cerebral discharge

My brother Jason and I had a conversation back in May about what websites we check every single day. He posted his list here. Maybe Dan and Mark will make their list and post them too.

Here comes mine.

• Smashboards.com – Yeah, I know that makes me a nerd. But I’m really into video games, and this one is one of the best. Smashboards is basically an internet forum for kids who play smash. We organize tournaments, discuss which character is best, and joke around. It doesn’t make me cool that I use a site like this, but it does make life more interesting.
• sherdog.com – I’m a big MMA fan. (MMA = Mixed Martial Arts) I’ve been watching since way before it was cool. I remember when Chuck Liddell was just another guy trying to make it at 205 pounds. Now he’s already kind of come and gone as a superstar. I remember when Randy Couture was a heavyweight…well, I guess now he’s a heavyweight again…whatever.
  sherdog.com is a one stop MMA site. It’s set in my browser as my homepage, so whenever I open up Firefox, it’s the first thing I see. I get all my MMA news (who’s hurt, who’s fighting whom, fight results, interviews, etc.), plus there’s a forum attached with all sorts of idiots posting all sorts of ridiculous things.
• chasinglions.com – Chasing Lions (formerly puddlegum.com) is a music blog. It’s how I keep up with the massive indie music scene without my head spinning too much.
  You know how you always hear that one really hip guy/gal you know say “You should listen to…” and then they say someone you’ve never heard of, even though you are also really cool, and watch MTV and everything? If you read chasinglions.com, you’d hear about them too.
• cerebraldischarge.wordpress.com – Yeah, I check my blog every day, in case I wrote something in my sleep. I’m kidding, but YOU should check my blog every day, and I’m just trying to set a good example!
• google.com – I’m CONSTANTLY looking crap up. All I do when I’m not working, (and most of what I do when I AM working) is sit around and look stuff up on google. I’m SO interested in EVERYTHING. If you knew me in college, you know I’m speaking the truth.
• wikipedia.org – Shutup, it IS TOO a lefitimate source that I CAN TOO use as a source in a research paper! I use wikipedia constantly. It’s how I learn official stuff about stuff. Want to know when that really cool game is coming out? check the wiki. Want to know who was the president after Lincoln? Check the wiki. (my buddies one time actually added their own names to the list of presidents on there. It was awesome for like an hour!)
• youtube.com – I am the biggest fan ever of youtube. I sit around and watch music videos. I learn about music gear. I watch people playing chess. I watch people playing Pokemon. I watch people play Guitar Hero. I learn how to play songs on the Piano. If the internet was the movie “Rambo” then the part of Youtube would be played by Stallone.
• patrickrice.tumblr.com – This is where I post all my awesome videos and pictures I find. In fact, it would be easier for you to keep track of me there instead of here, since it automatically pulls my blog posts there, too.

So there you have it. Those are the sites I check every single day. There’s lots more that I get around to on a rotation, but those are the ones I don’t miss.

If you are reading this, you should post your own list. I want to know what sites I’m missing that I SHOULD be reading every day. Leave me a comment and let me know where I can find your list, or just leave your list in your comment.

Amy and I decided this month to move to Phoenix, Arizona after spending our first five years of marriage in the bitter cold of Warsaw, Indiana.

I’ve been increasingly dissatisfied with my employment situation for the last few years. I left Lifeline for personal reasons and spent 8 months volunteering full-time for my church, but realized after all that time that having little or no income for an extended period of time makes it rather difficult to pay bills and eat. I went back to Lifeline with a little bit of a bad attitude.

After being back with Lifeline for over a year, it was more and more clear to me that I should be doing something different with my time. I enjoy most of the hours spent at my job, but I have bigger aspirations than the things I was doing with my time. My job wasn’t difficult, didn’t challenge me intellectually, and didn’t pay terribly well. Ultimately, I believe that I have a LOT more to offer than what I was being asked to do at Lifeline.

I tried (and failed) to get different jobs a total of 6 times during my last year with Lifeline. Not a single one of them worked out. I kept wishing someone would recognize my potential and offer me a job that fit me really well, but no one did.

About 6 weeks ago, I got a call from a family member in Phoenix saying “We want you and Amy to consider moving here and working with us. We have two jobs available that would fit you really well.” They shared their ideas for their business and thier plans aligned with our own. We went out for a visit and everything clicked. Some time during the first week in October, we’ll be making our way southwest.

It’s been weird trying to get used to the idea of moving. I’ve been in the same place my entire adult life, and I don’t quite know what to expect when we move. We’ve got a few friends in Arizona, but for the most part we’re leaving everyone we know behind. Amy’s family is only 2 hours from us here in Indiana, and we always have the option to drive home to Maryland for Christmas, as it’s only an 11 hour drive. Now, there’s literally no chance we can make it out this way without paying for plane tickets, which is getting more and more expensive as gas prices climb.

I’m hoping that we can find some people to connect with that understand where we are in life, but I’m not sure exactly how many people there are out there like us:

• Fervently passionate about following Christ
• Turned off by religion completely
• Midwest/East Coast transplants

Hey, here’s an idea. You can all come visit us in Phoenix sometime this year. You can’t say you’ve never thought about how cool it would be to check out the southwest sometime. Everyone who’s ever been to Phoenix loves it. Keep us company. Give us a call/email/facebook message/smoke signal and we’ll give you a place to sleep.