We Don't Walk Slow

About Tom Stortz

Enjoying my last few responsibility free years left.

D D

So for the first time in my adult life I played a designated driver for a night. Amazing I know but I suppose this day had to come sometime. We were heading out to Conshohocken and I decided that I would drive which proved to be fine. Watching a weekend night from the sober side is vastly different and has its perks. I will say though that after this experience in Conshy I am happy to never venture there again. It is filled with complete rejects and just isn’t that exciting. At one point we were standing on the street using lines like “you’re too good for conshy” or “you fit in perfectly”. Everyone thought we were being extremely rude no matter what sentence came out. I just didn’t think it was very fun but I enjoyed waking up this morning feeling good.

We got our first round in this afternoon which was fun. I was joined by the Wevs, the Wads, and CK4 and we all enjoyed the afternoon. Only because I feel obligated to do so, Ck4 carded a 17 with 5 shots in the drink off the tee. The Wevs was able to set a all time career low round and the Shee was the victor of the day with consistent play. I finished with a 99 with a few good shots thrown in but no feel for a short game. It was an encouraging start to the season though.

I came back and ran 7 miles which is something I hardly ever do on a Sunday. I’ve started working hard again for a few different runs I have coming up. After the Frostbite I pretty much took a break from serious training. Meaning that I still ran but it was only 3 times a week and usually just shorter runs to stay fit. On Thursday though I went on a 13 mile run and have run the last 4 days. I’m going to put in work until Broad St comes where once again my unattainable goal of breaking 60 will be set.

By Tom Stortz|2012-03-25T21:12:45-04:00March 25th, 2012|My Life|0 Comments

There is something wrong about advertisements before every video whether it’s youtube or some other source. These advertisers are stealing the most important thing in my life, time. I understand that people put hours and hours of time in creating videos and ads are a huge source of income for people who create videos, but I don’t watch anything they put in front of my face. Anytime an ad on the internet comes on I either look for the skip ad button or I’ll search the net while I let the ad play in the background. I can’t stand being subjected to an advertisement before every single video I watch. If youtube asked me to pay a few dollars to avoid all advertisements, I’d pay it without a second thought. I actually just caught that last line as a pun which I never thought about before. They just bother me because they are useless and complete time wasters. How many people watch ads and click on them and then actually do what they say?

By Tom Stortz|2016-11-01T23:26:52-04:00March 23rd, 2012|My Brain|0 Comments

Hunger Game Hype?

Let me begin this post by writing that I have read all the books in the trilogy. The first book is an 8/10. It’s a quick, easy read and its pace is the best thing about it. Meaning that you want to continue reading and the book only takes 5-10 hours to read. The characters are very minimally developed. You get a feeling for who they are and what they are about but there isn’t any significant description into the characters. A complete far off example to explain this point. I am reading the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and each of the characters represents something whether it be individualism, capitalism, or communism and they all speak like they are thinking about that underlying theme. I know I’m comparing a literary masterpiece to a young adult novel but I think that has to put the Hunger Games in perspective. The idea behind the Hunger Games is interesting and well told and the ups and downs of Katniss is exciting. Like I wrote, it makes you want to keep reading to find out the ending. However, that’s where the good times end.

Aside from the fact that I thought the ending of the first Hunger Games was stupid, books 2 and 3 are horrid. Seriously awful. The 2nd book is a lame remake of the first and the 3rd is just bottom line boring. I never FELT anything for the characters. I didn’t care if Katniss chose Peeta or Gale. The pages kept turning but the feelings stopped. The first book had me wondering if Katniss would make it through the games or what twist was at the end, whereas books 2 and 3 lost the emotion. So I understand the hype over the movie and all but this is not a glorious series. It has one decent book followed by 2 stinkers. This is way, way too hyped up.

By Tom Stortz|2016-11-03T15:32:44-04:00March 23rd, 2012|Books|0 Comments

Outliers – Young for Your Grade Example

I read the book “the Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell a few weeks ago and I just started the book “Outliers”. The tipping point was an absorbing read that produced a lot of good thoughts on how small, thoughtful changes in ideas can lead to major results. I just read the first chapter in Outliers and I’m immediately stunned by how this chapter could have affected my life. The general gist of the chapter is that athletes born closer to the cut off date of a league have a higher chance of success than those born later. The example in the book looks at how a hockey league’s cut off date for players is January 1st and how the majority of the team’s players have birthdays in the first 3 months of the year. The guy born on Jan 1st will be the oldest player in the league is where the idea lies. Meaning the earlier month birthday are the older, more mature athletes who develop early and than seem to get the most coaching because of this. These types of athletes seem to have the best chance at future success.

I think about this topic and how Gladwell stresses that this important component is a huge factor in the development of a human being. Here’s another example to make the point clearer. A student of exactly 5 years old and a student of exactly 4 years old are in a kindergarten together learning the same material. With an extra year of maturation the 5 year old will perform better than the 4 year old for the reason that he’s one year older. Since they are in the same class the 5 year old appears smarter through maturation. In turn he receives more attention and gets put into gifted programs whereas the 4 year old lags behind at no fault of his own intelligence but the mere fact that he’s younger and less educated in life. The 5 year old also seems bigger, faster, and stronger so he gets more opportunity from coaches in sports than the 4 year old. It’s only one year difference but at such a young age this type of attention starts to create a snowball effect. More time is spent with the older student preparing him whereas the 4 year old is dismissed as slow.

This relates to myself personally in a number of ways that I haven’t even thought about until this day. My birthday is Nov 6th of 1983. I don’t know when the cut off was for whatever grade I was in but I was always one of the youngest students in my grade. I carried this with me through my entire education. It doesn’t seem like it makes a big difference but I think this could be an obvious reason for why I was always one of the smallest kids in my grade until junior year of high school when I finally had a growth spurt. Just to compare athletics with my brother Jeff (birthday Jan 3rd ((the ideal birthday)) and I’m using him because we are family), I was a full 10 months behind in a maturation and his times were significantly better than mine. I don’t doubt he worked harder and had better coaching to boot but it’s the facts.

I just wonder how much this seemingly small decision of deciding to throw me into school early instead of holding me back a year would have altered my life. If I were taking all my tests with an entire extra year of life under my belt if things would have been different for me. My entire life would have been drastically changed if my parents decided to hold me back. I will acknowledge though that I played athletics with the right age group for travel and was never a standout star so I’m not sure how much it really comes into play. Fascinating material though to know that there are studies proven that back up this idea.

By Tom Stortz|2012-03-22T01:12:17-04:00March 22nd, 2012|My Life|0 Comments

Congrats Brother! (and sister)

So I finally got some news that’s blog worthy, my sister is getting married! A big congratulations to Laura and Brookes. Brookes, the title of this blog is dedicated to you with the trending brother reference. I’m still using the Hey Brother on a regular basis and it becomes even funnier when you use it to someone in the family. Even though you aren’t technically my brother, we become family which makes the hey brother the universal greeting.

Laura called me today and greeted me with “get your tux ready…” My first instinct when I hear this is “Shit, I hate wearing a Tux.” Then she said “I’m getting married” and I was sort of caught off guard. I don’t know why else I would need a tux but for some reason I didn’t put two and two together and while I was processing this information I think I mumbled something like “oh that’s great.” I think her response was “wow, you seem really excited…” which was appropriate for the enthusiasm in my voice. In no way whatsoever am I disappointed in this wonderful news but I’m not one to go jumping around the room in excitement like I’m sure other people would who place marriage at the top of pyramid in news priority. It’s great to see two people who have been together and know that they want to spend the rest of their lives together tie the knot. I wish Brookes and my sister the very best and you can refer to this blog post when I say “I will be happy to do anything I can in any way to help the wedding go as swimmingly as possible. You have my full support.”

Just a few selfish thoughts to take away from the real people who the spotlight should be on. I dread weddings because you have to find a date and without one our society thinks your weird. As a single person a wedding isn’t something I look forward to. Married people and couples who have been together for a long time probably love weddings because they get to get all dressed up and spend time on a joyous occasion. This is why when Laura says get a tux ready that my mind immediately goes to uh oh. I’d almost go as far as hiring an escort than showing up alone. Maybe it’s more in my own head but I honestly don’t think so. People are fickle. I also think the fact that a younger sibling getting married before an older sibling has people start asking “when are you going to get married?” These are all things that our society has developed. These aren’t normal thoughts from rational people. These are ideas that come from group think. The fact that I live my life how I please shouldn’t concern you and your idea of what is normal. This is why from my personal standpoint, I don’t like weddings. So if any females read this and want to go to this wedding to take the pressure off of my life, that would great. We can even set up a wedding before Laura and Brookes so I can make sure I get married before her to keep everyone happy.

By Tom Stortz|2012-03-21T23:54:09-04:00March 21st, 2012|My Life|3 Comments

Flopping

This article on Yahoo is why I can’t stand professional sports. Here is the video:

I know this is the Philippines but we see this all of the time in sports everywhere whether it be the NBA, NFL, or Soccer. This type of unsportsmanlike conduct ruins the integrity of the game. Athletes who do this deserve to be thrown out of games. I understand that the idea of a game is to win and do whatever it takes but acts like this are going too far. What’s worse is that the refs who fall for this type of behavior just prove that they have no clue what they are doing. So not only are the players making a mockery of the game but they make refs who fall for it look stupid. As a general sports fan, this type of behavior and mindset in sports makes me not want to follow the leagues because they are a joke. If the players feel the need to sink to cheap levels, I have no interest in watching. I think that’s why everyone prefers this time of year in the NCAA Men’s BBall tourney because they lay it all on the line without this undermining taking place. All leagues need to implement penalties for this type of behavior. Some good examples in all sports:

Finally one with some creativity.

By Tom Stortz|2012-03-21T23:24:18-04:00March 21st, 2012|Sports|0 Comments

Frozen Planet

I have a few thoughts that go along with this series, Frozen Planet, on the Discovery Channel. The ratings for the initial premier were around 26 million people so that should give a sense of how popular this program is. I was captivated the entire hour I watched and also DVR’d the second episode. I hardly ever watch anything nature oriented but footage of fascinating animals and nature in Antarctica is unbelievable.

The first thing that crosses my mind is how do they get the footage? They have picture perfect shots of polar bears, seals, penguins, wolves, and killer whales. I just can’t believe a human is there filming because everything looks so natural. Plus they have tons of underwater shots where a camera has to be impeccably placed and this is such a vast area that I have no clue how it happens. The quality of the video is unreal too and the time taken to put this together has to be thousands of hours.

Another aspect that makes the show so good is that there are unique animals that I don’t ever see much footage of. The wooly bear caterpillar, some crazy whale with a huge horn on its nose, and a giant (seriously giant) seal are just a few. Watching a polar bear try to catch a seal by creeping along and then stamping his feet on the ice isn’t something you see everyday. I think the fact that this is the Arctic, an area that I personally have little experience viewing, is what makes this show so enthralling. I highly recommend giving it a chance.

This is a complete side note but I got the idea from the show. Here is a wooly bear caterpillar.

He is unique because he spends his few spring and summer months eating and then hibernating in hopes of becoming a moth. The calender year only gives life in the Arctic a few months of spring and summer before everything freezes over. So this process can take somewhere over a decade. When the caterpillar goes into hibernation and literally freezes itself, his heart stops. It stays this way frozen for the 6+ winter months and wakes up and does the same cycle over and over. If this doesn’t make humans want to freeze themselves in hopes of a cure for death in the future, I don’t know what else would.

By Tom Stortz|2012-03-21T09:14:44-04:00March 21st, 2012|My Brain|0 Comments

Stale

I’ve had times in my blog life where I threatened to quit the blog for various reasons. This however is not one of those times. I am just in a spot where I’m unable to come up with original, entertaining posts. When I put myself in the reader’s shoes I ask myself what do I like to read about? Something thoughtful, topical, and interesting. Perhaps new information that I was never aware of. I’d even go as far as something that makes a person who blogs unique. Then I think about all the different things in my life and I just know that I’ve wrote about them hundreds of times before. I am struggling to keep this interesting and that’s partly because I’ve been spending a lot of time at work and haven’t had the chance to focus on rnningfool.com. I do ask that you stick with it because I will pull myself out of miserable entry after entry and start coming through with some better entry’s. I think it might have something to do with culture shock and how I feel like a gerbil in his wheel.

By Tom Stortz|2012-03-20T21:53:49-04:00March 20th, 2012|My Life|0 Comments

Hey Brother!

As Jeff so deftly pointed out, I haven’t been posting much. The less readers you get, the less you tend to post. As my traffic has been decreasing you would think that I’d be posting more to try to increase traffic. We can chalk this up to laziness and lack of ideas. It’s difficult because this seems to be one of those tasks that doesn’t really accomplish much. I can’t look at this website and at the end of the day feel that I’m getting great return on my time. Sure for the reader you can spend 3 minutes and exit the browser without a second thought but I’ve been sitting here for 15 minutes just typing these last 4 sentences. I feel like I haven’t really been doing much of interest as well. Or perhaps I’ve been doing things of interest but just don’t feel like sharing with my blogging universe.

To be perfectly honest I felt a sense of sadness when I left New Zealand last week. There was something about knowing that I won’t be back there and that Jeff and Nicole are there on their own that struck a chord. I also think that my 7 days of vacation being over attributed to that emotion. I’m usually not one to get emotional and it really only lasted for about 1 hour but I still felt something which was good. Now that I’m back in the States everything is just back to the way it is. Everything is exactly the way I left it. I pick up work right where it left off and here we go again. I still can’t tell if it’s good or bad but it’s definitely not the way time was meant to be spent. Those 7 days of my life were ones I can look back on and say “I was living life.”

By Tom Stortz|2012-03-19T23:29:09-04:00March 19th, 2012|My Life|1 Comment

Business Idea

This is my business idea that I think is a million dollar idea. You can call it a pyramid scheme but I don’t believe it would work out that way. This system is based on a word of mouth that relies on the people who bought my product to become the salespeople. For example, I’m the manufacturer of key chains and they cost me 1 dollar. I sell a key chain to you for 3 dollars. I present the opportunity to you that if you sell one key chain to a friend, I will give you one dollar. Now since I’m the manufacturer of the key chain, I sell your friend the key chain for 3 dollars and you make 1 dollar. You now have the ability to sell key chains and make yourself 1 dollar for every key chain you sell, effectively becoming my salesperson. You can tell your friend the same deal, if he can sell a key chain to his friend, he in turn will make 1 dollar. I haven’t figured out exactly how the incentive referral based system would work but I believe that his theory would expand exponentially if you had a product that would work right and you could figure out the details so people get compensated for what they sell without getting screwed over. Word of mouth based products are the best way of communication.

By Tom Stortz|2012-03-19T23:03:46-04:00March 19th, 2012|My Brain|0 Comments