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Warren Shea

Archive for March, 2014

Being a nerd/geek is tough…

Monday, March 31st, 2014 at 4:34 pm

I’m starting to really like Wil Wheaton…I didn’t realize how intelligent, compassionate, and sincere Wil Wheaton was until I watched these videos.

I think he so eloquently answers these questions in a helpful way, but also in a way that he truly understands and overcame these similar hurdles…


How to deal with being called a nerd

Why it’s awesome to be a nerd

Even to my co-workers, even among (some of) my friends, even among my family – I can still be ridiculed for being a nerd or a geek. It’s frustrating – I don’t want to, nor should I, have to explain myself or the reason why I like things, or explain the nerd or geek culture – but sometimes I feel obligated to. Yes, it’s not the norm…does it make it wrong? No.

This ain’t Google (where, by watching The Intership, I realize I’d fit right in there) but I’m often surrounded by those who don’t understand nerds and geeks – but not only do they not understand, they ridicule or pass judgement. It’s frustrating fucking annoying as fuck.

I’ll say – being a nerd/geek is easier than it used to be. And I imagine it’ll get easier – gamers, nerds, geeks, hipsters even….they’re all building their own communities as it’s more normal than ever to be different.

Anyways…just posted those YouTube videos as I thought they were touching and useful, especially the first one.

If I knew then, what I know now…

Monday, March 31st, 2014 at 3:46 pm

“Don’t tell me how to live my life! I’m 17 and know it all!”
That was probably me, at 17. It was definitely me in my teen years – a know it all attitude and bad temper (to my parents). You could pass your wisdom and experience to me and I wouldn’t hear it – “what worked for you isn’t how things are done now, you dinosaur. I’m gonna change everything – create the path for myself and do everything right!”

So young, stupid and arrogant.

Even when I started this blog, I think I still felt a lot of that. But I don’t feel it nearly as much anymore – I’m much less in the “this is how I do it and that’s my way – and it’s the ‘right’ way” as I am “this is how things are done, and I need to conform”. And I don’t mean that in an individualistic, loss of identity kinda way…I’m just realizing that wisdom and experience are just that – and I should (and do) respect it much more.

I used to find myself reading these things on the internet about life, how to live it, mistakes people made, goals to success, etc. I used to think most of it was crap. Actually – not crap, but not applicable to me. Y’know, me being so much awesomer than the average joe.

I realize, when I read these things now, that they’re much more accurate to my life – I just didn’t know it at the time. So when I read this kinda stuff, I don’t take it as “that’s not me, that’s not my life”. I take it as a “that’s not me right now – but it could be, and it would be wise to heed these warnings, advice, wisdom, and experience now rather than later. Embrace the feedback, don’t reject it”.

I really felt this way reading Joe Mad’s post about what he’s learned/his experiences
http://leseanthomas.deviantart.com/journal/TO-YOU-ASPIRING-ARTISTS-FROM-JOE-MADUREIRA-368733515 &
http://www.worldofwarren.com/?p=6252

I recently read these:
http://markmanson.net/surviving-my-20s
http://markmanson.net/10-life-lessons-excel-30s
and I’m trying to use this feedback, and other people’s experience, to help guide my life. What I don’t want is to repeat their mistakes or regret things in a way these people do – and as much as they’ve learned from their experiences, it doesn’t make sense to have an issue that could be preventable – it goes back to my “if I knew then, what I know now” that’s been running through my head…

Listen to other people’s experiences. Listen to the lessons they’ve learned. (and I mean that in a broad, consensus type way – not one person’s one-sided rant views).
Get as much “free experience” as you can, get as much “wisdom” as you can. These are things you can’t get quickly from non-conventional ways.

Read. Remember. Learn. Apply.
Turn your theory into a mentality through practice.

Change your life – but don’t do it letting things happen to you. Do it by bettering yourself.
Create opportunities for yourself. When the chance comes up for things to change, do you want to say “I’m glad I learned about this 6 months ago and I’m ready for this” or “I can’t do this…I need to do/learn this and this first”.

Taking my own advice – I need to so some reading!

I broke my resolve! :(

Saturday, March 29th, 2014 at 7:35 am

Sorry – for 2 nights, I had a life that involved booze and blogging wasn’t high on my list of priorities :(

To be honest, there were at least 2-3 blog posts I had planned but I didn’t get to them…

Yokai! Aegis!

Wednesday, March 26th, 2014 at 11:59 pm

Aegis – the name I use for most of my video game avatars – Zelda, Pokemon, Initial D…
It’s been over 15+ years since my inspiration for this avatar, Gate Keepers!



Gate Keepers Intro


Gate Keepers Outro


Gate Keepers 21 Intro 2

I happened to be watching Gate Keepers again right now – I can’t remember the last time I rewatched this series but it’s probably been at least 7-8 years. It’s pretty fun – the reasons why I liked it before are still there. It’s anime in its purest form. Over the top fun, action, humour, romance (in a playful, not sappy way). Interesting characters, great animation. It doesn’t go too deep or too dark (tho GK21 is somewhat dark…). Anyways, I watched 6 episodes today…I think I’ll be done by tomorrow ;)

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Also, I finished Pokemon X already. BLEW THREW IT, avoiding any battle I could. I transferred 6 starter pokemon to my other 3DS game and power leveled them to 30ish right away to breeze by the start. Then, I played with these characters until they were in the 50s. At that point, I had enough badges to bring my original 80s/90s/100 over from my first game. And I continued to speed thru the game. I caught Xerneas in 1 try. Yveltal took at least 3-4 resets with multiple pokeball tries. I guess I got really lucky.

My plan is to get the legendary bird, and a second mewtwo and zygarde. With my extra mewtwo and zygarde, I’m gonna try to trade for other legendaries via GTS. Anyways…that’s the plan at least.

I kinda wanna play Mario Galaxy too…we’ll see :)

The Internship

Tuesday, March 25th, 2014 at 11:59 pm

Just saw The Internship (Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, at Google). It’s a pretty good feel-good movie. Lots of nerd and geek references throughout the movie that I get – which is exactly why I wanted to watch this movie. To see what it’s like at Google. And I gotta say – it looks pretty interesting and awesome.

I’m envious. If I were, to put it bluntly, better than I am, could Google have been a possibility? Could Microsoft or any of these companies? Was my potential wasted or did I reach my potential only to fall short? I’m pretty sure it’s both…and unfortunately, I way past my prime to fix it. Ah youth, the more important aspect of that is the time you have…I wish I could tell younger me that one day you blink, and the next day, you’re an old man writing a sad old blog post about youth.

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It’s annoying – at work, sometimes I feel like I’m the smartest person in the room and sometimes I feel like I’m just a kid and I don’t know sh!t. Sometimes I’m giving advice, sometimes I’m the technical go to, the problem solver, the one with all the solutions – and sometimes I’m in a room where my ideas are just plain awful and I know they’re bad but I can’t come up with anything better. But I guess my whole point is, I can’t tell if I should be giving any advice, given how sometimes, I feel like the stupidest person in the room (any to clarify, I’m not talking book smart, I’m also talking street smart, people smart, corporate smart, everything).

Sometimes I feel like I deserve where I am, sometimes I feel like I’m not ready…it was so much easier when “I could just not know what the fuck I was doing cuz…whatever”.
But I don’t feel that way anymore…the responsibility, the ownership – it can be maddening.

No resolution here, just some ol’ rants about feelings and stuff.

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This blogging everyday thing is fun. Every day, at midnight approach, I’m like ‘oh shit’ and I start writing about anything and it writes itself… :)
I think I should keep some blogging rule, like I used to in the ol’ days. Always blog on the 10th, 20th, and 30th day or something.