David Acevedo's Blog

I just took the GRE. I miss the pencil and paper days. On the computer it's so much harder to pace yourself. 630/630 was the score. Lower than I wanted. I want to take it again now.

Here is a very short video that speaks of the importance of entrepreneurship in life and compares it to the epic win mentality of video games. Fora.tv

Why is shit a bad word? I'm tired of hearing the word poop mentioned on TV on a reportage on toilets, on Myth Busters (Turd polishing myth) and all over. I mean people shit. It's not like the proper people take a poop and the rest of us take a shit; I've never heard anybody get offended by that word. I mean seriously, people don't give a shit. My roommate doesn't want me to leave my stuff on the floor, but I tell him it's my stuff and I'll drop it where I want to, I tell him this in my head of course, and then grab my stuff of the floor and put in in a closet with the rest of my shit. The closet is NOT full of poop. It's full of shit, MY shit. People pee, right? It's not like all of a sudden proper people urinate and the rest of us go wee-wee, take a tinkle, or just plain pee. But none of those are bad words. How come shit is? But say bugger isn't. Let's call it mucus people. That's the proper name, excrement, defecation, detritus, dross...

If bankers behaved like doctors, how would the world be? If a doctor messes up, a life is endangered, and a lawsuit will likely follow. But if a banker messes up; what then? Lives are endangered is not in the same immediate way but lawsuits? Personal lawsuits? Never. A bailout is more likely.  People sometimes ask me why I chose not to go to Med School. It was a complicated decision, but let me tell you that the pressure a doctor gets not to mess up, because lives are at stake is staggering. A banker? Well nobody dies. They make more money, with less of the responsibility. But I don't blame bankers and wall street guys for feeling superior, after all they get paid more that probably anybody. And society seems to pay by value, right? So aren't they the most valuable... teachers conversely who steward you kids, and the future of this nation, well they are not so valued. Can you blame the bankers? If society can't get it's value structure correct; we can't blame those ...

De chiquito yo veía la verdura de Puerto Rico como un bosque que crecía donde quiera. Después de las lluvia toda la grama rápidamente crecía, aun cuando había construcciones en las carreteras rápidamente volvía la verdura con las enredaderas y arboles pequeños. Entonces aprendí lo que eran ecosistemas. En un ecosistema no es de que color se ve, sino como esta compuesto el grupo de especies que vive en le hábitat. Por ejemplo, En le bosque del Yunque uno puede ver una densidad de especies bien grande, osea que un árbol, grama, varios arbustos, y hasta plantas parasíticas todas viven en un tipo de balance y armonía. Al lado de dos pinos hay esta area que esta colonizada por acacias. Mirandolo por encima parace que es parte de un bosque, pero a los ojos de un biologo parece mas un desierto, aunque verde. Las acacias no son realmente arboles, son arbustos que crecen rapido y altos. Al crecer rapidamente, pues estan acostumbrados a una escaces de agua, colonizan el area y ponen el resto del...

When I was young I couldn't stand my uncle's hippie friends. They'd sit on the afternoon, drink a beer and spout a continuous stream of complains. The government this, society that, and on and on it went. I just looked at them, adults with the power to drive, with money and time enough to drink lazily one afternoon away and I'd ask them "Why don't you do something about it?" Organize a group, write an article, campaign, run for office something. I'd always get the same response. "There is nothing I can do." I didn't get it. I was young, penniless and locked in a high-school most of the time. They were none of that: adults, had money and had transpiration and power. I didn't get it. Till it happened to me and I became one of them. I remember the vile frustration that was my first year out of college. It seemed that no matter what I tried to do nothing bore fruit. Temp jobs that never materialized, interviews that brought about nothing,...

The Hollywood studios created a small storm in a glass of water with this, but by moving the way they did the storm became huge, and has already swallowed up Blockbuster. The decline in DVD that saw me get laid off from my previous job in the DVD post-production chain is due to many factors but all of the factors were foreseen. None were a surprise and none could have been for-stalled. But in a good example of a communal pool where nobody has the incentive to help everybody, (that sounds rather reminiscent of Green Market's theory of the communal fishing pond) the individual incentives ended up hurting everybody. In Green Market's example a pond's fish stock is failing. It would be advantageous to all the boats in the area to reduce their catch for a few years and let the stock rebound less the fish stock could collapse. But lacking rather enlightened fisherman or regulation you don't get that. What you get is that as the individual's boat's catch reduces they m...

I suffer from tinnitus, or more commonly known as ringing in the ear. This doesn't quite discribe the experience. I'd call it, smoke detector alarm in the ear. Ever try to sleep with one of those things going off? Read? Write? Exactly. Managing it has been a challege. Particularly because I didn't do many of the things that can land you with tinnitus in the first place. I never hear music loud, I rarely ever go to concerts, and I've rarely fired weapons. One time I went to a club, the music was too loud but I thought it's just once I'll be fine. But when I came out of the club I was shocked that I couldn't hear well. The next day I couldn't watch Juno with my roommate and his friends because I couldn't hear. Everything sounded muffled. Slowly my hearing returned till now I can even hear the screech of breaks that I never thought I'd miss. It's gone down quite a bit, at first it was louder than anything and I couldn't even read anything wi...

My neighbors Matt and Kalomoera believe that the moon affect people. At first I didn't believe them, but then I noticed that crazy driving seemed to happen near the full moon more often than not.  October seems to have been a bad month spiritually-wise for a lot of people. I was in a bit of a funk, so was Matt, one of my friends just told me he's getting a divorce and is broken up about it, and another is going through a trying time with her boyfriend.  But October finished strong for me. I loved my Halloween costume and had a great time on the party. Found renewed calm and insight into my photography, dared new and risky things and saw family. I'm all set to put up a Model Mayhem profile if I want. I've got a new kick-ass website (with auto-detection of mobile browsers). And my friend Maya is back in LA. I'd missed her positive energy and yoga classes.

I've begun writing my novel for National Novel Writing Month. Started after midnight. So a quick prayer: Universe please provide the inspiration and illumination to write my novel and that I may easily hit the 50,000 word requirement and enjoy the creative process the whole way. What's it about? That's hush-hush.

Recently Latin American countries have voiced their opposition to prop 19 (it would legalize recreational marijuana use) because it will cause confusion. This is hogwash. While it might be a little curious to a Columbian that he can go to jail for growing pot while a Californian will not; it's no more confusing than a Bolivian growing coca legally and a Californian not. Wasn't Evo Morales a coca grower? Legalizing Marijuana if anything will lead to less confusion not more.

Recently worries about asteroids hitting the Earth are weirdly distracting. Why invest time or money on protecting ourselves from space-borne threats when we have an ailing and emergent environmental crisis? The boiling frog and the lottery. Yeah someone wins the lottery, but a frog in boiling water is the bigger problem.

I've played a few really great indie games recently and would like to share a bit about them. None of these games are brand-new and all are available in both Mac and PC versions. 1. Aquaria Aquaria is a gem of a game for those that loved the original metriod games. In Aquaria you play a young mermaid creature that decides to explore her world beyond her home waters. In doing that you guide her through many adventures that reveal a bit about her world. The game is visually beautiful and the game mechanics, though simple, are very nice. You can play the whole game with a mouse if you wish though gamepads are supported too. In the game you access special abilities by singing different songs. It is a neat concept.  The game was made by an indie outfit of mainly two people out of Canada. But it feels much more than that. It's very big like an underwater version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, with multiple treasures to collect and many secrets to uncover. It is available for ...

In a few weeks I'll be voting on whether Marijuana should be legal in the state of California. As a kid I never understood why hippies or California weirdos wanted to legalize it. I agreed with most opponents of legalization that weed was a gateway drug. Smoke grass and soon you'd be up with cocaine and you're screwed. You could see the junkies on the street, their bodies bony like images out of a pledge to feed Africa, signs asking for money to eat, pan handling at intersections through out the island when I was young. While doing my High School summer jobs I would catch sketchy characters trying to shop-lift t-shirts. And while on the boy scouts I was shown the video of a man breaking a heroin addiction in jail cold turkey. It was worse than any horror movie I've seen -- the suffering was so immense. This thin man lost control of all body functions, and shook like he was possessed. Heroine which mimics endorphine alters the brain chemistry. When you break cold-turkey...

Back in the nineties Apple made some key mistakes: 1. It refused to sell computers over catalogs, even thought it had one (Dell and Gateway took off with this) 2. It messed up the licensing of its operating system and 3. Having a better graphics platform than many PCs of the time it actively discouraged the use of the Mac for gaming. Now finally gaming is coming of age on the Mac. This year has seen the release of Valve's steam platform for the Mac. Which not only brings Valve's very popular games like Team Fortress 2 (TF2) but also allows cross platform purchasing. If you buy a game like Braid that is available for both Mac and PC you only need to buy it once and you can use it on both Operating Systems (OS).  Arguably the beginning of this period was the smart move by Bioware to release it's popular MMORPG World of Warcraft (WOW) as a Mac and PC release. Now the Mac has become a great gaming platform for most casual and occasional gaming. And Apple has learned it's le...

The Caribbean is a small place. I mean not if you're trying to swim it but geographically the countries are small. At one point the best University in the Caribbean was in Cuba. People went there to study pretty much any advanced degree.  The University of Puerto Rico opened up at the beginning of last century. At the beginning through enlightened leadership it became a premier institution. My grandfather who graduated from the UPR had a tiny class of around 200 students. He was always ever so proud of his university. My grandfather, played guitar, recited Shakespeare from memory, read French for fun, and had a rather extensive workbench, which I'm told he used a lot when younger. A very educated scholar, he was typical of the university's first years. However since them the UPR has become (all pardon me) a joke, a shadow of it's former self. Both physically and spiritually it has become a factory of students cranking out people in a quantity is more important that qual...

I'm looking for certain things, thought making a list would help. 1. I'm looking for an open-minded committed reader for a comic-book I'm writing.  Writing a comic book was my summer project. Summer has ended and my project languished, (my fault totally, gotta let it go). One of the reasons was that I was unable to get a reader for it. One reader, I regrettably lost contact with; and the other reader was a guy who was a fan of the comic-book series I'm writing for, but he loved the series so much, he hated where I wanted to go it. So  I've added "open-minded" to the title. My best writing flows when it feels like play, like sitting down and toying with something until it's cool. I'd like to get that state easily, like switching on a light in a room filled with interesting stuff. 2. I'm looking for work that will best use my abilities and talents, that's full-filling, fun, and financially rewarding. 3. Work out buddy to motivate making time ...

This is a response to Denis' blog . Here is the apparent problem with lots of RPG games: the encounters can favor either combat or exploration skills and characters that are good at one tend to be bad at the other so supposedly on type of character is bored during combat encounters and vice versa. Denis proposes that players use two characters. It's a neat idea.  I was thinking about how lots of RPGs degenerate into dice-rolling combat and "I want xp" fests. I liked the idea (also from Denis' blog) to only give xp for treasure that you spend on wasted stuff, like a wine, women and song. ("Brave, brave sir Robbin, sir Robin ran away...") But I remembered an idea I had a while back when I was considering what would make a good rpg game. I though that it was interesting that you had monks in RPG that are anything but monk-like, are really just fighters with less hair and bare fists.  I realized that part of the reason for this is that there was no incentive...

I'm testing tying my blogger website with my website blog.

So I’m trying this new website theme . I’ve even included a WebClip icon so if you drag it to your home on your iphone it will look nice. (I hope!!)