“I Don’t Know”

That simple phrase, that answer to so many questions, has been the bane of my existence since I was a child.

“I don’t know.”

I’ve talked before about how I don’t like making decisions, but this goes beyond that. When I was a kid, I was chastised for answering a question (ANY question) with “I don’t know.” Admittedly, sometimes that phrase was used to deflect responsibility for making a decision. But there were also times when it was used to stall for time: “I don’t know… let me think about it.” Of course, without the second part, both uses sound the same.

Even as an adult I can’t escape the shame of “I don’t know.” It’s even more maddening when I use it in cases that I TRULY DO NOT KNOW the answer, usually to big questions like “What do you want to do with your life?”

What do I want to do with my life? You know what? I’m not sure! In fact, I’m not even sure that one needs to “do” ANYTHING with their life! Can’t the beauty of the unknown be enough for some people? Do we need to compartmentalize everything into nice plans and purposes? Can’t you just accept that I, like so many people of my generation, are coming to the realization that life may not have an inherent purpose or meaning?

Look, I’ve thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life. When I graduated high school, I KNEW I wanted to be an astrobiologist. I even had it all planned out: what classes I would take, where I would go to grad school, et cetera. That plan came crashing down after my overloaded first quarter. Later, I thought I wanted to be an architect. I was still skittish, of course, given my previous experience, but I stuck with it and got my Masters. Then the global economy tanked, and I ended up having to compete for entry-level internships against people with 10 years’ working experience. Is there any wonder I ended up in retail? Is there any wonder I’m even more skittish about giving up what stability I have to “chase a dream?”

In fact, I even challenge the assumption that people need to find “their purpose,” the career that’s perfect for them and fulfills all their earthly and psychological needs. At this point, I don’t know if there’s anything I’m passionate enough about to devote my life to it, and the things in the running are really hard to make a living with. No one wants to pay me to play video games and read all day, or spend my weekends dressing in medieval clothes and hitting my friends with sticks.

So what do I want to do with my life? I don’t know.

Thanks for asking. Let’s move on.

Computers and Education: Modern Era

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post.

Dell Inspiron 4100

The computer I went to college with. Once I decided I was going to the University of Denver, with its requirement that every incoming student have a laptop computer, I started eagerly poring through the various Dell catalogs that kept getting delivered to our house. In a fortuitous development, my parents decided they would sell the upright piano (that had been practically untouched since elementary school) in order to pay for my new computer. In other words, I was trading one computer for another.

I had a ton of fun customizing various options and configurations on the Dell website. I remember being quite excited that I could customize the color of my laptop. Unfortunately, the green panels ended up costing extra, so I went with a quite outlandish School Bus Yellow (this was also during my phase of wearing obnoxiously loud Hawaiian shirts as often as possible).

I actually still have this computer sitting on a shelf in my office. It was quite the beast when it was purchased in 2002, and actually aged fairly well. It had a whopping 512 MB of RAM, a GeForce 2 graphics card, and a native resolution of 1600×1200. The front bays were adjustable, meaning you could replace the floppy drive with a DVD-ROM or even an extra battery. Unfortunately, it did not have a built-in WiFi antenna, so I had to add an external one through the built-in PC Card slot.

I ended up using this computer for about six years, until I went back to grad school. It traveled to France with me. The battery is long dead, and the DVD drive tends to crash the computer if it’s not seated just so, but it still holds a soft spot in my heart. It was even the source of my first hard drive crash scare (TL;DR, I lost all my pictures from France, but years later was finally able to recover them).

Man, good times. Good times.

Dell XPS M1530

 

Still my current system, and the first one I had to pay for outright with my own money. I bought this one when I decided to go back to grad school, as I figured I would need a more robust system for doing things like running AutoCAD and modeling in SketchUp (to say nothing about the new games I was itching to play). Plus, I still had money at the time. So back I went to the Dell website, tweaking and customizing the specs to get the best computer I could for my money.

I think I did a pretty good job. I was able to get a staggering (at the time) 4 GB of RAM, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a 320 GB hard drive (how would I ever manage to fill that up?), and a nice, fast Geforce 8600 graphics card (my current gaming bottleneck). The only downside was that it came pre-loaded with Windows Vista. So the first thing I did, once it came in the mail, was take my Windows XP disc from my old laptop, format the hard drive, and install the old OS on it. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that XP didn’t have the proper audio drivers for my system hardware. I begrudgingly re-installed Vista, but XP SP3 eventually fixed that issue. I have since upgraded to Windows 7 (64-bit, to take full advantage of my RAM and GPU memory), and it’s been working great.

But like its predecessors, it’s beginning to show its age. While I definitely got my use out of the 4-year warranty (which I can heartily recommend), my hard drive started giving up the ghost. Luckily the failure wasn’t catastrophic this time, but it was still too close for comfort. I ended up replacing it with a solid state drive (which I’ve written about previously), and it feels a lot faster, which should let me squeeze a bit more life out of it. But I can feel the new tech itch already starting to build.

* * *

So there you have it: a brief account of my history of using computers for school. I know I didn’t go into much detail as to what I used each platform for, but I imagine you’ll be able to fill in the blanks. Just try to keep your mind out of the gutter, alright? I’m pretty sure my parents read this blog.

Anyway, to me, it’s less important what was done with each technological iteration as the feelings and memories each one invokes. For instance, I hadn’t thought about that Brother computer in years, and once I finally found a picture of it online, the memories came flooding back. Same with the AlphaSmart and IBM laptop.

Also interesting is how my technological upgrades have, in the past, been primarily motivated by educational needs and opportunities. Now that I’m done with grad school (and have no intentions to go back [for the moment]), it’s going to be a bit different. I’m going to be upgrading because I want to, not because I have to. As someone who sometimes has trouble doing nice things for himself, this will take some getting used to.

Does anyone else chronicle their computing history like this?

Computers and Education: Pseudo Era

I have long said that I type faster than I write. This has been especially notable when it comes to tasks that require both speed and accuracy, like taking notes in class. While it’s not uncommon these days to see a college classroom filled with glowing laptops of various sorts, using a computer for education is not a new thing for me. In fact, it started pretty much as early as Mario taught me to type. Over the course of my educational career, I’ve had the chance to use some, shall we say, interesting computing platforms.

Brother Power Note

I started using a computer to take notes as early as elementary school. The first “computer” I used in this respect was a Brother Super Power Note. I’m not sure how this brick of a computer came into my possession, probably via a family friend that had finished using it. The biggest thing I remember about it was the black-and-green LCD display, which had an odd interface that looked like a three-ring binder. I have a memory (more of a fragment, really) of me sitting at a counter along the periphery of some elementary school classroom with this thing plugged into the wall. Thus began my journey, which continues to this day, of searching for seats with easy access to power outlets.

AlphaSmart

In middle school and early high school, things improved a bit. If nothing else, the “computer as learning accommodation” thing was not as unheard of. As such, I actually got some official support from the school. This came in the form of access to an AlphaSmart, a basic word processor that wasn’t much more than a keyboard with a tiny LCD screen that showed about three lines of text at a time. It saved notes as a regular TXT file, which had to be regularly offloaded to a more capable desktop computer. My big memory of this one is of me tapping away in biology class while the other students scribbled in their big binders. That, and the odd gray-green color of the plastic housing. Since these were school property, I couldn’t really take them home, but I think my parents were able to get me one on a more semi-permanent loan.

IBM Workpad z50

The Workpad z50 was the closest thing I had to a “real” laptop in high school. It even ran a version of Windows! True it was Windows CE, but it finally included Microsoft (Pocket) Office! It was light, portable, and had a large (at the time) color screen. It still wasn’t a standalone computing platform, but it felt the closest to one I had been able to use so far. I remember having a lot of fun customizing the look and feel of the OS. I wonder what happened to this one? Last I remember, it was in the bottom of my brother’s closet, refusing to turn on.

To be continued tomorrow…

*via katmellon.com

Everything Is Awesome

TL;DR: The LEGO Movie is awesome. Go see it.

My girlfriend and I aren’t big on Valentine’s Day. Instead, we prefer to celebrate Half Price Chocolate Day. And for HPCD this year, we went and saw The LEGO Movie.

Now, I’m a huge LEGO fan, so I was in an interesting headspace leading up to this movie. I was of course predisposed to like it, but I was also worried about getting my hopes up. After all, I saw what they did to Transformers.

But somehow, they finally got a nostalgia-fueled movie about a kid’s toy right.

The movie was awesome. Not only did it manage to capture that unique feeling of playing with LEGO, it also had a really good message. And I loved the art style: while they used CGI, everything looked like it was made out of physical bricks. Everything. Even the water and explosions were rendered with gentle wear and scuff marks. And all the characters move like they were actual minifigs (read: not much) In fact, I would say this is the first CG movie that fooled me into thinking it was real (or at least stop-motion).

A word of warning: the theme song WILL get stuck in your head.

Now, if you haven’t seen it yet (you totally should), you may want to go elsewhere. I’m going to venture into more spoiler-y territory. You have been warned.

Continue reading →

Stalled

It’s been a while since I talked about my efforts to restart a fencing drill regiment at my local practice. Unfortunately, there’s a reason for that: things have kind of stalled out.

Things seemed to be going well before the winter holidays. General practice attendance was up, I was motivated, and people seemed interested in hearing what I had to say. But then the holidays came around, and people started having other commitments. Attendance dropped, down past what I felt was a critical mass for drills. And then, as attendance started coming back up, it was time to start doing melee drills for those people going to war. Long story short, we haven’t really done drills in several months.

I could keep coming up with excuses. But the reality is, I’ve dropped the ball. I got out of the habit of leading drills, and let my nervousness get the best of me. Say what you like, but it’s tough for me to waltz into a room and take control of the training environment. Especially when there may be people who seem more qualified than me there (read: white scarves). After all, how do I know what I’m talking about, or if what I have to say is of any use to anyone else? Maybe I’m just wasting my time…

These thoughts, of course, are not rational. But they’ve been gnawing away at my confidence, making it that much easier to push drills of until “next time.” Heck, it’s been so long that even I’m getting rusty on the curriculum I wrote. If I’m having to re-learn things each time, how can I expect to be able to teach it to others?

I’ve been trying to think of ways out of this slump. Writing about it is helping; once it’s down on the page, I can see how ridiculous it sounds. In fact, the voices of my friends start crowding my mind, trying to slap some modicum of sense into me. In fact, I’m already feeling more motivated to lead drills.

But that’s not the reason I started this post. My main concern (after self-confidence) is familiarity with the material. So here’s what I’m proposing: I’d like to use my next few blog entries to detail the curriculum my friend and I have developed. Right now, it doesn’t exist much beyond a few bullet points and diagrams in a notebook. It needs to be fleshed out, and I’ve been meaning to do so. Doing it here, in a more or less public environment, would mean that I can’t shirk my duty, that I would need to actually follow through with my intentions.

(This is what I do, see? I trick myself into productivity and gainful activity!)

So for those of you who read this blog and come to fencing practice: if you’ve been expecting drills, I’m sorry. I’ve dropped the ball, but I haven’t forgotten about you. I’m going to try to make it up to you, and hopefully end up with a better product for us all at the same time. As always, your feedback is welcome.

You Can Probably Skip This

And just like that, after two heavy, cerebral posts, I can’t think of anything to write about. I’m pretty sure I had ideas earlier in the day, but the fact that I’ve waited until the last possible moment to write before I need to head to practice means I won’t be able to put much thought into things.

That’s an odd Catch-22, isn’t it? I have things I want to write about, but I want to do it well (read: perfect), so I don’t write about them. Instead, I think about writing them, and this feel a small sense of accomplishment for not doing anything. Go me.

I used this strategy against my perfectionism a lot in school: if I waited until the last minute to do my homework, who could blame me if it wasn’t perfect? Not me, that’s for sure. A part of me has always wondered if I would have done any better in school if I had actually taken the time others suggested. That’s not to say I did poorly; I’m just woolgathering over might-have-beens.

And today wasn’t exactly a day to instill motivation to write, anyway. For the first time in a while, like last week, I had two days off in a row. However, this week I didn’t have anything I particularly needed to accomplish. So what did I do? I slept in, puttered about on the Web, played some video games, and even chipped away at my Netflix queue. In other words, a whole lot of nothing.

I even got bored! That’s not a common feeling for me these days; usually I’m too exhausted/stressed/whatever to feel much of anything once I accomplish what I need to. But lo and behold, I actually managed to complain (at least to myself) about “nothing to do.”

But hey, I promised a post a day, and I want to hold up my end of the deal. I did get two posts written yesterday, so I finally have a small buffer again. It would have been so easy to just let today’s commitment slide, but no. So instead of nothing posted, you get a post about nothing.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go hit my friends with sticks.

I Might Be Good

An odd thing has been happening recently, and I’m not sure what to do about it. People have been coming up to me and commenting on how much they admire my fighting skill, both in heavy fighting and fencing. In fact, one of my friends even said he was surprised that neither my belt nor my scarf were white.*

I haven’t been sure what to do about this. In fact, it’s even taken me several weeks to work up the courage to even write about this.

It’s hard for me to take a compliment at the best of times. To be honest, it makes me uncomfortable. I can’t do much more than stand there and stammer out a “thank you” that starts to sound ridiculous to my ears after a few repetitions. Whether I’m uncomfortable because I don’t like being the center of attention or because my internal view of myself is slightly biased, I don’t know.

Okay, that’s a lie. I do know: I tend to be much harder on myself than anyone else would dare to be. As such, it’s hard for me to objectively value my own accomplishments, as I always see things I could have done just a bit better, or taken just slightly more time to complete. I also tend to dislike my work once I complete it, especially in creative endeavors. I can’t stand to re-read my own writing, and almost all of my design projects in grad school ended with me being disgusted by them, but with due dates looming that required me to present something.

I also think of myself as quite humble, maybe to a fault. I’ve said before that I’m too nice for my own good. I also think that the things I do are not really anything that special. If I help someone, it’s because it was the decent thing to do. I don’t set out to accomplish things for the recognition; I do them because they need to get done. Apparently that’s a noteworthy trait. Who knew?

So I guess I’m not exactly the most unbiased critic when it comes to my skills. As such, I’m trying (hard) to accept the fact that my friends might know what they’re talking about. I’ve been fighting for about 10 years, fencing for a little less, and one couldn’t help but develop some level of skill in that time. I also have a black belt in Taekwondo. I’m not exactly a slouch. But it’s hard for me to see that. A part of me will always be the shy, nerdy kid.

That’s not to say I’m the best fighter out there. I’m not. I’m just trying to come to grips with the fact that I might be a good one.

So if you’ve given me a compliment lately, I say again: thank you. I’m trying hard to see what you see in me. If nothing else, I’ll try to take it on faith until I can.

* In the SCA, white belts signify knighthood, which is more or less equivalent to a black belt in eastern martial arts. A white scarf is the equivalent on the fencing field

Guns

While I was writing my article about the Nerf party yesterday, I found myself getting slightly off track. Unlike most times that happens, however, this time I noticed it, and decided to break the new train of thought into its own post. Which is probably a good thing, since the topic is one a lot of people (on either side of the fence) find it hard to be balanced and rational about.

I’d like to talk about guns.

One thing that made the Nerf party interesting for me is the fact that I don’t really like guns. No, that’s not quite right: I don’t have much of an interest in real-world, bullet-firing guns. I don’t own any, I’ve never shot one, and to be honest the cultural fixation on them (and resulting impossibility to be rational about them) makes me a bit nervous. But I’ve had fun playing laser tag and paintball, to say nothing of some of the video games I play. The Nerf party was, for me, abstracted enough from reality that I could have fun with it. It’s much like the melees I do in the SCA: sure, I may have no desire to wander into a crowded public space and start hacking and slashing indiscriminately, but I can still have fun hitting my friends with sticks.

While I was writing, that last thought gave me pause. After all, was my fascination with medieval combat and equipment (armor, swords, etc.) really that much different than modern gun culture? When I go to fighter practice every week, how is that any different than someone who goes to the firing range every Saturday? Is the collection of swords in my room any different than someone else’s gun rack?

Part of the problem, I think, is that “the gun issue” has been made out to be far more black-and-white than it really is. Guns are either elevated as a symbol of personal freedom or condemned as a bogeyman, with no room for subtlety in between. That sort of polarization will inevitably poison the well of any attempted conversation.

I know I’m guilty of this myself. It’s hard to stay rational when it seems you can’t turn around without hearing about some new incident of gun violence. And it’s so much easier to respond with a knee-jerk reaction than it is to take the time to stop, think, and perhaps face some uncomfortable truths.

Like I said, I don’t have any personal interest in real-world guns. I do find the intensity of gun culture in this country to be disturbing at times. But I do have several violent hobbies myself. To condemn someone else for theirs would make me something of a hypocrite. It’s not easy admitting that, but I try. I also tried hard to avoid offending anyone with exaggeration and straw-man arguments. No matter what your opinion on the subject, I hope I succeeded. If I fell short, I’m willing to have a conversation with you, as long as we can all agree to follow Wheaton’s Law.

P.S.: I would encourage you to go read this Cracked article on the subject that I think is relevant to what I’m trying to say. Too often the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the situation gets depicted as more polarized than it might actually be in reality.

I Need Sleep

So yeah, in answer to the question posed by my last post. I am, indeed, quite tired. Working late kicked my butt as much as I expected, and even going back to early mornings for the past two days was tough. For some reason, someone thought it would be a great idea for the skinny guy with no thermal mass to go crawling around in the giant freezer and milk cooler.

Let’s just say I was less than thrilled.

But getting this tired wasn’t completely bad (I realized that may sound a lot dirtier than I meant, but bear with me). Sunday, I had the chance to go to a friend’s Nerf party. What’s a Nerf party, you may ask? Well, it’s better than a Tupperware party, I can assure you. It involves getting a bunch of people together, a couple barrels of foam darts, and more tubs than you can carry with plastic launchers for said darts. Then, you use the aforementioned darts and launch them at the aforementioned people.

The theme was suitably nerdy: Redshirts (Star Trek) vs. Stormtroopers (Star Wars). That is to say, people who can’t hit anything against people who end up dying anyway. We even had a bunch of cardboard boxes to use as terrain.

It was a ton of fun. We had done something similar last year, but without a unifying theme or anywhere near as many structured scenarios. People really got into it, and I was even able to drag my brother out of his post-sportsball-defeat stupor to come and have a good time. We ended up being on the same team (Star Wars, if you must know), but that didn’t stop us from shooting each other occasionally.

It was a ton of fun, and I think everyone that showed up had a great time. As things progressed, you could see strategies starting to form beyond just “wade in like Rambo Deadpool, firing indiscriminately.” And of course, there were a few minor hiccups with rules and intensity (one team seemed more aggressive than the other, and it can be hard to read whether or not a foam dart hit you), but for the most part it was nice and friendly. Although it was amusing how the “I shot you!” “No you didn’t!” dynamic holds just as true whether you’re twelve or twenty.

Who Needs Sleep?

One of the annoying things about working retail is the lack of a fixed schedule. I know I’ve written about this before, but it’s come up to bother me yet again.

Having no regular days off makes it really hard to plan non-work activities. For instance: I can’t decide on a whim to go to an SCA event, or spontaneously hang out with friends later in the week. I have to plan, but I can’t plan more than a week out in advance. Luckily, working early mornings has given me plenty of downtime in the afternoons to generally slack off or “get stuff done.”

And I’ve pretty much gotten used to waking up at 4 in the morning; it sucks, but at least it’s a consistent schedule I can get used to. In the past, I’ve had weeks where my shifts can vary from mid-day to closing (mostly closing). Since what socializing I do get around to is mostly done with friends who have more typical 9-to-5 schedules, working evenings cut into that time a lot more than I liked. Sure, early mornings get to you after a while, but at least they’re consistent.

But this week is inventory week, which means it’s all sorts of weird. Like today: they’ve taken a bunch of people who are used to starting work at 5am and having them work until 11h30 at night. Which is about two hours later than I’m usually asleep. I can see what they’re trying to do: they’re trying to get everything they need to done tonight so they can have their usual morning people come in Saturday night for the count. But I can’t help but think that they won’t get the best quality of work out of people who are dead tired.

Oh, and Saturday? I work another evening shift until 9pm, and then have to be at work at 5am the next day. That’s technically eight hours between shifts…

I realize I haven’t said anything truly deep or meaningful here. But every once in a while it can be good to just rant for a bit. I’ll spare you the drama llama GIF.

This time…