Brian's World

Slide

I really enjoy the tune from “The Riddle” from Five for Fighting. It has a very pleasant, upbeat rhythm and everything. I just finished cleaning my listeners, as per Katie’s suggestion. Its always good to maintain a clear listening ability, because I think listening is one of the more important things once can do. If you’re not listening correctly, you probably should not be listening in the first place, so its essential to ensure those pathway are free, unobstructed, and unbiased. Out of these three topics, I think listening would fall in the middle, somewhere after doing, but before talking. Everyone would organize this differently, but for me its more important to be able to do things than to be able communicate effectively about things. It kinda related to the concept of being “all talk and no show.” I think that is a terrible idea, so I try to have the show done before I talk, or substantially done so I am sufficiently confident. It did only take 3 out of the allocated 4 supply units to complete my task, so that’s good. Considering the four I allocated was half of my ration left.

I’ve placed a finger on another problem of mine, touching and going. Now I’m describing this in terms of airplanes. When a pilot is going too fast or is running out of runway he can pull up.. touching the ground, and going away.. usually they turn in a circle to try again but thats not really important, we’ll focus on this single incident. For example I can walk somewhere, take a quick survey of the situation, then leave. I don’t have to stop and take off my bag or coat because some flag was thrown that advised me it wasn’t safe to land there. This also happens when I’m driving in my car. I recall this year the Big E was going on, and Katie and I headed down that way to check it out. Well I got on the main road where every starts selling their yard as a parking lot, and I failed to park anywhere so I left. It was pretty sketchy parking on lawns, and there was too much traffic to try and switch lanes to get into the official parking lot. I wonder what character flaws this exposes.. hrm. I guess any number of them really.

Sometimes I get sad, wondering what can I do to improve things that I’m not good at. I try to figure out but its challenging, and I’m clearly below average. There are some things that I can easily apply an improvement plan I’ve already planned for if necesary, or I have a response ready if needed, but there are some things I don’t… its just rare I am tossed something I’m not sure how to deal with. I mean things could go better, but I have a feeling that magic isn’t a statistically sound thing to rely on.

I am trying to figure out what this verb “slide” means in the song “Slide” by Goo Goo Dolls. I can’t seem to see why this person should slide… or specifically what they will sliding on. Will they be sliding on a floor? Down a ramp/slide? I just do not know. Maybe it is about a person who is trying to move who has large concrete blocks around their feet so all they can do is slide across the floor. Actually I think I’m right. Well that riddle isn’t fun any more.

This next week is my dads last full week of work I think, after next weekend he’ll be working part time as “Senior Consultant.” Its pretty depressing for me, and I’m not even him. He’s been working at T&B the entire time I’ve been alive, and well before that so I don’t know too much besides that. I mean we’ve taken vacations and stuff, but come Monday morning he’s already headed out before 7:00am to the office. Now who knows what he’ll do, certainly not me. I haven’t thought about my “retirement”, mainly because I don’t even have a job yet. But I forsee it being a problem, as I spend most of my “free” time now working on projects.. and its not like I’m going to be able to find a bunch of senior citizens who want to work on a neat project when we all retire… lol.. one of us would die or something. That would be terrible… ____ didn’t get around to writing that function, he died last week. My mom “retired” last year I think, but she may have gotten bored and will find a part time job. Her retirement doesn’t hit me the same way my dad’s does because my mom, a teacher, always had summers off.. got home moderately early, and took time off to raise Kevin and I. Dad on the other hand works. I’m not sure if its a motivating factor, or a depressing factor, when I think about my dad’s success. I’m not talking about financially or family or anything like that… like his summer job was checking water levels in the Holyoke Canals and he worked hard enough to become an executive at a company interfacing with towns and municipalities all over MA and the area. Its kinda daunting like hrm, will I ever get to be as successful as him? I guess we might measure sucess differently; but even then… by any metrics I’m measuring what I’m doing.. I am by no means a sucess yet.

Speaking of sucess, I’ve felt for the past 2 weeks or so that something is on the edge or something. I can’t really identify it, but I feel something is going to break out soon and be very awsome. Ideally it might be something like Concerto, but right now its aimed very local to RPI… and the impending feeling of awsome is something larger than the scope of RPI. If I knew I would be able to place a little more focus over there, but I don’t have a clue. My facebook application has been pretty stagnant, and my YouTube Widget hasn’t been used more than 4000 times (which isn’t that many considering google calls it several times a day for some dumb reason). Maybe I just have a stomach ache or something, thats probably what it is.

I should be heading to bed, Eagle Eye Cherry is telling me to save tonight but I’ll do you all one better. Save and Publish.

Good night moon.

CC123

Where to begin. Originally I was going to start with a song, however while researching that song I found that ‘death’ and the different tense ‘die’ have a meaning not related to a feeling of depression, but rather the opposite, a ” intensity of emotional excitement.” [Dictionary.com] I will not speak of the music or references here, but instead link to wikipedia, which in this case knows best.

I hadn’t finished with my previous blog about frustrations, so I have a few more comments to add. I’ve had this problem with people who CC too many people for a long time. I’ve found at 2 of my many places of employment it was commonplace, people would make a message seem more important by CC’ing more people. Those people don’t have any action items in the email or communications, but mearly gather data as if to circumvent the primary addressee of the email itself.

The banging continued last night, perfectly timed to start the second I got in bed. It was as if someone was waiting for me to enter my bed before starting to make noise. Tonight however the noise is not going on, and its significantly past 10:00. Maybe they are actually waiting for me to go to bed. I will test this hypothesis after I post this blog, brush my teeth, floss, turn down my sheets, and finally enter my bed.

So there are a few things I need to clear up, I will do this in a list like fashion. I know I could walk around and speak these lines to the people they are addressed to, but proclaiming them to the entire internet has a much larger scope I think.

1. I like the name Concerto. That doesn’t mean I completely understand it, nor is it my job to. I cite many of the great paintings and works of art, they look very good and are great and everything but I could not explain to you why they are good or great or why everyone should like them. If you think that I don’t like the name, or I think it is stupid, you are incorrect. Please walk through the NOT gate and fix yourself.

2. I am having a hard time coming up with point number 2

3. I think before people make arguments and conclusions, the case study should be concluded. I don’t feel its very safe to isolate evidence and make a per-case conclusion, especially when all the examples are contained in the same entity. I feel that one entity would warrant one conclusion, not a distinct set of conclusions relating to a distinct set of input conditions.

Ok so that list isn’t so impressive… I tried so kudos to me. I’d also like to comment about my blogging because I think some people are confused. Its so rare I address readers directly, hello reader! thanks for stopping by! Lol. You should smile now. I don’t write blogs because they are getting published as literary works, nor are they going to be included in biographical text. What I write is how my mind works, apparently scatters isolated thoughts connected by only traces that I see. I do feel I’ve been letting you all down lately. There was a time in my blogging career where I formed each blog into a very intricate puzzle ready to be delicately unraveled by a curious reader. Lately I’ve been serving blogs up like slabs of meat from a butcher shop. Poorly cut and rarely trimmed. I will work on this, as I must, I owe you.

More to come tomorrow… I’m tired

Building up

So today hasn’t been a great day, and based on the progression of things it won’t be going any better. I really don’t have the time to blog right now, but I think when I don’t have the time is actually one of the better times to do so. I had written a blog last night, but Firefox decided to crash on me and WordPress’s auto save didn’t catch it.

I don’t like those days where things start off bad, and they just keep getting worse. I’d prefer it more if bad things came a little more spread out.. its easier to deal with little chunks of unpleasent spread over time than it is to deal with them all at once. Where should I start… well last night seems like a fitting time. I was going to bed at 10:00pm as I normally due, and my roomate was already asleep so I turned off the lights and grabbed my PJ’s out of my drawer. I walked over to my computer to start shutting it down and then I heard the shower start. Zut! I was too late, Windows XP was already shutting down… grrr. So I sat in bed for 30 mins trying to rest without falling asleep. I don’t think I got any rest.

And then last name, someone in BARH A-Wing felt it was appropriate to bash/pound/slam into their wall/floor/ceiling every minute or so. I don’t know where they were located, but it was a moderately loud thump, and I could hear a picture frame I had on the wall wiggle. This kept up until at least 11:45, afterwhich I stopped looking at the clock. So my alarm goes off at 6:45 as it normally does. On a typical day I enjoy getting up at this hour, showering, etc and being at breakfast a little after they open at 7:30. Today was one of those days where my roomate has class at 8:00am; and based on the 1.5 hour rule, I would be unable to perform my morning “routine” between the hours of 6:30am and 8:00am. For those of you who don’t know, the 1.5 hour rule is how long the resources will be unavailable to me while other people use them. I have done a pretty good job of cutting down my time in the bathroom to 15-20 mins in the morning, which is still longer than I’d like…followed by 1-10 mins after I eat breakfast so I can brush my teeth, etc.

Then I went to do my laundry… where the light was out so I couldn’t see a thing as to what I was doing. I checked everything twice and managed to loose 0 clothes… whew. After laundry and lunch, which I wore my backpack to oand it was terrible I headed to physics 2 where we got our test back. I’m a fan of physics, but I’m not a fan of other professors giving kids a study guide when that professor makes the exam.. leaving the rest of us to guess whats on their. What bothers me more is when there are multi-part questions, and you get a step somewhere in the middle wrong, so that mistake effects the rest of the problem. For example I got A right, and B wrong. I needed my answer from B to do part C.. and since B was wrong of course C was wrong. My logic was correct, but the 1 number I plugged in was wrong… Personally I’d like credit for that part.. but I accept that will never happen.

Fast forward to this afternoon… I’m in my room trying to study some chemistry and finish Canos and Database Systems homework. Of course I am not lucky enough to do this in piece. It seems a steady flow of garbage is ready and waiting to drain into my ears. Personally I don’t produce any such garbage, and I minimize the amount that other people might see as garbage. I make the following noises: typing on a keyboard, squeeking in my chair, flushing of the toilet, running the sink, lightly blowing my nose, listening to music/tv in my headphones, talking on the phone, the ringing of the phone. I think thats about it. I’ll assume things like making bed, and using pens/pencils produce negligible sound… not that my headphones produce loud sound, but I wanted them to be there for example. If I pictured sounds flowing into my ears as images, maybe some classical music would be bouncy flowers or pleasent bursts of color. Some more “popular” music might present images of the people singing them, or telling me a story. Whatever I am hearing sounds more like a large plank of wood bashing me in the ear like a ram or something.

So tomorrow there is a chemistry test. I hope to do alright at it. I’m only likely to falter if they ask a confusing weak-acid/weak-base question, or a lot of things that require me to have charges/ions memorized. Otherwise I hope to be ok. This test is at 8:00am. So we apply the 1.5 hour rule, which indicates that I can’t use what I need after 6:30 am. Big deal, wake up at 6:00. Nope, that won’t suffice.. because what if.. for some strange reason my 1.5 hour estimate is off slightly, I could easily see that shift to 1.75 or something like that… hence I would have a problem. So I’ll wake up between 5:30 and 5:45. Therefore if a situation arises where the desired facilities become unavable I will have some wiggle room to do what I need to do. Waking up early does cost me though, specifically whatever a plain bagel w/ butter and a small hot chocolate with whipped cream costs at Dunkin Donuts. Commons doesn’t open until 7:30, and that is way to long for me to be sitting on an empty stomach. Last time this happened Dunkin Donuts ran out of bagel, or didn’t have any at 6:15 in the morning. Yea, I don’t know either.

I need to review chemistry some more, because the way college tests go for me, they tend to ask what I don’t know, followed by what I know but worded in such a fashion that I don’t think I know it.

Oh yea, apparently its suppose to snow or something… I will have to figure how that factors into everything.