(no subject)
It is Friday night and I am home. And posting, for the first time in too long, because I'm still denying the fact that learning how (by which I mean remembering for more than 30 seconds) to tie a half hitch, and get it in the right place in the string, is going to take some effort. It'll lead to much nicer, faster beadwork, but in the meantime I'm staring at some things that I figured out what I want to do with and thinking, "Damn. I don't want to do The Hard Part." So, livejournaling.
Yesterday I learned that microwaves work by moving polar molecules around. (I'm good at oversummarization, yes?) The movability of molecules in a liquid and nonmoveability of molecules in a solid is what gives you soup leftovers that boil around the outside of a core of frozen soup. It looks like magic, but it's just that the microwave heating works faster on the liquid, and the effect overpowers the speed of heat transfer from the liquid to the frozen-solid part.
Today I spent half an hour at work pondering why you can solve for the probability of several events occurring and for none of the events, but couldn't figure out how (if I ever learned a way... if there is a way) to solve for one event or the other(s). Did I dredge up probability equations buried a under a decade of mental soft peat? Yes. Did it do me any good? No. (Specifically, the Birthday Problem. Why do you have to work backward from the probability that none of the people will have the same birthday? Why can't you do it forward, from the probability that any pair of people do share the same birthday?)
My computer is happier than it's ever been. I do not have a new case or anything 133t, but some stuff has been upgraded and is happier. And in the process of reinstalling stuff, I've reconciled bookmarked URLs from home and three or four work computers. (Mostly. There's still tidying to be done, but I'm unlikely to bother getting it perfect.) I also deleted a bunch of crap that I didn't need to keep bookmarked. Firefox is nice -- not because of the tabbed browsing that people won't shut up about (I still don't understand how that's different from (and so much better than!) tabs in my task bar), but because I can open everything in a folder at once. Nice! And other good things.
I made kickass vegetable soup last week, and pot roast that wasn't dry. It wasn't like Granny's pot roast, but it was closer than I've gotten before. The soup would make me happier if it had chick peas, but I forgot. Next time.
I've also realized that, despite the amount of time I spend daydreaming hypotheticals, I've never created an alternative world that's consistent enough to use as a setting for any of the skeletons of story ideas I get. Which is why (or part of why) they never make it into ink/type. In my head, I feel like I should be a Carey/Kay/Stephenson/Tarr type writer, when I'd probably do better with a focus more like McKillip's. Which means nothing to most of you, but neatly summarizes part of the problem for me.
I've been playing Psychonauts, but only in short bursts once or twice a week. (I discovered that playing anything for a long time on a large TV will make me motion-sick.) It's still colorful and strange, and I'm still very amused. I'll never handle controllers as well as everyone else I know seems to, and I'm still irritated that button assignment seems so random sometimes, but at least I don't play worse than an average six-year-old anymore.
Oh! and I got a light box. (This is the worst-organized post ever, isn't it?) This is to be used in the morning to reset my circadian rhythm, so I don't perk up at 10PM and get myself into trouble by not wanting to sleep until 2AM or so. After two weeks (in which I've skipped using it some mornings), it still hasn't made me spring out of bed delightedly, but I am getting more sleep than I used to because I go to bed at a semi-reasonable hour. I don't worry (so much) about falling asleep at stoplights. One morning last weekend, I woke up (before noon) and felt awesome, which almost never happens to me (this is the first time I can remember that I've ever felt good or well-rested within half an hour of waking up).
And I'm going to Michigan with Adam for Christmas. From the 21st to the 27th, for anyone who's trying to coordinate Stuff around that time. (This means that I probably shouldn't stay up all night on the 20th like I had thought of doing.) I'm assured that I will die of ass-frozen-off, and am contemplating whether I should plan to simply wear my warmest sweaters over long-sleeved t-shirts (like I do when it's really cold around here) or whether I should test the supposedly-magical properties of long underwear. The latter thought makes me go into a "Do I have to?" mentality, but a perverse sense of curiosity is also at work. (Long underwear in the name of science!) I still haven't mentioned to my own mother (or either grandmother) that I'm not going to be here on the holiday itself. Heh... I should do that soon. And find out if any of my relatives are going to be in town. And start making candy, if I'm going to give it as gifts. But it's not even November yet, so it's hard to get motivated.
Hmm. And now I'm going to go and be brave and work on those stupid knots. (If I wait long enough, I seem to develop patience for the process, rather than simply wanting to bring the end product into reality.)
Yesterday I learned that microwaves work by moving polar molecules around. (I'm good at oversummarization, yes?) The movability of molecules in a liquid and nonmoveability of molecules in a solid is what gives you soup leftovers that boil around the outside of a core of frozen soup. It looks like magic, but it's just that the microwave heating works faster on the liquid, and the effect overpowers the speed of heat transfer from the liquid to the frozen-solid part.
Today I spent half an hour at work pondering why you can solve for the probability of several events occurring and for none of the events, but couldn't figure out how (if I ever learned a way... if there is a way) to solve for one event or the other(s). Did I dredge up probability equations buried a under a decade of mental soft peat? Yes. Did it do me any good? No. (Specifically, the Birthday Problem. Why do you have to work backward from the probability that none of the people will have the same birthday? Why can't you do it forward, from the probability that any pair of people do share the same birthday?)
My computer is happier than it's ever been. I do not have a new case or anything 133t, but some stuff has been upgraded and is happier. And in the process of reinstalling stuff, I've reconciled bookmarked URLs from home and three or four work computers. (Mostly. There's still tidying to be done, but I'm unlikely to bother getting it perfect.) I also deleted a bunch of crap that I didn't need to keep bookmarked. Firefox is nice -- not because of the tabbed browsing that people won't shut up about (I still don't understand how that's different from (and so much better than!) tabs in my task bar), but because I can open everything in a folder at once. Nice! And other good things.
I made kickass vegetable soup last week, and pot roast that wasn't dry. It wasn't like Granny's pot roast, but it was closer than I've gotten before. The soup would make me happier if it had chick peas, but I forgot. Next time.
I've also realized that, despite the amount of time I spend daydreaming hypotheticals, I've never created an alternative world that's consistent enough to use as a setting for any of the skeletons of story ideas I get. Which is why (or part of why) they never make it into ink/type. In my head, I feel like I should be a Carey/Kay/Stephenson/Tarr type writer, when I'd probably do better with a focus more like McKillip's. Which means nothing to most of you, but neatly summarizes part of the problem for me.
I've been playing Psychonauts, but only in short bursts once or twice a week. (I discovered that playing anything for a long time on a large TV will make me motion-sick.) It's still colorful and strange, and I'm still very amused. I'll never handle controllers as well as everyone else I know seems to, and I'm still irritated that button assignment seems so random sometimes, but at least I don't play worse than an average six-year-old anymore.
Oh! and I got a light box. (This is the worst-organized post ever, isn't it?) This is to be used in the morning to reset my circadian rhythm, so I don't perk up at 10PM and get myself into trouble by not wanting to sleep until 2AM or so. After two weeks (in which I've skipped using it some mornings), it still hasn't made me spring out of bed delightedly, but I am getting more sleep than I used to because I go to bed at a semi-reasonable hour. I don't worry (so much) about falling asleep at stoplights. One morning last weekend, I woke up (before noon) and felt awesome, which almost never happens to me (this is the first time I can remember that I've ever felt good or well-rested within half an hour of waking up).
And I'm going to Michigan with Adam for Christmas. From the 21st to the 27th, for anyone who's trying to coordinate Stuff around that time. (This means that I probably shouldn't stay up all night on the 20th like I had thought of doing.) I'm assured that I will die of ass-frozen-off, and am contemplating whether I should plan to simply wear my warmest sweaters over long-sleeved t-shirts (like I do when it's really cold around here) or whether I should test the supposedly-magical properties of long underwear. The latter thought makes me go into a "Do I have to?" mentality, but a perverse sense of curiosity is also at work. (Long underwear in the name of science!) I still haven't mentioned to my own mother (or either grandmother) that I'm not going to be here on the holiday itself. Heh... I should do that soon. And find out if any of my relatives are going to be in town. And start making candy, if I'm going to give it as gifts. But it's not even November yet, so it's hard to get motivated.
Hmm. And now I'm going to go and be brave and work on those stupid knots. (If I wait long enough, I seem to develop patience for the process, rather than simply wanting to bring the end product into reality.)