The Perfect Relationship: Just a Crush, or True Love? 7

Just a Crush, or True Love? is an essay series that began during my early high school years, the first two as classroom assignments, and blossomed into a personal project from there on. After a six-year hiatus, I wrote a sixth entry into the series and published it in 2009. Today I present to you "Just a Crush, or True Love? 7."

In this seventh iteration of the series, I ask this question: "What constitutes a perfect romantic relationship?" If you are expecting the obvious answers of compromise, compassion, and love, read on for a (hopefully) pleasant surprise.

Before getting to the essay, however, I will admit this: I do not like the direction that the Just a Crush, or True Love? series has taken since its fifth iteration. The initial four entries were light-hearted essays with no formal style or focus, intended mainly as a fun outlet for me to express a few ideas about love. With the fifth, sixth, and seventh entries I have followed a stricter style of writing and form, and I definitely feel like my writing has become stiffer and more rigid than before. While I still enjoyed writing "Just a Crush, or True Love? 7," I am confident that any future iteration of this series will be undertaken from a very different angle.

With out further delay, I present to you...

Just a Crush, or True Love? 7

B3 out.

Ramping Up For 2011

2010 is far from over, yet I am already beginning work on planning for 2011. I am starting with my goals for the year, which I feel are designed to focus on the "core" elements of my life and interests.

Thus far, my goals for 2011 are:

Focus on my portfolio as a programmer

I have spent much of 2010 diversifying my programming skills by learning new languages and a few new technologies, but in 2011 I aim to produce results with these new skills. I have several projects - chief among them being Yola - that I want to finish in 2011 in order to show off in my brand new portfolio of as a programmer. I have several smaller projects - libraries, small websites, an IM client - in the works, and I hope to finish all of them in 2011.

Write two short stories

I have severely neglected my first love. I had a goal of finishing one short story in 2010, which I did with "Paradise at Thirty-Five." I feel that too much of my time is spent as a software developer and not a creative writer. With that said, I have a few short stories on the back burner that I intend to revisit and finish in 2011. One will be from the same universe as "Minor Thirsts" and the other will be completely original.

Finish 40 Pounds Down

In the spring of this year I quietly started a program dubbed "40 Pounds Down" - a plan to lose forty pounds over the course of a year. I initially stumbled out the gate with this one, but by August of this year I have been making weekly progress. I have lost quite a bit of weight as it is, although none of this is temporary: the kind of changes I have been making with this program are lifestyle changes. I walk to work on a regular basis, I eat smaller and healthier meals, drink only water, and stay active and fit to achieve a daily balance of calories and exercise. Most importantly, I feel great, and I plan to continue and achieve my ideal weight in early or mid 2011.

These three goals are just a start for 2011, but a start nonetheless. I have a lot more in the pipeline to talk about as we get closer to the new year.

B3 out.

Great Things Ahead

Critically Correct has been stagnant for quite a while, and for that I apologize. I attribute this to the following things:

The new BrandonBruno.com - When this blog was the landing portal for my domain name it was my face to the world. Now that I am beginning to host my own content directly, I have been pouring a ton of time and resources into making that new portal as spiffy as possible. Besides providing access to everything online that I consider important, it will also serve as a hub for my career - my resume and my project portfolio, for example.

Games, Games, and oh, Games - About two months ago, after a summer of learning the LAMP stack, I dove back into gaming and should have looked before I leapt. In one weekend I purchased an XBox 360, discovered Minecraft, and fell in love with a bunch of old games (Doom 64, Hydro Thunder, Thief 2). Minecraft has been the biggest time-sink in my life since Guitar Hero II in 2006, and I have easily lost more than a hundred hours of my time to this game so far. I have managed to finish my first Xbox 360 game, Red Dead Redemption, which was an experience worth every penny. Now I have Fable II to play through, so I will be busy with console gaming for quite some time. It feels good to be back in black.

So there it is: new projects and tons of games have kept me from blogging on a regular basis. Sometime before 2010 is up I will be totally finished with the new BrandonBruno.com site and will return my attention - and weekly updates - to Critically Correct.

In the meantime, I have a few cool new changes in the pipeline!

New Development Projects and Yola

In March of this year I became disenchanted with Facebook due to its constant privacy gaffes - my data is mine, dammit, and I want full control over it. My motto was (and still is) very simple: "Don't trust anything that I didn't write myself." So I set out to recreate Facebook for myself and my close friends - codenamed Yola - and it is nearing a beta release stage. Yola 1.0 is essentially feature-complete (think Twitter meets Facebook Photos) and will be rolled out for testing sometime in November.

As I push Yola into this less-intensive stage of development, I am looking to begin several smaller development projects. The first one, a game concept, is huge - I want to prototype it as fast as possible and get feedback. I have studied the concept for it countless times and honestly believe I have a winner on my hands, but I am only one man and do not have the time to fully develop a prototype for it yet. Perhaps in 2011.

In the meantime, I am going to shift from PHP and web technologies to learn a bit of client-server networking by writing a simple IM client and server in C# / .NET / Mono. This will be my holiday project and may even spawn some integration into Yola down the road.

CodeMash 2.0.1.1

This coming January 12, 13, and 14th I will be in Sandusky, Ohio for CodeMash 2011. CodeMash is a technology conference with dozens of sessions, speakers, and plenty of industry-level networking. This is "the next big thing" for me, so I am looking forward to spending an extended weekend in Sandusky. Check out www.codemash.org for all the details.

Android in 2011

I am eligible for a new subsidized phone from Verizon in mid-2011. Thanks to plenty of tasty-looking Android phones, the possibility of the iPhone coming to Verizon, and new, tiered-but-affordable data plans now available, I will finally be making the leap to a smartphone - probably Android - next summer. This is mostly a personal achievement for me. I get by just fine without a data phone in my pocket - hell, text messaging even annoys the hell out of me sometimes - but it will be infinitely cool to have access to the Internet anywhere I go.

B3 out.

Correctly Quoted: Learning

"All my best learning happens accidentally."

B3, circa 2007

You Are Not Alone: The Social Network Review

We are a connected, attention-starved society, and David Fincher’s The Social Network understands its audience very well. The Social Network is essentially a film about dispositions prior to two key civil lawsuits during the past six years of Facebook’s history - including every dry and boring detail that come with civil law matters. What is not boring is the film itself: a fast-paced blend of drama, arguments, sex, drugs, and hacker culture; overall, a perfect symbol for the modern youth generation. This is a film not about the founding of this century’s biggest and most important company, but about the people watching it and powering the machine it strives to describe.

The Social Network is a fascinating reflection of our nation’s desire to starve off loneliness, to be part of something bigger without risking our own image. The film opens as Mark Zuckerberg’s public image goes down the toilet at Harvard after an unfortunate breakup results in his creating FaceMash.com, an immediate predecessor to Facebook.com. After losing the respect of women on campus but gaining the attention of Harvard’s elite final clubs, Zuckerberg immediately begins development on TheFacebook.com in an attempt to put his ideal college experience online and begins a quest to restore his public image.

While not everyone will find the subject of the film interesting, rest assured that The Social Network is the best two hours that anyone will spend in theaters in 2010. The film is well written; dialogue spatters from one line to the next without being dumbed down to give the audience a break. The film is fast; half a dozen years pass in two hours’ time, and every scene explodes with drama, dialogue, music, and most importantly, purpose. This is a film with great storytelling and professional talent behind it: actions have consequences and characters make mistakes and learn from them. Not only does an all-star cast give incredible performances on-screen (headlined by Jesse Eisenberg), but an all-star director and executive team really shine behind the camera with fantastic direction, music, and editing.

I went into The Social Network expecting two hours of dramatic dialogue and endless faked computer screens, but I ended up sitting through the best non-action action movie of the year. The Social Network is smart, fast, fun, and most importantly, a story of drama, deceit, longing, and love so well told it will be the benchmark for years to come.

B3 out.

The Almost Birthday

As of 3:10pm today, I am a 26 year old human being.

This year feels even less special than last year, but I still spent it with some good food, lots of quiet alone time, and of course, The Lion King.

I could not ask for anything more.

B3 out.