Time Keeps on Slipping … into the Past?

March 31, 2008 · Filed Under Rant 

Pseudorant - March 31st 2008

Ok, here is the Pseudo Rant of the day.

A friend emailed me this and I got a good laugh. It comes back to my whole point of people having too much free time on their hands. Sure, I have too much free time on my hands too. I maintain a Blog for god sake! But really it all comes down to how we choose to waste our time.It’s funny because I have people tell me a lot of the time that they couldn’t do this or that because they were “Busy”. Yet somehow as a home owner, who works full time, does repairs around the house and spends time with the wife, I still find time to do the things that others chalk up as a “waste of time”.

This comes back to a theory I have about how every person wastes resources how they see fit. Yet if you were to ask these people, they would not consider it a waste. For example, I used to take my wife out to eat all the time before we owned our house. I commented about this to a friend whose response was “Yeah that must get expensive. What a waste…”

Yet this same person would go out and buy two $60 video games a week, play them for 4-5 hours and then forget about them. I understand the collector mentality but look at what has happened here. The person who burns $120 a week for 8 hours of electronic recreation passes judgment on the people who spend $80 a week for 8 hours of luxury recreation.

This works the same way with time. I have always enjoyed playing video games. I especially enjoy playing MMORPGs. There have been times in the past where family and friends have passed judgment on me for the amount of time I have devoted to this hobby. The same family that spends an average of 4-5 hours a night in front of the TV, and the same friends that spend their nights socializing at bars and parties.

This is another conflict of perspective. To them I am the one wasting my time. But to me they are the ones who accomplish nothing while rotting their brain in front of the TV, or by socializing all night with strangers. In the end, what do they have to show for it?

I have a substantial gain I can show. My “wasted” time has lead to another guide being written, or an accomplishment in an online game, or getting my MP3s organized, or numerous other things. Everyone has very different priorities.

The point of this rant is not to pass judgment on the people who judge me. It’s to paint a picture that “waste” is all in the eye of the beholder. There is not one person that is free from this cycle. Whether it’s wasting your money on video games, entertainment, socializing, drugs, traveling, dining, it’s all the same. We will all find our accepted way of wasting resources.

With that being said I do not retract my original comment about someone having too much free time on their hands for creating something like this. In fact more power to them. I can tell just from watching that this must have taken forever to create. While to me this seems like a waste of time, the by product of that waste of time did lead to some entertainment for me.

With that being said, sit back and watch. The only real point of this post was to link to this project. Take the post itself for what you will, but enjoy the information below.

Man you gotta check this out. Its pretty sweet.

01. Go to START, RUN, then type CMD

02. Then type TELNET, and press Enter

03. Then the letter “O”, and press Enter

04. then type towel.blinkenlights.nl enter

[Thanks to Netzer for sending me this interesting bit of info.]

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