn't feel a thing, but one of my pals ended up being pretty out of it. Based on this anecdotal evidence, I have to say that coffeeshops are very inconsistent in their baked goods. Maybe we should've smoked. Oh well. As for the red light district, it was about what you would expect, but can never really comprehend until you've seen it, and even then it's still fairly surreal. Amsterdam's liberal, tolerant nature is obviously a big point that draws in tourists. The district at night is definitely something to be seen. Most of the people wandering the streets are just tourists satisfying their curiosity, but at the same time, it's just bizarre to realize that the women in the windows (who were, for the most part, very hot) are indeed actually selling sex. It's kind of weird for a fairly sheltered American boy to be beckoned and propositioned by prostitutes. There are also a couple strip clubs and theatres with live sex shows (what the fuck is a banana show?).
All in all, Amsterdam is a pretty fun place, I wouldn't plan a trip just to see it, but if you're in France, Belgium, or Germany, it's definitely worth a day trip. You can see all the sites (the Anne Frank house, the Heineken brewery, the canals, some museums) in a day and enjoy some clubbing or other debauchery at night if you so choose.
If you've made it this far with me, thanks for reading, I'm doing good. It turns out I locked my keys in my car. Thank goodness I brought a spare set here.
I'll see you next time.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy
I threw a wish in the well. Don't ask me, I'll never tell. I looked to you as it fell, and now you're in my way.
This is Bockmed comin' at you from shitty hotel wi-fi in Caseyville, IL. If it is isn't apparent yet, my mind is a jumbled mess right now. I'm in a surprisingly good mood considering all I dealt with today. But we'll get to that.
Some of you know (and some of you don't) that Imma be interning with a certain company in the Hotlanta, GA area this summer, so today and tomorrow I'm road trippin' with my [one?] favorite ally.
Today, I drove ~576 miles to get to where I am now, plus about another 30 due to a series of unfortunate events. But I'll allude to that later.
While it's on my mind... Foreigner's Urgent is a terrible song to come on the radio when you need to piss like Secretariat.
So I wanted to relate to the internet, which is mostly a few of my very close friends, the kinds of thoughts I had during my ~10 hours of driving today. Because that's about all you have to do when you're driving aaallll by yourself across fucking Iowa, in a car that maybe has A/C (It's about as capable of producing a cool breeze as a 90 year old asthmatic politician, so what you get is this kind of "is it cold? I don't know." kind of output that is 1 degree cooler than ambient so I just open the windows), no cd player, no auxiliary input, and I have no ipod radio adapter thing. So basically, I spent the day listening to whatever shit came on the radio. And believe me. There was a lot of shit.
I fucking hate Nicki Minaj. Why is she famous? Why do people pay her to make what some call music? What's with the fucking voice change shit? And the lack of flow, and the rhyming of words with themselves? She exemplifies everything that is wrong with popular music today. Which reminds me, this guy makes a ton of valid points on the subject. I don't agree with everything he says, particularly the T. Swift hate, but it's hard to argue against him.
You know what this country needs more of? Christian rock, Christian talk, and country music stations. There's a serious lack right now.
It was hot today.
Who hates Iowa? I hate Iowa. Seriously. Next to Kansas, it's the most desolate hellscape I've ever driven across. It's tearjerkingly boring. It's just an endless string of fields and farmhouses. but wait, in the southeastern corner, some of the fields have a gentle roll to them. Shit I'm already looking forward to the drive back in August, when the only thing I'll see is corn for about 5 hours.
At least Missouri looks kinda like Minnesota, but with less Evergreens. But their road system. What the fuck?
I bet the meeting where they decided how to name their highways went something like this:
"Dude, brah, bro, Broseidon, bro cookie, I've got this great idea for trolling drivers. What if we, guys, what if we name the roads, guys, what if we name the roads just a letter?"
"Um, that's actually kind of a good idea. That would really simplify things."
"No dude. It looks like the joke's on us, but secretly, the joke is on drivers, because we won't put them in any logical order, and sometimes, we'll double the letter."
"Good one, brah. They'll be so trolled."
scene.
But despite all the rageworthy occurrences of the day, I'm actually in a really calm, peaceful state. And with that, I'm gonna go to bed. Because I have another 9 hours of driving tomorrow and I want to get an early start. Moar updates later. I promise.
Your bonus words of the day are:
You didn't have to stoop so low: have your friends collect your records and then change your number.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
an advocate
as someone who has had 3 concussions and has faced the repercussions of them, i am just baffled at how ignorant the NFL is at admitting that their sport causes serious, significant, permanent, life-altering injuries.
with my passion for sports and love of documentaries, i have watched a bunch of different films that provide an undercover/in-depth perspective of life after the NFL. one such documentary, blood equity, is available for free right now on hulu. it's not the best look into the life of a former NFL player, but it definitely shows how debilitating the injuries can be--not just for you, but for your loved ones as well.
the facts are pretty straightforward: the NFL consistently refuses to pay for procedures and surgeries of former players. the NFL only provides players with insurance for 5 years after they retire. (most life altering injuries do not occur until after a player has been out of the league for 5 years.) the NFL continues to allocate a ridiculously small portion of its general fund to concussion, traumatic brain injury, and neurological research. this is the same NFL that had over $7 billion in its coffers as of 2008. that number is only going to grow exponentially.
the reason i write this is because less than a few hours ago it was announced that junior seau committed suicide near san diego. junior was my favorite defensive player growing up. he was one of the few players who still made an impact at the tail end of his career. he was a dominant force who had entire offenses scheming on how to take him out of a play to expose every other weakness of the defense.
he was a great guy. but he was also a guy with a history of concussions, head injuries, and a plethora of other physical problems he probably neglected to tell anyone about. he battled on the field. he wouldn't come out of games. the trauma to his brain likely was augmented by these decisions. i understand he had a passion and fire for the game that was unmatched by anyone. and that he ultimately chose to stay in the games. but dang it, NFL researchers, this is another suicide that could have been prevented.
seau was found dead with a self-inflicted wound to his chest. this was eerily reminiscent of the way that dave duerson committed suicide. duerson intentionally killed himself in the chest so that researchers could use his brain for scientific purposes to further prove that the NFL and head injuries cause life-altering problems that can lead to manic depression and, in some cases, suicide. i can't help but wonder if seau did the same thing.
RIP, junior. you will be sorely missed.
with my passion for sports and love of documentaries, i have watched a bunch of different films that provide an undercover/in-depth perspective of life after the NFL. one such documentary, blood equity, is available for free right now on hulu. it's not the best look into the life of a former NFL player, but it definitely shows how debilitating the injuries can be--not just for you, but for your loved ones as well.
the facts are pretty straightforward: the NFL consistently refuses to pay for procedures and surgeries of former players. the NFL only provides players with insurance for 5 years after they retire. (most life altering injuries do not occur until after a player has been out of the league for 5 years.) the NFL continues to allocate a ridiculously small portion of its general fund to concussion, traumatic brain injury, and neurological research. this is the same NFL that had over $7 billion in its coffers as of 2008. that number is only going to grow exponentially.
the reason i write this is because less than a few hours ago it was announced that junior seau committed suicide near san diego. junior was my favorite defensive player growing up. he was one of the few players who still made an impact at the tail end of his career. he was a dominant force who had entire offenses scheming on how to take him out of a play to expose every other weakness of the defense.
he was a great guy. but he was also a guy with a history of concussions, head injuries, and a plethora of other physical problems he probably neglected to tell anyone about. he battled on the field. he wouldn't come out of games. the trauma to his brain likely was augmented by these decisions. i understand he had a passion and fire for the game that was unmatched by anyone. and that he ultimately chose to stay in the games. but dang it, NFL researchers, this is another suicide that could have been prevented.
seau was found dead with a self-inflicted wound to his chest. this was eerily reminiscent of the way that dave duerson committed suicide. duerson intentionally killed himself in the chest so that researchers could use his brain for scientific purposes to further prove that the NFL and head injuries cause life-altering problems that can lead to manic depression and, in some cases, suicide. i can't help but wonder if seau did the same thing.
RIP, junior. you will be sorely missed.
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