This is a remix of a video from a movie called “Network” that came out in 1976. I never even heard of this movie until recently, but I love the rant given by the character in this clip. I don’t think TV in and of itself is evil, it’s just a problem when it replaces the normal, critical thinking and self-reflective thoughts that are supposed to bounce around one’s brain. On new year’s day 2007 I started fasting from all major local and national news and it has been one of the best personal growth choices I’ve ever made. One might fear you’d be ignorant if you don’t stay abreast of the news, but rather you shake all the fear-mongering perpetuated by the major news outlets and gain an entirely new level of clear, critical thinking capabilities.

I wanted to point out a great post by David H. at the 37Signals blog where he writes about the false dream of early retirement that seems to plague every would-be Internet entrepreneur. This is the notion that if you slave yourself over your latest, greatest idea –– often at the expense of health, family, friends, etc — that at some point down the road there will be this big payoff that will allow you to relax and somehow make up for all the damage you caused along the way. I love the way he ends the post:

If you come to the realization that work in itself isn’t evil, you can stop living your life as a waterfall-planned software project too. No need to divide your timeline on earth into the false dichotomies of Sucky Work Era and Blissful Retirement Era. Instead, you can just fill your life with a balanced mix of activities that you can sustain for decades.

I think that the false dream of an early retirement spent counting your dot-com buyout millions is usually not born from a desire for success, but rather it’s a fantasy concocted in the mind to distract oneself from their current state of unhappiness or lack of fulfillment; offering a sort of mental masturbation that prevents them from taking the bold action they need to make a positive change in their life. If you ever find yourself day dreaming about an early retirement, you might want to catch yourself and think about the actions you’re not taking towards a sustainable sense of fulfillment derived from work that allows you to maximize your full creative potential.

I hope all you Battlestar Galactica fans caught the “unboxing” reference in the post title. I felt like father’s day was a good day to blow the dust off this blog. It used to be hosted on my buddy’s server, however I failed to relocate it to a new server before he moved to CA, and now all the precious bits of my previous site are locked away on the magnetic platters of his server’s hard disk somewhere in the detritus of his apartment. I need a home for all of the Ruby code I have been cranking out lately, and who doesn’t need a blog with a vanity URL anyway?