Ummmm, yeah.

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 03:34:18 GMT

I have apparently been tagged by Dallas, Almerane, and Quint. Since these constitute at least half of my actual female friends, and certainly the ones I'm closest to, I'll give it a try. 20 random facts, coming right up.

1) I'm a black-belt in karate
2) This does not mean there are not people who could reduce me to a fine paste
3) I looove Beatles music. I have weird taste in music in general.
4) Indian food is godly. I haven't had enough of it lately.
5) Three out of four of my college courses seems to involve analyzing big complicated things made out of small simple things. This rocks.
6) I still have lots of homework though.
7) But for this week, I'm done with my homework! Yay!
8) Whenever I utterly angst out, I end up writing really escapist literature.
9) I haven't done this in a long time. This is a good thing, but I miss being inspired to write. ;_;
10) I played the clarinet and flute for several years in middle and high school. I have since not had time.
11) I didn't actually have more than one or, arguably two, years of high school. I was home-schooled and got a GED diploma the last two years.
12) My parents claim I refused to be home-schooled before that. I'm not sure I believe them.
13) I have lived in the West Bank for two years, St. Louis for 11 years, Beirut for four years, Denmark for one year, and St. Louis for another three years.
14) It's scary when your sister has a nervous breakdown for something like two years
15) It's even more scary when she ends up studying nearly the same thing as your dad, in the same school as your dad. You'd probably have to know my dad to understand the true horror of this, though. :-P
16) I have no clue what the hell my feelings are for people right now. Time was once, I at least knew if I loved someone or not. Now I'm much more... ambivilant, somehow.
17) There are still people I know I love. I can tell because they're the ones I never get to talk to enough. I worry about ending up stalking them.
18) I am much, much, MUCH shyer in Real Life.
19) My fondest hope and dream is to be an astronaut. This has been true since forever. The closest I'll probably ever get is being a planetary geologist.
20) Just about anyone I spend significant amounts of time with WILL end up calling me "silly foxy". I have no clue why. It's some sort of universal rule.

So... eight minutes. That means I have to send this to eight people. Do I even know eight people?

No.

Mon, 11 Jul 2005 19:12:52 GMT

I feel better now.
Back to playing Super Metroid.

yay, a post

Mon, 11 Jul 2005 14:16:58 GMT

"Why did you do this in this problem?" Because I thought it was
right, dammit!
"Why did you think it was right?" Because I have no way of telling
that it's wrong! It looked right, and it sure seemed to work, and I
thought it was the right rule to do here.
"But it's not the right rule, you should have done this..." How the
fuck was I supposed to know that? Like I said, it seemed to work just
fine; I got a valid answer! (Yeah, and 2 + 2 = 5 gives you a valid
answer...)
"But how could you not know? Look, it's simple. There's only two
rules..." NO THERE FUCKING DAMN WELL IS NOT! You give me rule after
rule after endless fucked-up rule, and I sit there and do the problems
and study them, and then when it seems like I know how it's supposed
to work, or when I think I know when I should use this rule or that
rule, or how to put them together, oh no, life is never NEVER easy,
and there's some whacked-out special case that applies to this
situation, or it looked just like I should do this when I really
should have done that, which has nothing to do with how the problem
LOOKS like it should work, but if you mutate it three times through
these OH SO OBVIOUS equations, everything just falls into place!
Oh, yeah, but everything just falls into place when I do the FIRST
thing too, but it just does so wrongly.
"Why don't you have any confidence in yourself?" YOU HAVE TO FUCKING
ASK??!! You just published your fucking thesis and you're THAT BLOODY
DENSE? EVERY time I try to do an important quiz or something, I get
everything wrong! And it happens blindly, for the stupidest of
reasons, even if it's just a misplaced minus sign that I didn't notice
before and didn't see when (if) I checked my work. ALWAYS. I have
gone through this fucking calculus, what, three times already? Four?
Five? Depends on how you cut it. And EVERY TIME, I FAIL. AGAIN.
AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN. And I keep trying, again and AGAIN, and each
time I think that I'm finally getting it, that THIS TIME I understand
what's going on and how it's supposed to work, and I FAIL AGAIN. And
you sit there and have the fucking NERVE to ask WHY I HAVE NO
CONFIDENCE IN MYSELF.
"But why do you go too fast? You make these silly little mistakes..."
Yeah. I go fast because I want it over with. Because I can. Because
I think I'm doing it right. Because it seems obvious that the way I'm
doing is the way it should be done. Because I think I understand what
I'm doing, how it's supposed to work. Take your fucking pick.
"But you're good at math! I don't understand why you do these
things." Yeah, I'm good at it. Right. I understand the concepts
quickly, and apply them quickly (whether I do it right or wrong). I'm
good at symbolic manipulation. I'm a programmer for fuck's sake; I've
had a lot of practice absorbing ideas and working out connections
between them. I HAVE BEEN TOLD "you're good at math" MY ENTIRE
FUCKING LIFE, AND THAT HAS *NEVER EVER MADE IT FUCKING EASIER*. IT
HAS NEVER MADE ME LIKE IT MORE. IT HAS *NEVER* MADE IT EASIER TO
DEAL WITH. If anything, the opposite. It's made me think I don't have
to work at it. Even when I know better, even when I work at it and
fuck it up time after time, everyone still says "wow, you're good at
math!". Because I pick up the concepts quickly, and lose them just as
quickly, and hardly even notice the difference. And then when I screw
something up, everyone seems surprised and says, as though they care
(they might), "But you're so good at math! I don't understand why you
messed this up".
"But you did the wrong rule here, why? There's just two rules you
need for this..." LIAR! YOU FUCKING LIAR! Yeah, okay, there's one
essential concept for, say, limits. Then there's three special cases.
And then for each of those special cases, there's another two special
cases. And then when you've got those, you fill the page with
whack-ass problems that need another eight ideas, equations,
shortcuts, identities and little tricks that work instantly if it's in
the right form and FUCK UP UTTERLY if it's just slightly wrong. And
that's for the quadratic form; the trigonometric stuff has another
eight or ten shortcuts and shit. Oh, and then there's these little
things you need to remember if it's approaching zero from positive or
negative. Oh, and you have to remember how to factor the shit right,
which is another six rules, and WHEN to factor it, which doesn't have
any rules but "you just kinda see it", when you need to get it into
the correct form for the aforementioned little tricks, if you know
which one you should be using. Oh right, and then you have to know
how to find and place the roots, and for that you need to work out the
domain, and for that there's another four little tricks, and then once
you're done you have to guess what the fuck it means, and how to take
that abstract meaning and turn it into answering the actual bloody
question! And that's all for just normal stuff; when you get into
THIS special case, which can be hidden inside all sorts of other
problems, there's just nothing you can do.
AND YOU SIT THERE AND HAVE THE FUCKING *BALLS* TO SAY "THERE'S JUST
TWO RULES"!!!
Dear reader, I bet you think I'm exaggerating. Shall I count them? I
think I can do that much math, at least.
It doesn't help that everyone I have ever met has LIED TO ME ABOUT THE
NATURE OF MATH FOR TWELVE FUCKING YEARS AND MORE, but that's a
different rant. One that's already been finished. One that will
never be finished.
(and have you ever tried, really tried, to change these problems?)
Oh, fuck off. I feel bad enough without you telling me how useless my
entire life has been; I already know. It's the exact same cycle, over
and over, even when I think that, as I said, this time I'm finally
getting the hang of it.
There was more, but I don't remember it. Let's cut to the music:
---
It starts with one thing
I don't know why
It doesn't even matter how hard you try keep that in mind
I designed this rhyme
To explain in due time
All I know
Time is a valuable thing
Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings
Watch it count down to the end of the day
The clock ticks life away
It's so unreal
Didn't look out below
Watch the time go right out the window
Trying to hold on, but didn't even know
Wasted it all just to watch you go
I kept everything inside and even though I tried, it all fell apart
What it meant to me will eventually be a memory of a time when
I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn't even matter
I had to fall
To lose it all
But in the end
It doesn't even matter
One thing, I don't know why
It doesn't even matter how hard you try, keep that in mind
I designed this rhyme, to explain in due time
I tried so hard
In spite of the way you were mocking me
Acting like I was part of your property
Remembering all the times you fought with me
I'm surprised it got so (far)
Things aren't the way they were before
You wouldn't even recognize me anymore
Not that you knew me back then
But it all comes back to me (in the end)
You kept everything inside and even though I tried, it all fell apart
What it meant to me will eventually be a memory of a time when I
I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn't even matter
I had to fall
To lose it all
But in the end
It doesn't even matter
I've put my trust in you
Pushed as far as I can go
And for all this
There's only one thing you should know
---
Dammit, I haven't had that song happen to me in what, six months? I
thought I had broken the cycle. But as I said, it keeps coming back
to that.
And, well shit, I can yell at the universe all I want and nothing will
happen. Let's stick this on my so-called LJ and surprise a few
people. Maybe I'll even spread the misery around if I'm lucky.
Gods I hate my life.
Oh, and do note that all that's just math itself, it has nothing to do
with all the things I'm supposedly going to need math for someday, all
the things I can't do until I've passed eighteen fucking months of
math classes, and the whole fun debate with myself that goes
something like "Is it worth it? Can I do something else? Would I
succeed at something else? What else would I do? Do I want to give
up? Would I want to live with myself if I did? I suspect not..."

This exists soley for Shale's convenience

Ummmm, yeah.

yay, a post