Ninjamarket

moblog

folks, i've gone mobile. me and steve jobs paired up with at&t to bring my life on the go to this website. moblogging here we come!

home

home

there's something about being home that just makes you feel great.

in san diego we call that something a california burrito.

for those that know

for those that know, someone sent me this and i just died laughing.

a blogger

a blogger

i was walking with my dad in costco and one of the ladies who passes out free samples (i believe she was passing out salsa) saw my shirt and said "oh, so that's what a blogger looks like!" (i was wearing the brown one.)

back to routine

back to routine

it took me quite a long time to find my groove. coffee in the morning, read the gadget blogs and the electronics reviews once i'm settled in at the office. thing about blogworthy topics, blog 1-2times a week. carry a digital camera everywhere and document my adventures. play with photoshop, illustrator, or any other misc computer app. organize/download music from various sources -basically keep up to date with emerging songs and artists. finally i'd finish my days with a netflix movie and a glass of wine.

in oct when i moved from norcal to socal, it all went down the toilet.

no coffee.
no blog reading.
no blog writing.
no picture taking.
no photoshopping.
no music listening.
no netflix.
no wine.

what did i do with all my time? replace every single category listed above and replace with this answer: worked.

i've just worked and worked slept then worked smore. for this blog writer, that lifestyle is simply unacceptable. so i'm taking back what i once had. the blog must go on

getting back into the routine is not easy, it's 'work'. but i'm ready to take back my life of netflix, wine, blogging, and music.

fishing & life?

fishing

i think i've learned more about life from fishing than from anything else. the regular person may think that fishing is nothing but sitting around putting dirty worms on hooks, it's not.

fishing requires hard work. fish don't bite at noon, they eat early. if the fish start eating at 6am, that means you need to be out of bed around 430am to prepare. but fishing has taught me that waking up early pays off. waking up early is hard work, probably some of the hardest work i've ever done, but hard work pay off.

fishing requires patience, you have to wait in order to get what you want (that big fish). i used to hate waiting for fish to bite, i had no patience. until i learned to enjoy the wait. i learned to love the time between the cast out and the fish bite. that's the time where i just hang out, normally admire the water and the horizon.

fishing taught me more than the simple lessons of patience and hard work. it taught me "about life". years and years of living have taught me what fishing taught me the first time out. at any moment one event can completely change everything. you always have to be poised, and ready to endure the monotony for the long run. yet at any moment... one bite could change everything.

adrenalin dumps into your bloodstream the moment a fish nibbles at the end of your line. there have been days where i'm almost too tired to stand, many hrs with not one bite to show for. then bam! a bite. my energy is back, i'm set to fish for hours longer. in a split second my whole attitude, energy, and mentality changed. it was just a small bite on the end of my line, what would appear to be an insignificant event, however it completely changed everything.

everyday i wake up, toss my line out, and see what's going to happen. most days i catch exactly what i'm fishing for. there are a few days where nothing bites. and then the days you remember forever. when the big one hits.

joining in

hyperwest has decided to start blogging everything and anything. i, in turn have decided to 1/2assedly do something similar.

my old useless [so i thought] casio 1.3 megapixel camera now travels with me anywhere and everywhere in order for me to at least capture everything and anything.

perhaps after i've ingrained the habit of carrying a camera and shooting everything. i'll then form a habit of blogging it all!

more to come [let's hope]!

back from the past

the longer i take to blog, the harder it is to actually pump a blog out. with that in mind, i decided to simply spit text out... exercise the ol' muscle and get the fingers typing.

i've gone from 8 hr days in windy/cold downtown streets to 14hr days in hot and dry suburbia.

i've gone from float to consolidation.

i've gone from futon to ortho temperpedic

and most importantly i've gone from adidas to adicolor!

yelp!

i'm a yelp(er)

when i moved to sf, i decided to remedy the problem i had when i lived in la that left me saying "oh yea, where was that place i went that one time? i went with him and her and her and we ate noodles. where was it? what was the name of that place?"

to remedy that problem i started an excel spreadsheet as soon as i moved to sf. the spreadsheet column header labels were something of the following: name, address, who i went with, what i had, why i liked it, would i go back.

accompanied with this .xls worksheet, i quickly picked up the habit of collecting business cards at each restaurants/lounge i visited. after a week or weekend, there would be a stack of 3-5 business cards on my desk awaiting entry to my "sf places" excel file. filling out the spreadsheet was something i did to relax and recap my week/weekend.

this method worked great, i had a list of everywhere i went -and my opinion of each. the only problem with this list was the fact that it was stuck on my computer at home. many times i would make plans to meet someone after work, and the same question popped into my head "oh yea, where's that place i went to one time?"

then i discovered yelp...

what is yelp? it's basically myspace.com + citysearch.com = yelp.com

yelp is a social networking website, so you have a list of friends, comments, personal pics, etc... but the focus isn't showing skin and posting pic of your funniest drunken stupor moments [crack at myspace.com if you weren't paying attention]. yelp is based on users opinions. from restaurants to auto mechanics yelp is a place for people to post opinions and reviews about establishments and their services.

i figured that yelp was the answer to my problem here. moving back to la, i needed a new leaf to turn over. so yelp.com got my signup! with the habit of collecting business cards at each establishment already part of my normal routine, i figured that 1/2 of the work i've already taken care of.

the second half is to yelp about everywhere i visit.

so far i've got a few reviews going, and plenty more to come. if you want to be my yelp friend, let me know. if you are already on yelp, then why didn't you tell me about it before?!

chapstick

chapstick

"hi, my name is ameer, and i'm addicted to chapstick."

have you ever walked out of the house, checked your pockets, realized you forgot your chapstick, and then actually went back in the house to get it? i did this just the other day. i've done this many times. but this time it triggered a thought, "oh man: i'm addicted!!"

that got the rusty gears in my noggin a-turning.

there was a time in history when people didn't go back in their homes due to lack of lip balm. what did they do? in the 1500's did everyone on the planet just live with chapped lips? i don't think so?!

the chap-lip-prevention industry has gotten it's hooks into the masses. and they're here to stay. i state that with (adam is so cool btw) confidence because almost every person i know carries some sort of lip moisturizer with them at all times.

thing is, i don't find myself applying chapstick every minute of every waking moment. some days i don't even apply, even once. but the moment i realize i'm without chapstick, my lips shrivel up and i start to frantically search for the closest lip-balm selling store. it's almost as if chapstick in my pocket is enough to moisturize my lips. it's mental! i'm mental!

so the chapstickers have stuck the idea of dry lips in our heads, and on our lips.

thus all we really need is that subconscious piece of mind that if we ever do need some lip moisturizing, we have it! we can live without chapstick?

what do you think?

p.s. my brother borrowed my laptop while i was composing this post. his name is adam.