Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v.3.02

Joke

Descartes walks into a restaurant orders dinner.

The waiter askes: "Would you like desert?"

He replies: "I think not"

And disappears.

Conversations

I am... The Boy Next Door.... grrreeeeaaat....

Back In Town

Pics are available in the gallery, of course.

Richard Burton

From the preface to The Arabian Nights by Sir Richard Burton:

Now Moslems are not to be ruled by raw youths who should be at school and college instead of holding positions of trust and emolument. He who would deal with them successfully must be, firstly, honest and truthful and, secondly, familiar and favourably inclined to their manners and customs if not to their la and religion.

This is in the context that as a nation with control of vast territory in the Middle East, England must come to understand the culture in order to rule over it.

Protection Racket

There are people out there looking out for me. While I definitely do not do very well at acknowledging them, I feel very fortunate to have them in my life.

My only hope is that everything I do to be a good person shows my gratitude.

NADD

NADD stands for Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder. Some great insights in there about how nerds with ADD operate. Definitely would have been diagnosed with ADD. Definitely a nerd.

My favorite part is:

My mother first diagnosed me with NADD. It was the late 80s and she was bringing me dinner in my bedroom (nerd). I was merrily typing away to friends in some primitive chat room on my IBM XT (super nerd), listening to some music (probably Flock of Seagulls -- nerd++), and watching Back to the Future with the sound off (neeeeerrrrrrrd). She commented, "How can you focus on anything with all this stuff going on?" I responded, "Mom, I can't focus without all this noise."

That is so me.

Here is a typical evening for me. These simultaneous activities will take place.

1. Television running with either something from the air or on a DVD.
2. Computer playing a game and music in the background
3. Radio playing NPR
4. a book open to my place

Something is always in primary focus. Everything else is available in case I get bored.

During the typical day at work, I end up with all the applications running simultaneously.

1. Task Manager
2. Microsoft Outlook
3. 4 - 10 sessions of SSH
4. Macromedia Dreamweaver
5. IRC
6. 2 - 4 sessions of various instant messengers
7. 4 - 20 tabs of Mozilla
8. HTML-Kit
9. 4 - 8 windows for Microsoft Internet Explorer

These are the base line. Occasionally, I end up using Word, Excel, Opera, Netscape, and dozens of other programs. The likelihood of me having none of the above open means my computer was turned on only in the last few minutes. I didn't get to do anything.

Brendan Gill

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious."

Wrong Path

I have been at UGA for the past couple days. I think that in retrospect, I made a major mistake not coming to school here. This place "clicks" with me just as well as my forays to New York and Chicago. At the time I went to college, I did visit Georgia Tech and was not impressed. That colored my view of big universities.

Now, I think that was a mistake.

Maybe I can recover from that by coming here to grad school?

The Plan

Plan: A proposed or tentative project or course of action

The single piece of a definition of plan that I cannot place the most emphasis on is "tentative". Plans are always subject to change in my head. No matter how good things look on paper, those executing it have to think on their feet and change the operation to guarantee success.

Did you guess I am a pessimist? The glass is not half empty, I need add more water.

Don't tell me it will work exactly according to the plan. That is utterly worng. It won't happen that way. Something will go wrong. Perhaps that is why I favor action movies or drama. They depict difficult situations where the plan falls apart and someone makes it work.

My long term plans are all falling apart.

1. Work is becoming high on my list of things I don't want to think about because it makes me frustrated.

2. Ditto for dealing with women

3. Ditto for dealing with my dad

Even my short term plans are failing.

1. Skipped a meeting yesterday.

2. Got a call yesterday to deal with a rental car situation for the trip today

3. Found an interesting situation where not all forms of plastic are alike

4. Got a call from a friend about his computer breaking

5. Got a call from another friend to hang out

Everything worked out in the end, I think. Just a little bit tired.

Caffeine. Neeeed caffeeeeine.