[Tyris]

Oh, it's even worse than that. When we do rapidly switch tasks, efficiency decreases dramatically.
_________________
You can't look dignified when you're having fun.
Dubbed "Tetris" by Asa... apparently.
Keeper of Nanashi's ghostly blue visage and Felucca's hypothetical ejecting nose-cone.

"It's a sad thing when a man loses his cookie." - Nem

[Tinu.]

Today the Center at my school got back to me about the article I turned in yesterday and . . . I got the job/internship thing! I get to write for them now! Whoooo! ^____________________^
_________________
Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein

[Asa]

Congrats, Nu! That's exciting.

Yesterday I went to a wedding and got back home after midnight. Today I woke up at 6 because a group of us were planning on going swimming in the morning. Well at 6:30 the driver SMSed us and postponed it until noon. So I just got back from swimming in a natural spring, one of the sources of the Jordan river. It was slimy with algae and at either end of the pool were substantial lilypad fields, but there was a small 'waterfall' where the stream met the river with a ledge of stone right under it. It was really great to sit there and let the water pour over my shoulders... really great. They want to do this every Friday, which is an awesome idea, but I won't be here - I'm flying back to the States Sunday night for the summer.

So tomorrow is my last shabbat in Israel until the autumn!


Today Teh Lady's hospital troubles made me think of Usa, and I'm wondering how he's doing in his recovery...
_________________
Self-styled Forum Grandmother, because I hand out nicknames and hugs whether you want them or not. ^_^

Keeper of the Library and the Gateway to Haven

Nem: "It's the sort of face you just know is getting ready to poke you with something sharp."
BS: "...then insist you eat a brownie."
__________________
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended...
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

[Nem]

Congrats, nu' ^_^

Hope you have a good flight, Asa. I hear it's quite hot in the 'states at the moment.

#

Today is just generally a bit meh. The folks are back, having them around always makes me feel a bit tired and lonely. Come home, boom, TV on.

It's strange how being closer to people can make you feel more alone. Though perhaps it's like being closer to cake makes you feel hungrier =p

Hnn.

It's not that I don't understand how it might go. Assume someone doesn't get what they want in life right away. Well, there's probably a substitute out there that's more rewarding than the immediate results of the work they might put in towards getting what they want.

Just as fantasy can motivate people... surely it must be able to annihilate them? Suck their souls out into a brighter, softer, warmer world - on which their thoughts dwell in the grey present. And in that light all the world may be cast as a shadow of the shell that is left of the dreamer.

The they'd longer spent there, the worse the problems in the real world would get. Suddenly they're forty years old, going on fifty, and wondering why they didn't get what they deserved.

But did they ever actually ask for it? Did they ever put the work in to become the sort of person who could have those things? I do have to wonder. Maybe they tried it as children. But as children their resources would be so minor and their results so dependent on the whims of their parents that it could have just made them miserable. While the fantasy would always be as potent.

Perhaps there was a point where the challenges they'd have had to address weren't that bad - but they got caught in a feedback loop. Now becoming that sort of person would be too painful, involving the recognition of all the roads not taken. But if it's just fate - if it had nothing to do with what they deserved. Being helpless is potentially a rather comforting feeling.

To get lost in dreams and lose the thread of living.

#

I've always disliked the sense of ... violence ... in people talking about what they deserve. What does deserve have to do with anything? Pain and punishment and suffering are there for purposes, and in the absence of those purposes I'd not have anyone suffer them. It's sad that not everyone gets to be happy. That we live in a world where some compromises have to be made.

The underlying assumption of a deserve mindset is that people who don't deserve shouldn't get. And that people who deserve something else should get that too. A rather brutal commentator once noted that with respect to democracy, now I think of it:

'Democracy is the view that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.'

And if you're tied into the idea - if you stand to lose something in giving it up... there's a lot of potential harm in the world there just going around to keep the comforts in place.

Hneh. And having all that framework for how it might go, it doesn't get me any closer to doing anything to counteract the effects. What can you say to someone? Is this really what you wanted out of life? Like that's going to go well. What could you be doing that's more fun? Maybe there isn't anything for either of those, and even if there is - a weakly expressed intent for something that's not initially going to be very rewarding....

In Nem's experience talking rarely creates significant changes in others' behaviour on this sort of issue. Though Nem might just not be particularly persuasive in that regard. If you look at the rehab therapies that are available and most successful, most of them involve doing things - isolating from the old group and integrating with a peer group that has different attractors and offers good rewards - more than actually saying things. Still - it's not inconceivable that a more developed theory of mind would provide the right leverage. I'm just not sure where you'd look for it. =p

#

Today it rained. Rain is nice. As long as there's not too much of it - as has been the case for much of the country lately, (a month's rainfall in a day in some places - massive flooding.)

Today went down to town to get some passport photos taken for some form of ID.... £9.95 - what a ripoff. =p

Today vague notes on adjusting your sleep schedule:

Seems to be easiest to adjust waking up. Hard thing to do is to not nap during the day.

Stay awake until you feel sleepy. Even if that's like five in the morning. Set the alarm for the time you'll have to get up. Even if that's like six in the morning.

You could build up some incredible willpower prices on this sort of thing.
_________________
Never forget,
We stroll along the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
- Issa

[Tinu.]

Tomorrow morning my brother and my sister-in-law fly in! I can't wait to meet her!
_________________
Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein

[Nem]

So, it turns out 15 hour work days (inc travel) are totally killer. -blank stare- Who would have thought it?

Excuse me, I think there's a switch over here that resets the brain.... Ah, there it is. Let's not do that again in a hurry.
_________________
Never forget,
We stroll along the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
- Issa

[Nem]

So, it turns out professional qualifications are -

Rather valueable - at least in terms of hour per wage increase.
&
quite easy to get.

A positive side to the real world. Who'da thunk it?

Only thing is, the courses can be really boring =p still, going forward, I can see this getting exploited massively. One thing's for sure: the guy getting fired probably isn't going to be the designated first-aider....

Have to look into what other courses are a floating around at some point... Don't really want to work too long with the company arranging this round of training - largely because of how badly they're managing everything else - but still, shows it's well worth doing..

Today I'm sitting around waiting for a lift back home. Another thing that's well worth doing - making friends with folks - think I'm getting the hang of that even if my attitude is still largely of the wave goodbye and see someone years later kind most of the time.

Still, let's you split transport costs and so on. Nice little saving. Did the figures on some other guy's transport - gonna have cost him £80 to be here over four days and he doesn't come as far.

Ah, things - they are alright. Today at least. Make friends and get stuff done. Feels good when you can get the chance to do it rather than all that pedantic nonsense you so often end up doing. ... He says, tounge in cheek, as one of the most pedantic people around =p
_________________
Never forget,
We stroll along the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
- Issa

[Asa]

Today I am halfway through a road trip with my family! We have come within a state or so of several forum members, though not close enough to make detours (more's the pity).

Anyway, we've driven through Skyline Drive in Virginia (gorgeous!), gone to Luray Caverns and Montecello, and met up with friends of my parents from before they got married. Over the next few days we're going to go ziplining and ropes-walking, go horseback riding and see thoroughbred trainers work with their horses, and visit a military base where friends of ours from back home are stationed. Then we'll drive back home and spend the rest of the summer visiting friends and family.

Additionally, I got two short papers finished completely. ^_^
_________________
Self-styled Forum Grandmother, because I hand out nicknames and hugs whether you want them or not. ^_^

Keeper of the Library and the Gateway to Haven

Nem: "It's the sort of face you just know is getting ready to poke you with something sharp."
BS: "...then insist you eat a brownie."
__________________
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended...
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

[Tinu.]

[Nem]

Hnn, options that are beyond reach significantly decrease average happiness. Advertising may well make people miserable. =/ especially since people are really bad at estimating costs.

They did a study a while back where they kept on switching prices around. Found that to double the sales of a cheap item you just had to put it besides a comparable, but vastly overpriced, version. And that people would tend to the middle value if you then added a more expensive thing.... =/ interesting stuff. Folks don't have much idea of the value of things.

Talking of lesser evils, other mens sins....

Heh. Difficult choices are finicky. There's something I want to do on Friday, but I'd have to spend the day essentially wandering around a city with nothing to do. And I've no idea what to answer really. Oh well. Was going to have some other reason to be there, so they arranged it as a bot of a surprise. Hence the talk of options you can't have decreasing happiness.

Edit: problem solved - somewhere to lurk with a roof overhead found. Bring laptop, write some programming tutorials or something similarly time-consuming. =p

Gosh I'm tired this week. Barely had time to get home, check the emails and go to sleep before heading out again.
_________________
Never forget,
We stroll along the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
- Issa

[Tinalles]

Yesterday I completed a rite of passage: I got my first speeding ticket. ^__^
_________________
Keeper of The Remnant Minuon (cognomen Lucy, the Eaten One) and the Emissary Caeli

[Nem]

... congratulations =p

Odd, I never pictured you as the speeding type. Though there's no logical reason I can think of to always follow the speed-limit. ^_^

#

Yesterday I saw a drum scanner. They're a really neat idea. They take a big cylinder and paste negatives onto it with a film of oil then cover them with plastic and tape it all down. Then they put the cylinder onto a machine that has an arm in the middle of the cylinder that shines a beam of light outwards into a sensor. And as the cylinder moves along the sensor builds up the image line by line. The oil fills out the scratches and imperfections on the negs too - diffusing the light. They create incredibly clean very high resolution scans.

And there are only a handful of them left in the world because there's not that much call for high-resolution scans of negatives anymore. It's such an elegant solution to the problem though - you look at the scans it does, and even from things that are scratched all to heck they only really require a little retouching.

There was this one scan, from a quite old negative (shortly after the 2nd world war I'd guess), that I saw where you could zoom in across a couple of streets and read the names off the street sign - see the individual bricks on the wall of a building and what was in the windows and stuff. Just, really incredible quality. The scans are so precise that they even do the work in a static free environment. Not quite a clean room but... 'cause little things like that will cause imperfections on the image.

A lot of the things I saw yesterday were a bit like that. I was at a photographic lab/archive place. It was awesome. People who really seemed to enjoy their work doing really neat stuff to old photos. ^_^ Their archive is huge - an entire warehouse just full of old prints and negatives. The man who did the organising estimated they had about 4km of shelving for negatives alone.

It has to be said, although storing things on computer is much more convenient - we're losing something. It doesn't resonate with the soul quite as strongly. Maybe we're just not neurologically hooked up to appreciate numbers as well as we are tilting your head back and seeing kilometers of shelving.

So, yeah. That was a really nice experience. Got to talk to lots of people in some quite niche professions who were incredibly good at their jobs. Found myself phasing out on some of the technical detail stuff - you know how it is sometimes: You can listen or you can analyse. Just have to save things up for later mental dissection.

Ah, I do love this sort of stuff though - all these ingenious solutions people come up with. ^__^
_________________
Never forget,
We stroll along the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
- Issa

[Tinalles]

I'm not really -- I just wasn't paying close enough attention to speed limit changes. There's a school zone near my house where the speed limit drops from 35 to "25 when children are present" for about 3 blocks. No one really pays attention to during the summer when school is not in session. Presumably that's why the cops set up a speed trap there.

So I was doing 40 and not paying attention when the speed limit dropped. Looks like 1 point on the license and a $15 fine, which is tremendously cheap. If it had happened across the river in Minnesota, that would be a $300 fine. I could show up at court and argue that there were no children present, but I have no way to prove that. It'd be my word against the cop's, which I doubt would go over well. Anyway, it's not worth going to court over a $15 fine. I've got better things to do.
_________________
Keeper of The Remnant Minuon (cognomen Lucy, the Eaten One) and the Emissary Caeli

[Anonymous]

Wow, that is pretty jammy. Here you get - I think - 10%+2 mph over the speed limit before they'll nick you for it. Cameras are absolutely everywhere though.

Today I come to you live from a second account, on account of the first account being locked out for a bit since I changed my email address and haven't got the email to set the other account active. Which is odd because I got the email to make this account active easily enough. Weird bug in the forum software mayhaps.

Today I walked around the house and cleaned all the windows. It was... really disgusting. There was grime on there from their old cat. That died. More than a year ago. There was grime on there from back before certain things had been placed in front of the windows that I know dates back more than half a decade. Just, really....

You can see colours through them now! ^^;

They should give me some money, I'd redo things - stick some real storage solutions in. Make it look less like the police just put the dogs through and trashed the place.

Today I waxed nostalgic about games. Because someone asked me about good games. Then went to youtube.

This sort of thing:
http://youtu.be/4i574kbRGQ8
Brings back so many memories.

Ah man, who remembers that bit in the original Homeworld? Barber's Adagio for Strings to Agnus Dei....

In my mind, I always see planets burning in space when I hear that.

There were some really, really great games while I was growing up. Wonder whether the next generation are going to be as lucky in the quality of their games. Going by the state of the industry at the moment it's fairly questionable I think.... ^^;

[YatesOfYore]

Today I reactivated Nem's old account. He could have just asked


My parents are putting an offer on a house today. They've never owned one before - we've lived in apartments my whole life.

And if they get it, I'm moving into the basement. Weird. Good, but weird.

I'll be nice to have the rent money going into something my parent own for once. Apartments definitely have their advantages, but ownership is not one of them.

Should I ever be in the position to actually own something of my own, I think I'd go for a condo.
_________________
Keeper of Nanashi's Vambraces and the Amethyst Trees.

PS: Don't panic! I changed my username - I'm not an impostor!