David Acevedo's Blog

In Puerto Rico, I watch TV. I watch a lot of TV. More than I should. I used to watch very little while I was learning to code in California and was unemployed so had little time. Also I watch very little when I was dating here. Now I watch a lot. I find that mentally I'm too tired after work to do much of anything important. My theory: commuting in Puerto Rico causes massive mental anguish. Think about it. How much emotional energy do you waste on your drive home? Now my drive is not long. I used to live in LA for god's sake. But it is intense as most rush hour driving is in Puerto Rico. Now I even find myself amped even when it isn't intense. A Pavovlian response.... I arrive exhausted. Ready for a break.

"And if you can't find a loyal companion,   travel alone..." I slept in late. I didn't want to get up. I couldn't stay there any longer and as if to confirm it my aunt started the conversation with "I don't want to kick you out, but when --" But I cut her off. "I'm leaving today." All the stuff was packed in the car. After a year of sleeping on the floor on an air mattress, having my car stolen, recovered and broken into again, learning photography and co-directing a documentary, the time had finally come to leave. The next day, after staying one final night in Florida at my friend's apartment in Tampa, the inherent adventure of solo travel would take me over, I would wake up early the next day, ready to travel across the country, ready for a journey with an uncertain destinations. I was uncertain and ready. I put on my Princeton T-shirt to remind myself of what I had accomplished and gassed up the car and set off. The dri...

A black man was shot in Florida. A kid really. Wearing a hoodie, buying skittles not to far from his home. Unarmed. The man who shot him was Hispanic. Everybody is crying racism.  I doubt it.  Race had something to do with it I'm sure, but I don't think it's as simple as racism. I think it's from a different way of looking at the other man, a way where the man is suddenly a threat before anything else, a kind of Anton's blindness that prevents people from seeing what's in front of them . A teenager with skittles becomes a threat. A danger. A terror that has to be stopped, lethal. I, of course, don't know for sure if this is what happened in Florida a few weeks ago, since few details have come out. But I doubt the calls for racism and wonder if it is this other thing. I'll call it the Scary Man syndrome, w hich is distinct from racism. I've seen it before. My roommate in college told me an experience so bizarre at first I thought he was pulling...

I've been researching to write a book on Truth after I finish my novel. It's slow research, one can't rush philosophy or theology. So tonight on a restless night I was reading about a person that ran into trouble with his neighbor on his tiny house. I got upset. I got sad. I went through teeth-grinding frustration reading his blog post. Only words yet they got me so upset. I've been noticing this more and more lately and paying attention to them and recording them to see why they make me so upset. Like for example one of the people in my Agile Management Class, writes in such a way that I get upset, angry and furious about it and become rather arrogant with him. I'm not sure why it pisses me off so much the way he writes but I'm beginning to think I strikes me as him "being better than me" and I just want to show him his not better than me. I should say that in his writing he doesn't say he's better than me but that's how it strikes me, pre...

My friend Denis' nephews were involved in a car accident in December. I wish them both a fast and happy recovery. That they are still alive is a sort of miracle. Here is a link to his blog for the whole story .

How do you create them? That is my goal for the new year. I had the wonderful experience of re-doing my wardrobe with a friend. I got to learn that I bought clothes that were too big and I thought just right was too tight. We went shopping one day and it was fantastic, there was a synergy of purpose and while neither of us liked shopping, we had a good time. Suddenly I got while women liked shopping. It wasn't shopping. It was the experience with friends that combination of energy, unity of purpose and team work. I want more of that in the new year. This last year ends with the realization that one family partnership was bunk. And suddenly I had a profound feeling of loneliness. I didn't like that. But how do you create them? What's the magic involved that occurs easily in some cases but like a flaky fairy fails to appear in others?

There are things that I'm postponing until I land a job. So these are the things I'll get myself as a present as soon as I'm employed. 1. Become a subscriber to KPCC and KCRW. Total cost $60.00 ($30 e/a)     I listen to these stations an awful lot, though less lately as most news seem to be depressing. I absolutely  adore their mission of bringing information in an clear, clean effective way. I want to support them! They totally deserve it. 2. Buy clothing at Patagonia. Total cost average $65.00 each piece or more.     I may do this without the job anyway, I like the store, it's ecological and repair policy and the clothing is made to be used like I use it: Till it falls fucking apart. I've got my eye on a pair of Duck pants and Duck shorts. I'd rather wear those than khakis and they seem way more comfortable than jeans. I have to try the on next time I'm there. 3. A Flash with battery pack and remote trigger. Cost $200.00 for flash + $100 for remote...

Inspired by the over aggrandized bio of Joseph Rakofsky I want to write my own. If you don't know who he is; Joseph Rakofsky is a lawyer who earned a mistrial for a criminal client due to his (alleged) incompetence as reported on the Washington Post . There has been quite a few commentaries on his "Streisand-house" approach of suing all the bloggers and even the Washington Post and American Bar Association for reporting his (alleged) ineptitude. ("Streisand-house" is what happened to Barbara Streisand who wanted to have a picture of her mansion removed from the internet and she sued to have it removed. Unfortunately suing requires the filing of public documents with a picture of her house. The lawsuit had the direct opposite effect it intended. Everybody now could see legally, since it was a public document, a picture of her house.) But all that internet gossip aside I'm most impressed by his resume. Here is a quote from the website: Prior t...

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.

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,...

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.

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...

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...

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!!)