First, the home TV is busted.  It has been that way for a couple of weeks now, and it will persist in such a state for most likely another week while we wait for the repair company to receive the proper parts.  Along with that I recently attempted to upgrade some RAM in my PC, this resulted in a coincidental death of a memory slot on the motherboard. 

I have since ordered a new motherboard (A nice Gigabyte) and have subsequently RMA’d it.  Yep, an RMA on the new board.  It was simply a bad one (the first non-working item i have received from NewEgg).  From the get go it never once posted to BIOS.  The old motherboard does work – minus  some memory – but the effort to get everything back together just to take it apart again is beyond my patience, especially when i have a laptop.

How does this create professional reading?  Because with no TV and no PC games of any sort, I have a great deal of time on my hands.  I also have the motivation of starting a Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program next week, so quite a bit of refresher work is being done.  It would have been hard for me to imagine a couple of years ago that it was possible to forget some of the basics of classical conditioning, but when you travel abroad and across the country for a couple of years doing anything and everything that does not involve your degree, things have a way of slipping out of mind.

Luckily, relearning is much easier.  I have found the amazing ability to get through one hundred of more pages of text books in a day with almost total comprehension.  This should encourage all of you to start rereading things you learned in the past, the feeling of brilliance is a nice perk!

Who knows… I may even get some real updates ready for Sustainable Democracy…  Reading “Stranger in a Strange Land” has certainly given me ample material to think broadly about.  That and the complete lack of news I get is rather refreshing.

So kids, do like Uncle Chris, read more, watch less, make your friends suspect communism may be rearing its ugly head again.

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Happy Birthday Catherine!

- From Uncle Chris

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And by problems I mean changes.

The plan was: move back to Colorado, go back to school, do stuff.

It has turned out to be more like: Find a girl, move back to Colorado, get lectured about the school you picked as far below your level, go back to Boston for Thanksgiving with girl, decide to move again at some point, look into schools at the places I may move.

The plan contains most of the same elements, but I’ve decided to go with the flow and see where life takes Uncle Chris. 

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In the last two years I have moved to Japan and back to Colorado, then to Boston, and now I will be going back to Colorado.  With all this moving, one would assume that I am a moving pro.  In some ways I am.  I travel light compared to most people I know, and I’m really good at putting things into boxes.  On the flipside, I am terrible at planning ahead for these moves and doing thins like selling furniture.  I don’t wait until the last minute, but I am not ahead of the curve.

It would also help if Uncle Chris believed in moving trucks… Unfortunately I come from the school of thought that says selling of everything you own is more profitable than hiring people to move it.  While true, it comes with more heartburn.

So here it is, a great “Do what I say, not as I do” tip.  Making a schedule for when you need to sell things, have certain things packed, and when you actually plan on leaving are good important things to mark down.  I technically still have two weeks to do things like that, but working at the same time makes it harder.

If you do decide to move without doing much planning, plan on never buying a decent chest of drawers for your clothes.  By doing this you can live “out of a suitcase” like Uncle Chris has the last year.  I actually didn’t mean to live out of my suitcase, but not remembering one of the items on my list at IKEA resulted in being left with a closet and suitcase for wardrobe organization.  If nothing else it provides for great stories you can use in conversation.

Yeah, this is a short tip, but I really ought to pack things before getting kicked out of my humble abode.

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So, this is tip is “Just Do Stuff.”  That sounds kind of vague…  What I really mean is, go out and do things.

Hmmm… Still not very precisely put.

Life is not built for the living room of your home or apartment.  Sure you can see things on the web and the TV is great, but the things that you really remember and things most likely to make you happy are outside your door.  This is especially important if you’re going through a hard time, depression, or really anything that is uncomfortable and isn’t highly contagious – that’s right plague carriers, your fulfilling life activities are indeed in your own home.

I tend to be the kind of person who likes to retreat into my cave.  You can imagine that this was/is an important lesson for me.  Getting up and going out has always been a good idea for me.  You can have a goal, or just wander about for a couple of hours.  But Uncle Chris would never be so cold as to leave you without example of how going out and doing things is a good idea.

For one thing, you get great chances to take pictures of yourself in reflective objects.  Because really, nothing is sexier than capturing a picture of yourself pondering the picture you are about to take of yourself in a view screen.

Or better yet, you get the chance to take an artistic photo that people like while wandering around and checking out cherry blossoms near where you live.  The particular shot above was at a very small temple that was a 5-10 minute walk from my apartment in Japan.

I got both those pictures by following good advice to get up, get out, and live my life. 

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Memory is a tricky thing.  For most people, it seems like the harder they try to remember, the more forgetting they do.  But I have developed a personal system that works pretty well.  I don’t have photographic memory (although this can also be trained in most people), and I do my own share of forgetting, but hopefully these words of wisdom from Uncle Chris will help.

You know how some of the best ideas come while your in the shower?  I think this is because you reach a decently Zen-like state while focusing on cleaning and not focusing much on trying to think.  Cultivate that state of mind.  “Shower Mind” sounds odd, but it would be a mostly accurate description of what you want.  However, this is only step one!

Think random thoughts.  Don’t try to organize your thinking so much.  I think highly ordered or focused thinking tends to kill both creativity and memory.  This does not mean that you should aspire to be that ADD kid everyone hates.  But let your mind wander.  I know a whole lot of things and can recall much of it very quickly because most of the things I have learned are connected to lots of other random other thoughts and bits of knowledge.

So how does this work in practice?

If I need to remember something at the store I try to attach it to a fact (it can be true or not, memory is the key here, not winning on Jeopardy) .  You need bread, well lots of soldiers ate bread, and I happen to like the history of WWII, so when I think about the Medal of Honor game series and the fact that shooting Nazis is the most popular basis of all FPS games I remember I need to pick up bread (and hand grenades, they really never give you enough of those).

This can even help you pass tests.  After all, Jess who sits two rows down has great tits, you know like Anne Heche, and that woman has some serious identity issues just like the ones mentioned in chapter two of… Hey look!  Test answer!

If you have any other tips for improving memory that don’t involve deluxe free pills from my spam filter, let’s hear them!

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Life Tips from Uncle Chris

Now, to answer the inevitable questions that will pop into people’s heads (but rarely my inbox).

What the hell is this Uncle Chris thing?  Are you someone’s uncle?  Are you sure that’s not just weird?

Obviously my name is Chris, and I am in fact Uncle to a fair number of kids, but none that are really close enough to have me as their “favorite uncle Chris.”  Nope, this is a title bestowed on me by a co-worker from Japan.  She enjoyed that fact that if pretty much any topic was mentioned I either had A) a story for it, B) knew a useless fact about it, or C) could come up with a joke about it.  I was; therefore, the archetypal “Favorite Uncle” and thus became Uncle Chris.

The point of Life Tips from Uncle Chris is not not really to bring anything new to my blog.  I already rant about random things that have little to no connection to anything else.  This just makes it seem like there is some continuity to what I write.  But really, you have to face it, no Favorite Uncle really makes much sense.  They just happen to be that particular collection of random and witty that seems to make sense.

So welcome to it.  The first actual Life Tip will be next Thursday (and might even already be scheduled!).

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