Tuesday, November 18, 2008

I have a new favorite website, Ulillillia City Software.

Hours of entertainment.



Join a boy on his travels through his life of video games and dreams. 

"I was otherwise very normal before I became 4 years old. When I was around 4 years old, I began playing video games with the Atari. Day in and day out often for 10+ hours a day (except school), I played the Atari and future console systems that came out. This severe addiction to video games led to at least half of my many mental problems."

Journey through his dream journal where he explains his hundreds of mud dreams (as seen below).



My life has changed thanks to this man.



He's made me reconsider showering thanks to the excerpt below.


"How often do you take showers? Once a day? Twice a day? Once every two days? How about 3 to 6 times a month? Lately, it's been just that. The reasons come down to these (in order of their impact with the worst on the top):

Serious waste of time. It takes me 45 minutes to process the task of taking a shower in full and that's with shortcuts. It takes me about 5 to 7 minutes to find and check my clothes, 25 to 35 minutes for the actual shower itself, and about 8 to 10 minutes to dry off. I then remain cold for about two hours after it so in effect, it actually takes 3 hours total. Why does it take 25 to 35 minutes for the actual shower rather than 10 to 15 minutes? For one, I have timed this and it is quite consistant so I know the 25-35 minutes value is correct. Because the temperature knobs are very touchy, it takes much longer to get the temperature set, about 3 to 5 minutes right there. Even moving the knob 1/32 of an inch causes a 3°F temperature difference at the good zone and I have to maneuver the knob to a precision on the order of 1/100 of an inch for anything reasonable and it takes a lot of effort to get it that fine. It takes me about 1 to 3 minutes to adjust to the water and get used to it. Then it's about 5 to 7 minutes for the shampoo (the full process - warming it up first (this doesn't apply during the winter) getting it out of the bottle, spreading it around and washing it off in full - I do one round at it but use quite a bit of shampoo to cover otherwise two rounds at once to speed things up). Then it's about 8 to 12 minutes of using the body wash (warming it up especially (this takes nearly twice as long as the shampoo does, a good 3 to 4 minutes), moving the shower curtains so that they don't get in the way (I use water as a paste to "glue" the sides of the tub, otherwise they get annoying and in the way adding to my time), spreading it around, then washing it off). Finally, I spend another 2 to 4 minutes rinsing off before turning off the water. Then it's about ten minutes to dry off. It actually faster to dry off without a towel than it is for me with one. The reason is that almost all towels are stained in some way and when this was going on, I noticed that 15 to 20 minutes went by to find a towel that wasn't stained. Without the towel, it takes about 10 minutes instead, yet another reduction. To help with this, I have other tricks up my sleeve for further reducing the time - squeezing the water from my hair then going top to bottom removing whatever I can. This otherwise reduces the time by about 40% of what it would normally take. I get dressed after that then spend two hours fighting to keep warm by the time I'm back to normal again. Then, quite often, my mind drifts off which quite often adds an additional 5 to 10 minutes to my shower time. This is something that's hard to prevent from doing and it occurs at any time, whether driving, using the forums, typing, working on my game, eating, watching TV, etc.. With doing this every day, the amount of "wasted time" really adds up - a whole days' worth (well, 22 1/2 hours as a grand total versus my current 3 3/4 hours per month). I can do a lot with 18 3/4 hours freed up. I can do two whole mountain ranges in my 2D game (and that's about an 1800x170 image on average). I could watch an additional 30-minute educational TV show each day with a bonus every 4th day. I could type up a story about three times longer than some of the longest stories on my website. I could update my website in my usual way with 3-weeks' worth of details (dreams and my blog mainly) and still have time to spare. That's a lot of time and it adds up.


When I need to go somewhere, my motive increases but rarely high enough to get just above neutral. With my parents complaining, it adds even more of an impact, enough to get it past neutral, adding about 4 times the impact (which turns 110 into about 220), but not as much when it comes to needing to go somewhere, even the simple grocery store. I once been without a single shower or bath for a whole month."

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