While I was waiting however, I had one of those moments where you think you see someone, but it’s not them. This person was sitting on a nearby bench and I did the classic look once, shake head, look again maneuver. I awkwardly did this about 4 more times and I think this person got creeped out since they walked to some shop and then looked at me. In any case, if I had talked to either the person I thought it was or the actual person, it probably wouldn’t have been welcomed.

Today I was walking to a study area and the same thing happened. Except I didn’t look at the person a billion times, only once. This usually never happens to me, perhaps it is just because I’m looking out for someone and not minding my own business with my face to the ground like usual. Either that, or I’m going insane. Hopefully the former.

When you go out with someone, it is because you like them, right? Well how does like turn into love? Does the likeness meter hit its peak? Well it has to be it. When you like someone a lot you want to be around them, talk with them, get to know them. When you’re in love it would be a safe assumption that you would know a lot about someone thus you have done all prior activities in getting to know them and reached the maximum amount of likeness.

So all love is, is that you like someone a lot. Once again, something so complicated in real life has been made oh-so simple by yours truly.

Now the issue I have detailed stems from the “News Feed”. Now I’m not sure what classes as news, but if Jane Smith sends a friend-wide message asking her friends to join her mob I don’t think 99% of those people who will see the message care if she needs help with her virtual mob. Facebook isn’t a game site. I think all those quizzes, games, surveys and any other abominations of the like should be terminated. I for one am proud of the fact I have never played Mafia Wars, Farmville or any other game with a similar principle. I believe Tetris Friends was the only game I played, until I was beaten by a good friend. A few rounds of Tetris never hurt anyone, in fact, Tetris probably does more for the mind than most games.

Another thing that annoys me is this new photo system Facebook decided to add. First of all, it requires a plugin, at least for Firefox. On the upside, I didn’t have to restart my browser, in this case, the slow beast known as Firefox. Of course this isn’t really a bother unless you are unfortunate enough to use public computers. Wrong move there Facebook team. After you have installed the uploader which is pretty good I guess, you have to pick out your photos. Obviously you would click “Upload photos” and go ahead and select your photos. Now you need to enter an album name. Well what if you have an album already created? Now you have to find that album, hit edit, hit add more and then do the same thing. The easier way would just be to add in an option to create a new album or select an old album to add to. Pretty simple isn’t it?

Now, here comes another load of ‘why would you think that is even a good thing’ from the Facebook team. I’m not sure if it is just me but there is a 10 pixel (approximate) buffer zone from the top edge of my browser to the button when it is highlighted. Such as small fix yet no one has decided to fix it. It seems like a trivial CSS touch up but I did some investigating with Firebug and they have made their top navigation pretty complex, most likely to deal with Internet eXploder 6. Nevertheless, looks terrible to me. However I’m not gonna write a Grease Monkey script to deal with it, I can live with such a minor annoyance.

Now I’ll conclude my Facebook rant/critique here, but don’t be alarmed, there is plenty more wrong with Facebook. At least they are a few hundred steps above MySpace (We can all agree here).

It bothers me sometimes however, that some people don’t test themselves. For example, I used to play video gameslike any normal guy. Not a lot, but enough to be pretty damn good at some games. That was only 3 years ago and since then I hardly ever pick up a controller or load up a game these days. Why the sudden change you might ask? Well it got boring. Games are just long puzzles and most games are the same puzzle. COD, BF, Crysis and most other first person shooters are the same to me and hence I saw no challenge since learning this skill will lead me to no skill which I can use. I do however think strategy games are good thinking games but then they can get repetative. When I tell people that I don’t play games they ask me, what do you do on a computer? I can’t help but think what can’t I do, games are just great time wasters to me, I’d rather learn skills I can perhaps use later in life and enjoy while I learn.

So I challenged myself. I became a video editor. I got a YouTube Partnership and 3000+ subscribers and was mentioned to Travis Pastrana (from what he said). Well that was pretty cool I guess, what next. Then I became a Web Designer. Built a few sites and now I could have a site up and going within the day if I felt like it. Now I don’t know where to go next. The bike challenges are just to keep me at bay until I find something to try and master next. A big part of me wants it to be university and myself. But I think this would be a pretty hard challenge to take on but I can always try. I think my next challenge might be to master Photoshop. I’ve always wanted to be able to take some crappy photo and make it something awesome.

How do you challenge yourself? Or, why don’t you challenge yourself for some people.

This snail probably has as much purpose in life as you do. Depressed?

If you think about it, life is pretty pointless. I’m not talking about humans specifically but everything in general. Let’s consider a cheetah. It can run fast, it hunts pray and eats it and it reproduces until it dies. So in its life it will do four main things in general. Why does this species keep doing that? It seems like an infinite loop with no end.

Now let’s consider you. You will be born, probably have a nice childhood which is basically learning how to be “human”. Then you enter your schooling career which may last 20 years, it may last 10. Then you most likely get a job which funnily enough, like the cheetah hunting, involves you doing the same thing everyday for probably the next 10 years or so, probably more if you have an actual career and not some dead end job. Then after perhaps 30 more years you retire. Waste about 10-30 more years doing nothing except waiting to die and then, you die. In that time you’ll probably have less than 3 kids and they’ll do pretty much the same thing you did.

So why do cheetahs live? Well they’re pretty stupid as far as thinking outside the box however they are extraordinary creatures and out match humans in every way except the mind. Now why do humans keep on going? Its not like we’re doing it because some extra force told you to because as much as you might want to believe so, no one is telling you to do anything. Is it to have fun? Enjoy being with people? Get that rush of whatever it may be and feel on top of the world? You have probably answered yes to at least one of those. Pretty simple answers huh? Well we are pretty simple people aren’t we.

So let’s review. We only continue our lives for enjoyment, however we are in misery (majority of people) for the most part. We spend 30% of our lives learning skills and the other 70% using them. We save up money so we can stop working and wait to die. And we have been doing this for thousands of years. Not a whole lot to it really. We live. We learn. We work. We die. And somewhere in there, at any given moment, we’re happy.

I was thinking about this the other day – What if we aren’t real. That everything we know isn’t real but merely a simulation; similar to the latest James Cameron flick, Avatar (I’ve had this idea for a while). Maybe other people, even aliens, play as us. Maybe 1 year in our time is an hour for them? Imagine if this was just some test? Imagine if life was just some test and you can fail. Have you ever wondered why stereotypes exist, perhaps those are similar to the different types of characters we play in games such as Battlefield or Call of Duty.

If this was a test and we were aiming to pass what would be the fail mark? Would it be suicide, bankruptcy, drug addiction? Then again, what would be the pass mark? Perhaps it is having children, earning money or just being a good person. I was thinking of how I would be going so far. What would be my “Life GPA” if you will. I wasn’t sure how to judge it though. Would giving up your seat on the bus for an elderly person increase it? I guess it would be similar to karma.

I guess my thoughts (or even theory?) is somewhat related to Buddhism. They share similar ideas such as reincarnation and karma but and not surprisingly it is the only religion I deem to be not a total load of crap. So I guess we will never know our “score” until the end and I wonder if I’ll play another game. What’s your score?