USA vs Japan

I'm not a huge soccer fan but during the last two world cups(men's and women's) I've become a little bit more of a fan each time. When I was kid I played soccer for about 6 years for the YMCA league in Ashland. Never really did understand the game then other than if the ball goes in the net, it counts as a point. For a year I played goalie and played really well, the next...I was terrible at that position.

Today's world cup final pitted the USA vs Japan. Both very prideful countries and both fighting to prove something. Today it went to Japan. After the devastation Japan has faced this year, I'm glad for them. It gives the country some hope and something to cheer. It kind of reminds me of New Orleans and the Saints after Hurricane Katrina. Honestly, if they wouldn't have been playing the US I would've been cheering for them and I tip my hat off to them. They played well, with heart, with desire and can now bring some semblance of hope to country that has had just about anything but.

I cant even begin to fathom how our women's team feels in this moment. To be so close, traverse a road less traveled and still be a competitor, seems so surreal. I hate it for them that they lost, but no one can deny what they've done or how the American spirit resides in all of them. Though I'm sure none of the women on the team will ever read this I have this to say: Hold your head high. You DID write your own story. Too overcome the defeat to Sweden and to overcome the red card against Brazil? You are amazing! You showed the world the heart of America and you did it in a beautiful fashion.

And the game today was absolutely beautiful. For the majority of the game no cards were given. Eventually Japan got a yellow card and a red card. Every time a player went down, on either team, the opposing team checked to make sure they were okay. Thank you to both teams for showing sportsmanship even when a world cup is at hand. I hope that other teams in every sport take a lesson from the class act that was displayed on a world stage today.

XangaMyspaceFacebook . . . Google+?

There have been many social media sites and for me it started with Xanga but my first online social experience was IRC(Internet Relay Chat). The question is, why do we move from one website to another? Whatever the reason(s) may be, the inventors of these sites thrive on it. Without their insight into the human psyche and the “enough is never enough” attitude we have, we would all be on the same website we started with.

It’s hard for me to understand moving from one website to another when they all allow the same thing to occur. Myspace for awhile was the holy grail of social media then facebook snagged it. My guess is because at first it didn’t have ads and myspace was overrun with them. Xanga was a simple website that allowed you to post more of a blog than any status update, pic or video. Apparently, it is now a blogging community. I cant remember my username or password has it has been years since I’ve signed in there.

As for Google+, right now, I'm not a fan. I'm not finding it as user friendly as facebook. Yes the page is less crowded but as it grows I fully believe ads will start popping up. It’s a business and it takes money, so money has to come from somewhere right? And to keep people, its best to not charge a user fee so only other option, ads.

Maybe in time, Google+ will grow on me or as more and more people shift over there from facebook, I will shift as well.

Other Sites

Twitter: I’ve recently become a more avid user of this service as it allows for a quick 140 character snapshot of my thoughts. I believe its key draw is the ease of being able to send a text message to its number and its ability to link with facebook. Picture sharing is easy also however it does require a 3^rd party source

Tumblr: Never used it, I actually forgot it existed. After reading its “about” page it seem very similar to facebook with a different name and different layout.

Read at own risk.

Why do I try? It seems like such an easy task at hand but apparently society or something I'm completely missing has made this a much more complicated task than it really is. I'm a firm believer in “ignorance isn’t bliss” and I do everything I can to avoid making assumptions, especially of friends. However when certain situations arise that I’ve had arise many times over my life, it’s hard to separate my experiences from what I see happening.

I really hope and pray to God I’m wrong, but honestly, I haven’t been wrong yet in this regard. First time for everything right? I hope so. I actually pray that I’m wrong.

Of course, if that prayer is answered, would I actually realize it or be so blinded by my pride that I miss the answer? I mean, there are definitely obvious actions I could take, but are those risks right? What if they’re not? How much would/could I lose? Too much in my mind.

P.S. Women, if a guy asks you out and you don’t want to go, just say “no”. If you put the stipulation of “I don’t have the time” or any stipulation for that matter; almost every guy knows or should know that that is an automatic “No”. If he is respectful of you, he will take your answer at full value. Gray answers aren’t good either. As a guy, when it comes to this, be direct. A “yes” or “no” is a very simple answer and dependent on the answer, not waste your time or ours. We’ve taken a risk by showing our cards when we ask you on a date, please don’t brush that off as nothing as for many, it is an extremely scary risk.

And breathe…venting is over. Maybe a technology blog next time, something less intense or thought provoking. Well, I hope this is thought provoking in some regards.

What is "Chivalry" to you?

Back in the dark ages an unwritten moral code was arisen. This moral code was given a term, the term: "Chivalry". As the years have passed since then it seems this way of knightly living as fallen to the wayside, or has it?

What is chivalry to you? And yes, I really want to know. Everyone will define it differently as everyone has a different expectation on what it should be.

Here are the "10 Commandments of the Code of Chivalry"

From Chivalry by Leon Gautier

Thou shalt believe all that the Church teaches, and shalt observe all its directions.
Thou shalt defend the Church.
Thou shalt repect all weaknesses, and shalt constitute thyself the defender of them.
Thou shalt love the country in the which thou wast born.
Thou shalt not recoil before thine enemy.
Thou shalt make war against the Infidel without cessation, and without mercy.
Thou shalt perform scrupulously thy feudal duties, if they be not contrary to the laws of God.
Thou shalt never lie, and shall remain faithful to thy pledged word.
Thou shalt be generous, and give largess to everyone.
Thou shalt be everywhere and always the champion of the Right and the Good against Injustice and Evil.

The Code of Chivalry

From the Rifts: England Supplement

Live to serve King and Country.
Live to defend Crown and Country and all it holds dear.
Live one's life so that it is worthy of respect and honor.
Live for freedom, justice and all that is good.
Never attack an unarmed foe.
Never use a weapon on an opponent not equal to the attack.
Never attack from behind.
Avoid lying to your fellow man.
Avoid cheating.
Avoid torture.
Obey the law of king, country, and chivalry.
Administer justice.
Protect the innocent.
Exhibit self control.
Show respect to authority.
Respect women.
Exhibit Courage in word and deed.
Defend the weak and innocent.
Destroy evil in all of its monstrous forms.
Crush the monsters that steal our land and rob our people.
Fight with honor.
Avenge the wronged.
Never abandon a friend, ally, or noble cause.
Fight for the ideals of king, country, and chivalry.
Die with valor.
Always keep one's word of honor.
Always maintain one's principles.
Never betray a confidence or comrade.
Avoid deception.
Respect life and freedom.
Die with honor.
Exhibit manners.
Be polite and attentive.
Be respectful of host, women, and honor.
Loyalty to country, King, honor, freedom, and the code of chivalry.
Loyalty to one's friends and those who lay their trust in thee.

The Twelve Chief Rules in Love

From The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus

Thou shalt avoid avarice like the deadly pestilence and shalt embrace its opposite.
Thou shalt keep thyself chaste for the sake of her whom thou lovest.
Thou shalt not knowingly strive to break up a correct love affair that someone else is engaged in.
Thou shalt not chose for thy love anyone whom a natural sense of shame forbids thee to marry.
Be mindful completely to avoid falsehood.
Thou shalt not have many who know of thy love affair.
Being obedient in all things to the commands of ladies, thou shalt ever strive to ally thyself to the service of Love.
In giving and receiving love's solaces let modesty be ever present.
Thou shalt speak no evil.
Thou shalt not be a revealer of love affairs.
Thou shalt be in all things polite and courteous.
In practising the solaces of love thou shalt not exceed the desires of thy lover.
The Art of Courtly Love

From The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus

Marriage is no real excuse for not loving.
He who is not jealous cannot love.
No one can be bound by a double love.
It is well known that love is always increasing or decreasing.
That which a lover takes against the will of his beloved has no relish.
Boys do not love until they reach the age of maturity.
When one lover dies, a widowhood of two years is required of the survivor.
No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons.
No one can love unless he is propelled by the persuasion of love.
Love is always a stranger in the home of avarice.
It is not proper to love any woman whom one would be ashamed to seek to marry.
A true lover does not desire to embrace in love anyone except his beloved.
When made public love rarely endures.
The easy attainment of love makes it of little value: difficulty of attainment makes it prized.
Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved.
When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved his heart palpitates.
A new love puts an old one to flight.
Good character alone makes any man worthy of love.
If love diminishes, it quickly fails and rarely revives.
A man in love is always apprehensive.
Real jealousy always increases the feeling of love.
Jealousy increases when one suspects his beloved.
He whom the thought of love vexes eats and sleeps very little.
Every act of a lover ends in the thought of his beloved.
A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks will please his beloved.
Love can deny nothing to love.
A lover can never have enough of the solaces of his beloved.
A slight presumption causes a lover to suspect his beloved.
A man who is vexed by too much passion usually does not love.
A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thought of his beloved.
Nothing forbids one woman being loved by two men or one man by two women.

Chivalry code

This isn't the only site but had the most useful information in one place. What do you think? Thoughts and opinions please!

Thanks for reading :)

New Respect

Yesterday morning was eventful (as was the whole day-celebrating a friends 21st, w00t!). Phone was ringing with unknown numbers I continuously ignore, Chips(my cat) was meowing and crawling all over me. Thankfully the sun doesn't really enter my room so the illumination of my room stays fairly dim, even during the brightest part of the day. This was all before I crawled out of bed.

As I see it an unfortunate situation I have, is I have to wear glasses. Granted, its not always bad as it does help me see. My vision is pretty horrible as without them I am unable to see the screen I am typing on. My first step in the morning is to turn on my lamp then put on my glasses. Well, when I went to put on my glasses, they broke. The frame around the nose piece gave out. I had known it was going to break fairly soon, but it just had to break yesterday.

Since then I have been using my prescription sunglasses to see(break out Corey Hart's "I wear my sunglasses at Night puns now). This experience however as given me a new respect to those who are blind. I take my vision for granted as it is something I have and use constantly. But what about those who? So many questions run through my head. What's it like to blind? What's it like to be unable to see the beauty all around you? etc. I've heard that when one sense is gone the others get stronger, making up for the lost one.

I do not have the privilege of knowing any blind person but they have just gained my respect. To be able to traverse around a town let alone the world seems like a huge challenge, almost impossible but its not.

Good news is I will be getting new glasses tomorrow and my 48 hours of blurred or shaded vision will be over.

New opportunity

This is my first blog in 3 years. YIKES! Talk about a hiatus!

So today I started a new venture, social media management. Surprisingly seems more difficult than I thought and I have to pull back my thoughts from the company as I just use the media in hopes of gaining more business for the benefit of the company. And I definitely do not have the experience at running a company or advertising for that matter. This is a very new experience, and I hope I can do well at this. I enjoyed my first day though, getting a feel for the company and what the owners expect. Also, trying to understand how to best use social media to gain the customers and not scare them off. Too much is never good, but how much is too much and how little is too little? Trial by error? Not a way I want to do this so I began looking at some other companies that use social media and research and gauged, along with the help of Athena-who came up with a number- how much a company post in 24 hours. Larger companies seem to post about 8-10 times in a 24 hour period while smaller companies are about half of that.

Now, the next time I go in, unless I do it over the weeked will be to get a blog setup for Modern Mercantile and WM Wine Shop(@ModMerc on www.Twitter.com ) or on www.facebook.com.

You can also follow me on twitter @Smitz115 and learn about my journey through this experience or anything in general-philosophy, quotes, movie reviews(Im no critic! If it keeps me intriqued, I like it!) and day to day life.

And so Im back into the world of Blogging. Anybody remember Xanga? Yeah, this is the closest we will get to that now.

Extreme's, physical and spiritual

Extreme:
1. of a character or kind farthest removed from the ordinary or average: extreme measures.

2.	utmost or exceedingly great in degree: extreme joy.

3.	farthest from the center or middle; outermost; endmost: the extreme limits of a town.

4.	farthest, utmost, or very far in any direction: an object at the extreme point of vision.

5.	exceeding the bounds of moderation: extreme fashions.

6.	going to the utmost or very great lengths in action, habit, opinion, etc.: an extreme conservative.

7.	last or final: extreme hopes.

8.	Chiefly Sports. extremely dangerous or difficult: extreme skiing.

–noun

9.	the utmost or highest degree, or a very high degree: cautious to an extreme.

10.	one of two things as remote or different from each other as possible: the extremes of joy and grief.

11.	the furthest or utmost length; an excessive length, beyond the ordinary or average: extremes in dress.

12.	an extreme act, measure, condition, etc.: the extreme of poverty.

13.	Mathematics. a. the first or the last term, as of a proportion or series. b. a relative maximum or relative minimum value of a function in a given region.

14.	Logic. the subject or the predicate of the conclusion of a syllogism; either of two terms that are separated in the premises and brought together in the conclusion.

15.	Archaic. the utmost point, or extremity, of something.

So, first of in someways I am extreme but I also have my limits, not entirely sure where they're at but getting past arrogance I know they exist and I know I've hit my limits in some area's.

As for talking about extremes there are two things that I've recently done that I cant decide which of the two is more extreme. One I've already blogged about, going 145 on a motorcycle. For those of you who dont want to live this again, sorry, but be encouraged that it will be the second thing I talk about here. The other is skydiving, some people actually label this the pinnacle of extreme and I can see how, but as for feeling how, not quite sure.

Both of these adventures have their positives and their negatives. Both could very easily result in death and also show you how far you've come or grown.

Skydiving; was and still is the number one thing to do on my bucket list. The reason for it being there in the first place is because I even saw it as the pinnacle of extreme. The reason for it staying there is the experience was so surreal and dreamlike its really hard for me to grasp that I actually did it. And I have proof that I did it. I have pictures and a video(on the way). Its hard for me to believe though that I jumped out of a plane at 11,500 feet. Over 2 miles up. Sure, two miles doesn't seem far from the ground but when you're out of the plane and you see it flying away and your falling its pretty far. The speed you're going when you fall is about 120 mph. So after we've left the plane I'm in a surreal state just focusing on the other skydiver who's wearing the helmet with the video camera and camera. The video camera was on the left of the helmet and the camera was on top of the helmet controlled with a mouthpiece. The one thought I remember having while in the plane and while falling was this: "I forgot how much I hate camera's" and at the same time I'm glad I've got the pictures. Personal preference though is I hate the fact that some of my hair got caught in the goggles. While the rest of my hair is going up, a small, annoying section is hanging there. After falling 6000 feet, yes, we(the instructor and I) fell over one mile with no safety except a backpack on his back and him on my back, pulled the ripcord. Af 5500 feet the cord was pulled to start to deploy the parachute, at 3000 feet the parachute is fully deployed. Yes, there is a violent change in speed and direction, while my body was going up my shoes wanted to go down. I seriously thought I was about to loose them. After the parachute catches and my mind and body notice that the free fall is done I start to look around and realize the beauty of the chaos I had just experienced. While hanging around in the 2500 foot range off the ground with a canopy over me as my only safety I look out and around over E-town. I'm in the sky admiring the beauty that God has made and at the same time I'm wishing I could share it with someone, besides the instructor on my back, for the comedians out there. Which is why next year, I'm wanting to go for my birthday and would like to invite any of you who want to come, come and jump or come and watch. It is one of the coolest things I've ever done I will admit and would love to do again and hope I can. Disclaimer: the open invite maybe a bit premature.

Now for those of you who are not wanting to read about 145 on a motorcycle again, you may skip this section but I would encourage you to read it.

So, as aforementioned in the previous blog I went 145 on a motorcycle on new circle one night. I know its not the wisest of choices and I dont believe I've ever claimed myself to be the wisest. If I have I humble myself now before you and state this: "I value wisdom but I dont always listen to it". The reason I have a hard time deciding which one of these is more extreme has a lot to do with the speed difference, each though, if something went wrong as mentioned up top could lead to death. Obviously nothing went wrong with either one of these adventures since I'm here typing it up. "Everything happens for good of God for those who love Him" Very encouraging verse because even in my stupidity Jesus can use it for good which I'm slowly, painfully slow, learning. Going 145 is fun, I wont deny that and would love to and prolly will do it again, just in a safer manner(road course) but there was some wisdom passed on to me that makes a lot of sense and heard in one hear and out other until a good friend of mine mentioned it again and basically that is have your peripherals on and looking because you never know when something may blindside you. I can tell you from experience that bugs and rain hurt and sting around 70-80 mph. I've heard stories where guys have hit a bird or it hit them, depends on your perspective, but they've come very close to loosing control of the bike because of it.

These are 2 examples of physical extremes, pushing the mind and body.
Skydiving: Somehow, I have no clue how, but I completely disassociated my mind and body. If you look at the picture, my body is expressing terror. I wont say I was fine inside, there was fear, but not as much as what my body shows. People ask me all the time how I just stop thinking I dont really know how I do but I will mention this I had three similar thoughts around the 1000 foot mark on ascent. 1: What am I doing? 2: Why am I doing this? 3: Do I really want to do this? All these questions stem from fear. I'm not fearless. I have just as much fear as the next person but I dont want fear to rule me.

Motorcycle: There was a reason for the 145, not really for spiritual signifigance but to just run, run from a situation that I didn't want to deal with, still don't, but its getting easier. And, if I died during that experience or get injured I wouldn't have cared any, it was a carelessness of life. There wasn't much mentally there until the frustration in my head cleared out and I realized how fast I was going. After that I noticed a lil more. There are 2 reasons I slowed down. One consciously the other subconsciously. The concsious one being there's a turn coming, the subconscious one and I'm not entirely positive on this, but I very well could have been on one wheel for a short period of time.

Now, for the spiritual extreme. I'm going through an adventure, one that frustrates me, hurts me, stretches me, grows me, weakens me to strengthen me and at the beginning of this journey I absolutely hated it and I still hate it to some regards but what I hate now is that I've lost a friend for an unknown amount of time. As you can tell this is more extreme than the other 2 combined. Mentally its draining, physically exhausting, spiritually fulfilling and heartfelt stretching. Read on to understand more. I want to believe that this isnt permanent but where I've had so many people walk out of my life and never come back, its hard for me to believe that this friend will come back. Now, Jesus has been giving me blessings and encouragements and insights. As of late, Revelations 21:5 as stuck out to me: "Look, I am making all things new". 1, I believe he will make our friendship new and at the same time I'm asking Jesus to help me overcome my disbeliefe; 2 I know he's making me new in this process because I'm willing and malleable to what he has for me. I'm not saying its easy but I am saying its worth it. Prior to this 180 turnaround I was on a path that was very fun and even more destructive to my soul. I'm watching Jesus not let me heal the way I used to by hardening my heart to those who've hurt me but learning to love people even when they've hurt me, just like Jesus did. I'm learning my patience isn't as patient as I once thought, once again I'm learning to see the beauty of the storm and to understand on a deeper level that I can just trust Him to pull me through. By the way, this just isn't for me. Its for you too. If it was just for me I wouldn't share it on cyberspace for all to read. I hope you have been able to get something out of it and I pray that these words aren't mine but from God