Monday Monday

[jazzfish]

"I can't think of much worse than spending a lifetime doing something that isn't what you want to do." --Neil Gaiman, 2003-05-18

meeshdoublel has a brilliantly insightful piece on Matrix mythology here. (Spoilers, although mostly confined to the third and fifth bullet-points.)

I acquired the Foxtail Book (plus foxtail) Sunday at work... figured, hey, it's summer, it's nice out, and K and her foxtail are seven states away for the summer, so I might as well.

Got up Monday to try getting back into the whole 'running' thing again. Discovered that, to steal a cliche, there is nowhere to run around here. Too many steep hills, not enough loops in the streets. Grr. Drove to class. Glyndwr is doing the stupid thing where it shakes a lot when I press the gas pedal if it's been wet out. Grr. Class was cool, though. Medieval Lit, with JoAnn Harvill. (I had her for Irish Lit during one of several semesters when I flaked out. I suspect that she remembers me but don't really want to jog her memory.) Looks like it'll be a lot of fun. We're reading Boethius, The Inferno, and various other things out of an anthology. Got out after about half an hour (yay!), went and paid tuition, and bought books for class. Then bummed around for awhile. Went to work (yay fun). Read Dealing with Dragons, the first book in Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Very cool. Cute, and fast. One of the elder dragons at one point insists that something has to be done, "or we'll show them, by George!" and then apologises for using such strong language. I was amused. Talked to K for a bit... she's doing well.

Yesterday afternoon E pointed out that the walk-path behind the townhouses actually loops around them, making a complete loop at the bottom of the hill. So I tried running that this morning. The hills are still annoying, but it's doable. (I'll just be way stiff tomorrow.)

I'm down to seven boxes that I haven't dealt with yet. Five of those are probably going to get sorted through and have things put right back in them and placed in storage, though.

It's nice to have a desk that my computer will fit under properly. Means it's not such a hassle to change music CDs, which means I'm actually listening to my music again.

Comments

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Woo, foxtail! Never played with one, but often seen the book/toy. :)

Also, running with hills is rather better for you than ones without. Run less for a better workout and all that.

By George: Haha! :)

[jazzfish]

Foxtail: I'm more of a fan than I am of frisbee... foxtail requires less skill.

Hills: Well, yeah. It was more the lack of a good loop that I had a problem with... I hate running out someplace and then turning around and coming back. Feels like I'm undoing all that work.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I've never actually played Foxtail, but I'm pretty good at frisbee. ;)


Loops: Should run in Boston sometime. There's a set of 13 bridges, and a webpage that gives the lengths of the entire matrix of loops encompassed by picking two of those bridges and going for a run across/between them. :)

[zerblinitzky.livejournal.com]

CDs? Oh, you mean those funny little discs that the music comes in when you buy it? I always thought those were just part of the packaging.

[scathach.livejournal.com]

When Priscilla did that, she needed a new cylinder. Pricy. Ouch. Sorry.

[jazzfish]

Great. Just what I need to hear.

Did she do the shaking thing all the time, or just when it was wet/cold out? (Not like you can tell the difference in Minnesota...)

[scathach.livejournal.com]

Only when it had been raining, although it was starting to get chilly (I think it was the tail end of the summer). I got it fixed pretty quick, so it never got COLD.

It also only happened when I was in low gear - first or second. Once I made it into third, it usually stopped. It also didn't happen as much after the car had warmed up, although after about a week of that, it started happening even then.

I hope this isn't it - I think it cost me about $250 to fix it. It's not like getting a new clutch (yep, did that, too), but it's not an oil change either. Good luck.

[jazzfish]

Yeah, that's basically the same symptoms I've got. It's been doing this for about a year, but it's only gotten bad in the last couple months. Guess I ought to get it dealt with before I drive to Columbus at the end of June. (Come to Origins!)

Oh, okay. $250 isn't horrendously expensive, then. (For me, car repairs fall into categories of less than $100, less than $400, and at the point where I balance just selling the Damned Thing off and using the money to buy a (hopefully) less broken vehicle.)

Hope you're doing okay. New number here is (540) 382-4393. Just so's you know.

[vileone.livejournal.com]

"I can't think of much worse than spending a lifetime doing something that isn't what you want to do." --Neil Gaiman, 2003-05-18

This is pretty much what I kept telling people who were CS majors for the money. I guess I got lucky in that what I love to do also tends to pay well. But it's still crazy to chase a job you don't want to do just because you think you'll make a lot of money. I think of all the aerospace majors who got out right before that industry crashed. And now all those fresh computer graduates get to come into the floundering high-tech industry. Chasing today's cash cow when you have a 4-5 year lead time is just a losing proposition.

Figure out what you love to do. Then figure out how to get paid for it. And for pete's sake, if you can't make enough doing what you love, make sure your "real" job isn't so demanding that you have no time for love left.

[jazzfish]

These days it feels like everything is getting said twice, just to make sure I hear it. "Live deliberately" you said in an earlier comment; in different words I had just gotten that far myself. (I figure as long as I have a pretty good idea why I do what I do, I'll be alright-- if it's a reason I deem insufficient or just plain bad, I can change my action.)

I suspect that I could enjoy programming, and that I could be decent at it. But I'd hate the discipline and the three years' work necessary to get a degree in it, and I'm fairly sick of small software companies anyway. With about two exceptions the people I hang out with are either working in CS or working on working in CS, though, so it is taking / has taken effort to say "This is not what I want to do."

While talking with my parents a week and a half ago they tried to convince me that the answer to having a job you hate is to find the good things about that job and think about those, instead of the bad things. This strikes me as the wrong way to go about it: first you figure if the good things outweigh the bad; if so, then you do the accentuate-the-positive routine. If not, it's clearly time to check out. So, it was nice to be backed up by The Neil when I got back to Xiansburg.

Re:ligion: thanks for taking time to ponder. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.