Ahhh the Beach

Well, as an update on the philosophy study...  I haven't done ANYTHING!  Ha!  Well, that's not entirely true, the online Korean eBook store that I have been in contact with because I can't input my APO address because they don't have the APO AP option for the state, emailed me back about my inquiry.  Of course it took me about 30 minutes to craft a reply (I'm too OCD and have to have everything spelled correctly and I don't want to look stupid misspelling easy Korean words).

Anyways, on to more important things!  We had a nice day today, my Korean classmates and teacher all came over to our house and we grilled out and sat around chatting.  It was funny to talk to the teacher in Korean and every once in a while Rob Marion would talk about/in Japanese.  Of course Michelle doesn't speak either language so we'd have to translate some for her.  Then once everyone was gone we went to the beach.

We LOVE the beach, we'd pretty much live there if we could.  I spent nearly two full hours in the water.  The most important thing of all though, Alex (our older son), started swimming!  Michelle has been working with him on floating on his back.  Usually she always supports him for a few seconds then lets go to get him used to floating on his own.  Well, today he just started floating on his back all on his own, then he started swimming.  Of course it looked a little like drowning but he was definitely moving forward and then when he was floating on his back he started doing the backstroke all by himself without being prompted.  He wasn't scared to put his face in the water with or without his mask.  Wesley then joined in and tried using the snorkel and mask.  With Michelle's help he tried using the mask and snorkel for a while, but according to the lifeguard snorkeling isn't allowed in the swimming area.

Whatever you're doing where ever you are I hope you're having as much fun as we have on the beach. This picture wasn't taken today but it is of Wes getting the hang of snorkeling.

Philosophy

I may have missed my calling in life...

I read an article about East-Asian philosophy and how it's generally ignored by western philosophers.  Of course that got me on a trek to find a book on Korean philosophy written in Korean.  I still haven't succeeded but I will keep searching till I find one.  I kind of wish I had studied philosophy in school.  Of course now that I'm looking into East-Asian philosophy I see how lacking my understanding of western philosophy is.  I took a class on ethics in college and that only whet my appetite for understanding philosophy.

Honestly I don't really know where to start.  I really want to take a class on philosophy especially eastern philosophy.  I think I might try finding an iTunes U channel on philosophy.  I also need to find a good philosophy book, I've kind of gone digital when it comes to reading (don't get me wrong, I love the feel of a good paperbound book sometimes but eBooks are just so convenient.

I don't usually ask for comments... but anyone reading this have any ideas/suggestions for good teach-yourself philosophy books/sources?

Call Guinness Book of World Records!

I have officially blogged two days in a row!

You want to know what's on my mind today?  Well, if you're reading this I assume you care...  I HATE copyright law.  No offense if any of you work in that field I'm sure you can look yourself in the mirror every night after putting in a hard day's work squelching creative thought.  I'm exaggerating of course, but seriously.  The reason I've been thinking about this all day is an article we read (in Korean cir 2010) about the Korean version of ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) suing Starbucks for not paying royalties.  The defense (according to the article) was that they had a contract with the American copyright company which is where the music came from so there shouldn't be any issue.  Well, apparently the court ruled in favor of the copyright company.

Then after reading the article I looked into some other examples in the US.  Apparently I was previously mistaken.  I thought that as long as you didn't have a certain number of people attend you could charge admission without having to pay royalties.  According to some of the web forums I've researched basically boil down to: if you buy a movie or song for private home use, you cannot show, watch or listen to that entertainment with anyone but your own family.  Which is disconcerting because we just bought an awesome home projector/home entertainment system and we were hoping to host many a fun movie night in our home.

Some Recent Developments

I just finished reading a blog about blogging and felt the inspiration to take up blogging some again.  I liked the suggestions there EXCEPT the one about devoting time to blogging.  I don't have the time to blog twice a day!  I do read dozens of blogs a day and I should definitely incorporate more photographs in my blog but here I am just writing what I've been thinking about.

My wife and I just  finished the movie Act of Valor.  It was decent, better than the rotten tomato ratings.  The reviews were pretty straightforward, it was mostly a recruiting movie for the SEALs.

In general though life here in Okinawa has been, simply put, AWESOME!  We go to the beach regularly, we're trying to get signed up for SCUBA lessons, I run with a nice local run club, and I've ridden once with a road-biking club.  If you don't like swimming or spending time outdoors I can kind of understand not liking living here but in general no one should ever complain about living here.

Update

I know I don't post very often and I wish I could, but to be honest I generally don't have anything cool to talk about.

Finally I have made it to probably the best assignment I could have.  I'm now living on the island of Okinawa.  It's pretty much a sub-tropical paradise that I've loved every minute of.  My family has also had a great time so far.  We go to the beach all the time, I've joined a small running club and biking club.  The weather here is pretty much awesome almost all the time.  It rains more than back in Omaha, Monterey or Ohio, but even the rain is pleasant.  We've gone snorkeling a few times and look forward to many more times as the water around here is wonderful.  Michelle and I are also going to try to get into a SCUBA class also.  Basically the ocean is always calling and I want to answer its call.

In general the next few years are going to be some of the best I've had.

Return Home

Well, obviously I'm not too concerned about keeping up with blogging since I haven't written in months! But, I've finally come home from being deployed. Now I'm back home getting settled in to being back home. Our three-year-old, Wesley, is taking gymnastics class. He's hilarious! One of the best in his class he makes me so proud!

It's funny, seeing my son play and have fun at gymnastics makes me want to go back to CrossFit. Might seem odd, the correlation there, but anyone who knows CrossFit knows there's lots of cool gymnastics workouts included in CrossFit. Anyways, I need to find a gym!

Language Learning

I once read the book "How to Learn Any Language; Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and On Your Own" by Barry Farber. Then last night I watched the movie "Limitless," and it got me thinking about learning languages again. I have always loved learning foreign languages! But for some reason I've never really gotten around to putting Mr. Farber's advice on language learning into practice. Now, I think since I'm deployed and I can use my free time however I want, maybe I should start back up learning another language.

Modern technology is amazing! I have at my fingertips, all kinds of great language learning tools. Now, the question is how to use them and what language to start studying.

Japanese
Pros: I'm going to be living there next year so it'll be useful, it's closely related to Korean (grammatically) so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Cons: it really is actually difficult; multiple alphabets, no direct teacher to help me sort through the complexities.

French
Pros: beautiful language, useful throughout Europe, friend here that speaks it natively and can help, I've studied it once before so I have a head start.

Cons: no direct usefulness, no definite need/future usefulness (i.e. I doubt I'll be visiting a French speaking country any time soon).

Any other language
Pros: joy of learning a language

Cons: no plans and probably no teachers, unknown future usefulness.

Still haven't made a decision I'll post more when I decide.

Apple products

I have a couple computer savvy friends that made fun of me for getting this iPad. Even so, this is nothing short of a shameless plug for all Apple products. I am nothing less than very impressed with the iPad, iPod Touch, and classic iPod I have.

I know they're not for everyone, but I think I may never go back to IBM compatible products again! They have been quite user-friendly and the battery life on all the products I have is simply amazing. While I'm deployed battery life and convenience are the most important features in any electronics. I don't have high speed Internet and, more importantly I don't have time to mess with something to make it work.

None of my Apple products crash, and if they do, it's quite easy and quick to recover from and doesn't take any time to restart. They have an amazing array of apps that can do even more than my standard laptop. I regularly call and text my family back home via the Internet for free! If all Apple products are this user-friendly I might just have to stick with them from now on. Sure they're more expensive, but I'm willing to pay for the convenience.

Video Games

I like playing video games, they're fun. I'm not good at any video games and I don't want to be better, I play to have fun. Also, our unit here deployed has a morale room devoted to watching TV/movies and playing video games. Generally it's lots of fun to hang out there, however, today I went in for a few minutes since it's my day off to check the schedule and hang out for a little while playing video games. Well, it started out fun as I was playing with another person in the squadron who's really good at the game and he was destroying me. *I don't care about being bad at the game. Well, a couple more people joined in and it was even more fun. Then, a couple other people from the squadron came in the room... it suddenly stopped being fun! Because this new group of people started continuously heckling the couple of us that don't play the game very well. I have generally pretty thick skin when it comes to being picked on so it wouldn't really bother me, but today for some reason it bothered me quite a bit. Maybe it's because I really don't care about being good at video games and I know that being good at video games gets you absolutely no where in life. Hell, if anything being good at video games is actually detrimental to having a real life. Technically it's the taking the time and effort to be good at video games that is detrimental to having a real life but the ideas are linked.

Anyways, all this to say, if you enjoy video games and you're good at them BIG DEAL, only other video game players care. Also, don't heckle people that aren't good at whatever video game you're good at because they probably have a real life that is much better than yours.

You know what makes me mad!?!

First off, let me start off with a little background:

I ride a bike, both here deployed and when home.
I know the rules of the road concerning biking on the road.
I signal appropriately if there is another vehicle at an intersection.

Well, apparently many people don't understand that it's better and safer to treat bicyclists just like you would a slow moving car. For example, I was riding along coming up to a simple four-way stop. There was a truck already about to stop at the four-way coming the opposite direction. That truck, stopped well before I got to the intersection, and instead of proceeding as normal, the truck waited and flashed his lights at me. Now obviously the person was trying to be nice and let me go first but really, it's much safer and easier on bikers if you just behave as an ordinary vehicle. I only mention this because it's happened at least twice in the past two days.

So please, if you drive, which I assume that anyone reading this blog does, don't go out of your way and drive differently around bicyclists it only impedes their riding and the rest of traffic.