Sometimes life kicks your ass...

...and you just keep coming back for more! I've had a lot of developments in my life in the last couple of months, some of them absolutely wonderful, and others absolutely terrible. I've learned from all of them, so I suppose I can't complain, but the one lesson that has really stood out is, "life takes work!" Seriously, it isn't hard to just exist, but once you get a little skin in the game and start doing somethings that matter, well, then it's actually possible to get your ass kicked. Unlike someone who stays on the sidelines and never enters the arena, they usually don't get too banged up.

This book might help with the apocalypse...

I ran across this book, Emergency, by Neil Strauss, at Timothy Ferriss' blog, basically it is the story of how a liberal city boy learned how to be a gun toting, self reliant, survivalist minded member of society. There is some good stuff in the book, but so far it hasn't been very instructive. I would have liked to see more actual hands on advice, but it is a good read nonetheless, besides, that information is available elsewhere. Once I'm done with it I'll give a more thorough review.

The Alpha and the Omega...Seamaster

For most of the Bond franchise our hero has relied upon a vast array of gadgets and technological crutches. However, in his latest incarnation, James Bond has returned to the human element of being an international man of mystery. He has put aside the rocket pack and the floating cars, and instead has learned some serious parkour and major ass-kicking. Not to mention the quick wit and confident charm that has always been a 007 calling card. Of course, he still has his a couple of standard tools to help keep him alive and stylish, one of these is his trademark Omega watch.

Throughout the history of Bond, 007 has worn a vast array of watches, but for the past few films, he has chosen to wear strictly Omegas. Of course, advertising dollars has had an influence on that, but maybe not as much as you would think. In Casino Royale, when Vesper asks if he's wearing a Rolex, and he responds, "no, it's an Omega," I said to myself, "wow, what blatant advertising." However, in a recent trip to a jewelry store to ogle watches, I met an Omega representative who told me that they did not pay for that line, it was simply a part of the script. This was extremely impressive to me, that Omega had managed to brand themselves so well as "James Bond's watch" that the writer of the film included as a prop without monetary compensation. This led me to ask, what's so special about this watch?

At first glance, it is obviously a nice watch, but after doing more research I found that I started to fall in love with the understated elegance of it. The Omega Seamaster 300m is basically the same sort of watch as the Rolex Submariner, which, with date, retails for about $5800, the Omega is listed at $3400. They are both stainless steel dive watches that are capable of going deeper than people, so that isn't a concern, but the Omega is the only one with a clasp extender to fit over your super secret spy wetsuit. Also, I got into reading about the Omega's movement, it has a co-axial chronometer movement. Now, I'm not an expert, so I said, "what does that mean to me?" Basically it has to do with the accuracy and durability of the watch, rather than having to be serviced every 5 years or so like most automatic watches, this one can go 10 years. Bonus.

On top of all of the great features of this watch, there is no denying the looks. This Omega looks comfortable and at home in any situation, from shooting terrorists in the face with a silenced Walther to bluffing a giant pot, wearing a tuxedo in a high stakes poker tournament. In my opinion, that is the epitome of Awesome, confidence and comfort in any situation. Well done Bond, well done.

Born again Awesome!

For anyone who has been following this blog at all (not that I've really given you much to follow), you will notice that I made some changes. There were various reasons for the changes, but what it really boils down to is my level of commitment and seriousness. I wondered what would happen if I actually spent a bit more time and money on this little endeavor. Come to find out, I didn't need to spend much of either to make a huge strides in the professionalism of my site.

The first big change you may notice is the color, I moved from black to white. I have been noticing for a long time that the black minima layout on blogger is hugely popular, I mean everyone has it! It's a great layout, don't get me wrong, but if I was going to lay down a little skin, I wanted to look a bit different. So, I went with a white, slightly customized minima layout. Not bad. Someday I may try to get one designed or even, gasp, learn how to do it myself, but this works for now.

The second big change you will notice is the name. I moved away from "Get Swinked" (what the hell did that mean anyway?...actually "swink" is an archaic German verb, meaning 'to labor or toil' so in essence, it meant, 'get worked' weird.) Getting back on track, I decided to officially coin the term "Awesomeosophy." I'm definitely not the first to say it, but I'm the first to register the domain, score. I chose this name because A: I am awesome, B: I'm trying to get more awesome, and C: it gives my blog a theme to shoot for, the study and exploration of all things awesome. This will mean a lot of reviews on things that I find that I deem awesome, and rants and raves about things I find not-awesome.

The third big change I made is the registering of a real domain name so I could drop the noob sounding ".blogspot.com" from the end of my URL. I've been putting it off because I "didn't want to spend the money." Well, guess what...it costs a whole $10 to do. That's right, for $10 I get one year of registration, and my blog is already hosted on blogspot, oh, and I also get Google apps, so now I have email addresses with the domain... @awesomeosophy.com. Want one? I get a whole bunch of them, and I don't know that many people.