Brian's World

Chair, McDonalds, String

Ok so my computer chair is broken here at home. I discovered this on New Years day but I have finally gotten the hang of sitting on it. The middle rod that connects the chair to the wheely base is partially disconnected in the middle of it, allowing the chair to tilt roughly 15 degrees down in any direction. Its very different to lean forward and find youself nearly falling out of a chair, and then leaning backwards and finding yourself in a recline position. I don’t know what happened, but I do have a few clues as to who sat in it out of ordinary. I can fix the problem by lowering the chair, forcing the two poles in the center to interlock, but I don’t like sitting down low.

A few random stories.

I was at McDonald’s today getting Katie a snack after school. She enjoys Chicken Nugget Happy Meals, they provide just enough food to fill her up but not too much so I don’t eat leftovers (like Naked Nuggets). I went up to the register, where the lady was clearly distracted, and asked for a “Chicken McNugget Happy Meal”. She replied “What size?” Panic! Exception thrown. What was she asking I thought to myself? Drink size? What size nuggets would I like? Holy Buckets! How do I respond? Kid size drink? Normal Size nuggets? EEK! So I continued my expression of mass confusion associated with processing everything I could think of quantifying the size of a happy meal. Realize I had no clue what she was asking she gave me my options “4 piece or 6”. OK, lady.. do you lack that much skill? 4 or 6 is not a size choice, unless your shopping for clothes. Small, Medium, Large, etc.. those are sizes you associate with food and are sized I’m accustom to using at McDonalds. “Big” would have been a valid option, implying the “Big Kids Meal.” Using a word like “size” lead me to believe I had lots of options, any range of potential sizes would have been valid in my mind.. but of course a Happy Meal only comes in two sizes, regular and big kid.

Story #2. I was at Katie’s helping her with some homework. The problem wasn’t terribly challenging, find the linear speed of a satellite orbiting the earth. As for all word problems, Katie began by drawing a picture. She drew the earth, added 2 continents, and a small satelite far away. We recognized we were going to need to know the total distance the satellite would travel since we knew the time it took for one revolution. Katie correctly drew its path, a circle around the earth. Then I asked her how we get that distance. She replied “I dunno, I don’t have any string around here.” Huh? String? How would string be of any help on this problem where absolutely nothing was drawn to scale. Katie felt it necessary to explain how she could wrap the string around the path and then do some math from there. Yes, if I were Greek and pro with the slide rule I might like some string, but unfortunately I’ve forgotten how to use a slide rule (that implies I did know at one point know how, yes). Luckily I refreshed her memory with 2*pi*r and we were back on our track.

Let me think, any more stories to share? Not at the moment.