Just me venting, good luck if you read it.

I've been frequently riding by the Roseville All-American Speedway for the past three years, constantly thinking about how rad it'd be to host a race there. LeadOut Racing, a super cool team based in the Sacramento area who make awesome race videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EvtYmdO7p4I), had the same thought and the ambition to make it happen.

Totally impressed with how organized the race was, even more so because this is their first go at it and it seemed like they were doing everything right. NorCal racers need to take this race more seriously in 2013, hopefully a calender move to earlier in the year will help facilitate that.

The race course is crazy technical, which is its strong point. Hairpins and 120+ degree turns all over the place, and leads into and around the speedway. Before the race Bruce, the lead official, warned us about the corners and told us he'd be lenient about cutting them if we were out of control, as did the lead car, telling us to be extra careful through one corner in particular.

Sure enough, the first lap into the race there was a nasty crash in that corner (the fifth crash of the day in that corner). The crash allowed myself and two other riders to distance ourselves from the peleton - which was actually extremely cheap of us.

For the next three laps, my group made the exit of the corner wider than it was by cutting some cones - allowing us to safely take the corner if we were going too fast. The peleton found cutting the cones made the corner safer at high speeds and did the same.

See high-tech picture demonstrating this: http://i.imgur.com/KrTz2.jpg

Eventually one of the riders fell off pace of the group and my now solo breakaway partner started attacking me repeatedly.

I followed his moves and lined up to counter-attack through a series of turns. I came into the dangerous corner with too much speed, cut the cones in order to avoid crashing like everyone had been doing when coming into the corner with too much speed, and continued on my attack.

My attack proved well timed and I left him behind. By the finish I put more than one minute into him and caught up to eight seconds behind the peleton (third place).

After the race, the lead official, Bruce, decided to relegate me to second place. His arguments were that by cutting the cones I awarded myself an unfair advantage, and that this trumped the fact that I had to in order to safely navigate the corner. As for his pre-race announcement of being lenient around unsafe corners, apparently it was just pre-race rambling.

Everything rolled down to the fact that the dangerous corner came at the exact moment my breakaway partner cracked. Had he not have been cracked, he would have taken the corner just as fast as me, and have cut the cones like he had done just as many times as I had in the race.

Bruce could not understand this, no matter how many times and in different ways I explained it to him. He was too focused on the fact that in this one instance I had cut the cones and my breakaway partner did not, and somehow did an illogical, mental hoop jump to connect this to the immediate twenty second advantage I developed within the next lap.

The post-race emotions of being absolutely robbed of a win due to the unfair and obviously biased enforcement of a rule by Bruce, combined with various poor sportsmanship comments from my primary competitor made standing on the podium unbearable. With sincere apologies to LeadOut Racing, I made the decision to boycott the podium.

The worst part is that my mental image of Bruce, who I've known for half my life, will forever be marred. Not so much by his decision, but just the complete and utter disregard of logic and fairness in making that decision.

This sport is incredibly hard and demanding for everyone. Success is often fleeting, the majority of time is spent in pain, suffering, and solitude. The highs from winning are great, but they are always followed by horrible lows. Today was a tremendous low. I was already unsure about racing in 2013, this did not help at all.

Some shit I read online.

Some shit I read online:

Depression is a thing. OCD is a thing. Social Anxiety, all that shit. They exist. I'm not saying you don't have them, but for the vast majority of people I know who say that they're depressed, I have one response.

You're not Depressed. You're FUCKING BORED.

The human brain evolved over millions of years of running through jungles and fighting lions and killing shit. Today we sit here on reddit. Your brain doesn't have anything to do with itself. There aren't any lions. There are no more jungles. Our society has degraded itself into mental masturbation. Television, internet, media, movies, music. It's just fucking playing with yourself.

We are bored, and we don't know how to handle it. You think you're depressed? Drop everything right now and go volunteer somewhere. Go feed the homeless, go to the wartorn starving heart of africa and build a fucking orphanege. You think you're depressed? Go look an AIDS stricken ex-child solider in the eye, and tell him you're depressed. Your problems? You don't fucking have problems, man. You have no idea.

I challenge you, I'm calling you out. Go do something to make the world a better place for the people who have it worse than you. It can be something as small as picking up a homeless man and taking him to lunch somewhere. Or you can quit life and volunteer. And if after all that you're still "depressed" at least you have done something to make the world a better place.

It's like this. Your problems are fucking stupid. That's the core of our belief. Your worries about if Becky thinks you're hot, or how you spend too much time online, it's fucking stupid. It's masturbation. Go fucking do something. Go do something beautiful. Then you can understand what it means to not give a fuck.

Marine on thanking him for his service.

I hate it when people thank me for my service, and I know it seems douchey, I refuse to accept it. I tell them there is nothing to thank me for. Nothing I did improved their quality of life. Like this guy said, I trained to be a killer. This isn't the middle ages anymore. Not only that, but my time in the military wasn't spent doing anything actually productive for this nation. While I did actually spend my time on my one deployment doing something useful for our military(communications for an airfield) it shouldn't have even been necessary. Who was really benefiting from my services? The people trying to kill the Iraqis. Clearly it didn't help our economy. If anything I should be hated for participating in a blatant waste of our country's limited funds.

Plus, I don't like being reminded of my time served. It's not something I'm proud of. To me it's similar to thanking a criminal for the time he spent in prison. I was stuck in a contract for 5 years serving a country who's actions I don't exactly approve of. And I couldn't even leave of my own volition. There is no easy way out of the military, and if you do get out then you are screwed for the rest of your life. If you do stay in then you get viewed in some sort of preferential light in some cases, which is completely undeserved. It is not the highest quality of life, either. If you don't meet their regulations you get yelled at like a dog who just peed on the carpet.

I can testify that the character of the people in the military is in general not of a high caliber. A majority of the people I served with were of less than average intelligence and of low morals. A lot of them thought it would be cool to see combat and get to kill Iraqis. I don't see how anyone should be thanked for that. This nation's propaganda has turned us into heroes when we have done absolutely nothing to deserve it. As a network administrator in the military my job was to sit around on a computer browsing the internet and occasionally troubleshooting computers when someone had a problem. This makes us heroes? Well we should be worshiping every tech support guru that we see.

So, in the end, I agree with what this man says. Don't thank me for my service. It was a 9-5 job except when I was deployed on a deployment that I shouldn't have even been on. Anyone that still thinks that we're in the middle east fighting for justice because of 9/11 needs to think again.

Meaning of Life; Religion.

This is the big question of life. You're asking what the meaning of existence is, and I'm not really qualified to give you an answer. But, I would like to add that religion does not escape these problems either. Let's consider what God really is in terms of the fiction. He's an extremely powerful monarch. He gives people missions in life and punishes us or rewards us depending on how well we follow his rules. Now I ask you, is this really a satisfactory source of meaning? This philosophy is the ultimate embodiment of might makes right. It's saying that the purpose of life is to follow the orders of someone more powerful. Why should you revere power? Why should you bend a knee to a being just because He is strong? What if you disagree with God? What if you discover that God values things that you find offensive? Do you still say that He has moral superiority? Do you still let him define your meaning? If God is real, then the practical thing is to do whatever the hell he says, because he can make you sorry if you don't. But, on a deeper existential level, this does not give your life true meaning.

I like this girl a lot, did I screw up?

Had the following gmail chat conversation with this girl I like a lot. Wondering if I screwed things up with her or not...

Her:
Hey there, do you know what pages to do for Mr. Fedlman?
Me:
Hey! Hold on lemme check.
172-175
Her:
Sweet thanks <3
Me:
No problem, shit sucks though I still haven't done it
Her:
Hahah, yeah. Hey I think this is the most you've ever talked to me. lol
Me:
hehe yeah
Her:
Why you always so quiet at school?
Me:
heh, guess i'm just asleep in that class most of the time
Her:
hahahah year
you should sit at me and doms table with us next tomorrow! you can sleeep with us, lol
Me:
!!!!
you jus tinvite me to sleep with you?
Her:
lol in class you perv!
....your cute though :D
Me:
heh well ok
glad i could help you
Her:
:(
so thats how it is?
Me:
what? what u mean, whats wrong?
Her:
i just said your cute and your all like, "oh ok, bye!"
Me:
shit sorry!
i mean, thanks for saying it
:) thanks
Her:
...that's it? lol, nm, it's cool
:D
Me:
omg sorry. i mean i like you too, your cute
Her:
yay! thats what i like to hear.
i always thought you seem cool your just so quiet, we should do something sometime
Me:
woah seriously? you mean like fool around or what are you talking about? i want to, seriously though!
Her:
lol, wow are you serious?
Me:
shit, sorry, what do you mean?
like having sex? i have condoms
Her:
wtf lol why are you talking about condoms.
i said we should do something like hang out
holy shit your a perv
Me:
omg im so sorry
YES, i do want to hang out seriously
Her:
yeah i'll be you do.
with condoms "just in case", right?
Me:
no sorry, we don't have to fuck or anything.
we can just hang out, i won't bring them.
we just start like friends or w/e
Her:
we don't have to fuck?
seriously, we don't have to?
Me:
no, sorry. i mean no, if you don't want
unless you want to.
or i can eat you out or w/e you want, it's cool
Her:
omg dude, are you just joking?
like laughing your ass off over there at me?
this is a joke right?
Me:
no, i'm not i swear, just whatever you want to do is cool
i mean yea i was jokin about the sex stuff
Her:
allright bye.

K. Vonnegut

Now, laying in the ditch with Billy and the scouts after having been shot at, Weary made Billy take a very close look at his trench knife. It wasn't government issue. It was a present from his father. It had a ten-inch blade that was triangular 'in 'cross section. Its grip consisted of brass knuckles, was a chain of rings through which Weary slipped his stubby fingers. The rings weren't simple. They bristled with spikes.

Weary laid the spikes along Billy's cheek, roweled the cheek with savagely affectionate restraint. 'How'd you-like to be hit with this-hm? Hmmmmmmmmm?' he wanted to know.

'I wouldn't,' said Billy.

'Know why the blade's triangular?'

'No.'

'Makes a wound that won't close up.'

'Oh.'

'Makes a three-sided hole in a guy. You stick an ordinary knife in a guy-makes a slit. Right? A slit closes right up. Right?

'Right.'

'Shit. What do you know? What the hell they teach you in college?'

'I wasn't there very long.' said Billy, which was true. He had had only six months of college and the college hadn't been a regular college, either. It had been the night school of the Ilium School of Optometry.

"Joe College,' said Weary scathingly.

Billy shrugged...

Second greatest story ever written.

Played a paladin like an efficient SWAT officer, but I despised orcs more than you can imagine.

I made friends with a dwarf, super bro status, who also hates orcs. We team up and slaughter an orc village.

The rest of the party, except for the dwarf, feel like shit because me and him are torching huts filled with baby orcs.

They don't say anything to me about it though because I'm the tactical enforcer of the group.

Later on we're all battling in a cavern and I'm knocked off the side of a ledge. My dwarf bff grabs my hand to save me.

My helmet comes off as I'm hanging off the ledge, first time in the game, revealing my appearance and race to everyone.

I'm a half-orc.

My dwarf buddy lets go of my hand.