Digital (a random post)

Few people love the digital world as much as I do.  However, there are times when I feel like converting some of it to "tangible property" ought to be a priority on my to-do list.  Supposing there came a time when we were to lose internet, or all electricity, for an indefinite amount of time (two days can feel indefinite!).  Apart from all the very important things that would be lost - emails, information, essays and stories, etc. - this blog would be gone.  Pictures, quotes, and ideas would be soon forgotten.  A lot of the things I've depended on for studying or entertainment would be lost.  It would be like a year ago, when we had the ice storm, just sitting in the dark and staring at candles.  That gets old quickly.

I've never been one to really worry about this kind of scenario, and I don't think worrying is the solution.  At the same time, I think it would be a great idea to start writing more things down by hand, or printing them up and starting a scrapbook of some kind.  Though I love Project Gutenberg e-books, I should at least own hard copies of books I'd hate to lose (my mom has kept our hardcover encyclopedia for this very reason).  The concept of photo albums seems clever and new again. 

The internet takes knowledge from one location and spreads it to every edge of the globe - if we lost the internet, it would be as if a lot of that information had never set foot out the door.  And that's pretty sad.  I do love digital, but its strength is certainly its weakness.

Thoughts (and ideas)?

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Mystery of the Dying Clocks

UPDATE: Four clocks!  The fourth one was a brown clock (from the family room), which I used between the Roman clock and the living room clock.  It also stopped working.

PLUS new theory:  My room is near the (relatively new) roof antenna, maybe that has something to do with it?

I want a new wall clock badly, but I'm afraid to get one.  You see, three wall clocks have died in my room.  In a row.

Years and years ago, I had a blue flower-shaped clock.  The face cracked when I accidentally dropped it.  It still worked for a long while, but I ended up getting rid of it and adopting a hand-me-down from my sister.  This was a purple clock.

The purple clock lived happily for a year or more on my wall, until one day it acted very strangely, sort of ticking back and forth in one place.  I replaced the battery, and it was either then or a battery replacement(s) later that it stopped working altogether.  Bye-bye purple clock.

So I bought a new clock with Roman numerals--nothing fancy, but a little more expensive than the purple clock. Roman clock stopped working soon afterwards (probably within 6-8 months).  Replaced the battery, to no avail.  "Cheap clock, huh?" thought I.  "Well, Mom and Dad are getting rid of the living room clock, so that's bound to work."

We have had said living room clock for EONS and MILLENNIA.  It's nothing fancy or expensive, either, but it has lasted forever.  For sentimental reasons, I love this wall clock.  Of course, in my room, its lifespan was comparable to that of its predecessor.  Replaced the battery, to no avail (the batteries, I ought to mention, are the same plain old batteries that work fine in every other situation).

I'm seriously freaked out now. 

I have two theories, of sorts (neither of which, however, explains the longevity of the flower-shaped clock).  Firstly: the wall clocks' location has always been within a yard of my smoke detector.  Could it be that the smoke detector's radiation--however small--is actually powerful enough to destroy the mechanisms in cheap wall clocks?  I thoroughly examined the relative locations of the smoke detectors and wall clocks in other rooms of the house, and my room is the only one where the two things are somewhat close to each other.

Even this theory falls flat.  My smoke detector is perfectly normal, and smoke detectors' radiation is essentially harmless to humans.  Besides, the flower-shaped clock lived just fine in the same location in my room, for years and years.   

My second theory is that wireless internet has ruined the mechanisms.  However, this seems ridiculous, since other people have wall clocks and wi-fi, too, and they apparently don't suffer from this bizarre malfunction.

Right now, I just have a framed picture of HMS Victory where the Clocks used to be.  I don't expect to wake up to a shower of shattered glass, but anything could happen, I guess.

Has this phenomenon, or something similar, ever happened to you? 

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Ahahaha

I was driving to school today and passed the Google Maps car.  I grinned and waved.  But, as I reflected later, it was just coming out of a parking lot and perhaps the camera was not turned on.  Lucky them.

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Perfect

Have you ever felt, for a moment, that life is absolutely perfect?  Or, more rarely, that you are exactly who, what, and how you ought to be?  And then you want that moment to last forever.  Nothing changing or leaving it.  You feel so perfectly content, so complete, so truly at equilibrium, and too happy to make light of it by laughing.  You've known the other side, too, and this moment is more beautiful because it is light years away from disappointment, and forgetting doesn't hurt like remembering does.  You feel done wishing for other things--the thing you want most in this moment is only having what you have now until the day you die.  Which impossibility would make you sad if your mind was listless enough to have time to think about it, but your mind is too full comprehending perfection to give way to reality.  Hope instead becomes real, and doubt--doubt's the thing you can laugh over now.  This is what it means to live happily-ever-after.

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Hectic week

Uni transfer application.  *facepalm headdesk headWALL*

Rethinking my schedule for my last quarter at community college.  Planning to take a geography class that is supposedly to count as a lab science.  It really bothers me that the uni doesn't define lab science--at least for transfer students--anywhere on their admissions website, and the people on the phone can only give me vaguely optimistic theories.  In fact, it bothers me so much, right now I'm up late at night (or is it morning?) trying, via several trains of Google searches, to find the answer.  Failed, needless to say.  Not happy.  If I were to take this class and find out it doesn't count, I'd be seriously unhappy. 

It'd have been a jolly gloomy spring break if that were all I've been up to.  Well, we worked outside last weekend.  I bought and cut out this pattern today, hope to work on it tomorrow.  Watching The Virginian S4.  My new Kensington mouse came in the mail--best mouse EVER, and on sale too!  Reading The Great Enigma, at long last.  Bought a "poncho"-style tunic top at the thrift store.  All is well in my personal life.

And it's raining steadily, which to me is a bonus. 

Good night, good morning, have a nice day, whatever time it happens to be where you are!

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3.14: Happy π (Pi) day!

Acknowledging Pi Day is a new tradition on all that is gold.  Though admittedly, when somebody asked me during an exam today what day it was, I couldn't remember if it was the 14th or 15th (the Ides of March). I had been sure it was Pi Day, but characteristically, I was not sure the moment somebody suggested a shadow of doubt.  Flashes of photographic memory told me March 11 was printed on the church bulletin, so I decided (correctly) it really must be the 14th.

I don't know how normal people celebrate Pi Day, but a glance at the unit circle (oh, bane of Precalculus students!) seems appropriate.

credit: Gustavb

Student's Application of the Unit Circle:

1. Attempts to learn the reasoning behind the madness. 
2. Is 80% successful with the help of a patient teacher/tutor/parent/superhero.
3. Memorizes Unit Circle, after much Trial and Error.
4. Attempts to remember the reasoning.  Unsuccessful.
5. Headdesk.
6. Forgets everything on the Unit Circle.
7. Learns s/he can do pretty well if s/he only memorizes Quadrant I. 
8. Goes back to using addition and subtraction to find other angle measures...in much secrecy and shame.

In retrospect, methinks the best thing you can do is simply memorize the Unit Circle and don't bother to remember the "why's", or else you'll start thinking of the Unit Circle as an actual graph of a function with a triangle spinning around and around inside of it with tangent and sine and cosine playing hopscotch in your head.  Just focus on memorization, keep things nice and simple.  (Note: this is unofficial advice).

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Arrows!

↨  ↓  →  ↑  ←

Now I know how to type arrows!   Happiness!

P.S. Alt -23, -24, -25, -26, -27.

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Indeedy

Few things more frustrating than being awoken by an alarm clock or well-meaning family member, when you're in the middle of a wonderful dream.  And never knowing how it ends!

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C'est moi

When I do my homework, as planned.

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Tea and Light Conversation

Tea should be the official beverage for procrastinators.




First you have to boil the water.  Then choose a flavour.  Make the tea (the quick & easy way, you know).  Wait for it to steep.  Wait for it to cool.  Finally, drink the tea.  By this time, it's probably cold and too strong for normal human beings.

All of this is a euphemism for the breaking news you were all waiting for: my US History class  test was rescheduled for tomorrow.   So I've got two tests tomorrow, and I should be studying now.  But I'd rather be blogging about tea, and the inanity of small talk.

The definition is so cute: "light conversation for social occasions".  Picnic on the White House lawn.  Ok, perhaps not that extreme.  It is more like attempted conversation during moments of awkward silence.  Obligatory utterances.

Anywho.

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In some cases..

...ignorance is most certainly bliss.

That's all.

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Dear Mt Rainier,

We haven't seen you in what feels like eons. 


Every day on my way to and from school I search the sky for you, but all I've seen are foothills and clouds.  Stop hiding, won't you?

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Boromir, academic advisor

Gotta love Tumblr.

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Facts I will know forever

1. Berlioz was a music critic
2. Uruguay became totally independent in 1828.
3. TBA
4. TBA
5. TBA
6. TBA
7. TBA
8. TBA
9. TBA
10. TBA

Tests are so educational. 

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I can't write a sales letter

Everything I say sounds unintentionally hilarious.

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Snow day

Well, if the weather forecasts come true, my three-day weekend might morph into a five-day weekend.  I stayed home today, and the campus will likely be closed tomorrow, due to the predicted 6+ inches that's coming our way.

I'm not excited, necessarily.  After making school and homework the center of my daily routine, I succumb to boredom very easily on a day off. I end up drinking a lot of tea and wasting time.  Worse than other people...when I'm really bored, I don't do anything.  I don't blog, I don't watch movies, I don't even take a nap.  I just do nothing.  It's pathetic. 

My good deeds of the day:  I played with my sibs outside and I worked on my poem.  Let it be known that my snowball fighting skills are as bad as my chess-playing skills. 

What's the weather like where you live?  I know that, compared to some places, six inches of snow must seem like nothing, but around here, it makes headlines.  ;)

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In which I give myself "very good advice"

Whilst my unhappy laptop is undergoing another scan, I've been getting ready for winter quarter, which starts tomorrow.  My main thought is Get there early.

I'm a creature of habit, and few things of daily routine are as important to me as getting a good seat in a classroom.  "A good seat" can be two or more of the following:

1. At the end of a row
2. On the right side of the room
3. Near the door
4. At a comfortable distance from the whiteboard and the professor

Most importantly, once I find the best seat for the given circumstances, it is essential that I arrive at class early, every day, to be able to sit in what becomes my chair.

If, for example, I get to class on time for an exam, I typically find somebody already sitting in my chair.  Somebody who rarely attends lectures but always shows up 10 minutes early for exams.  This event sends me to an uncharted area of the classroom, where I may or may not have to take somebody else's chair.  Said chair may be of a different make and model than my chair.  Ergo, I take the exam in more considerable discomfort than was necessary.  If I'd only got there early...

What about you?  Where do you like to sit, be it a classroom, theater, sanctuary, or conference setting?  Do you like to sit in the same place each time?  And why, or why not?

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Laptop rant

My laptop is having some major problems right now.  The program shortcuts aren't working--all I get is "Choose the program you want to use to open this file"--and it seems to be the result of some virus.  Presumably the virus is gone now...I ran an anti-virus scan, a quick scan, and two system restores.  But those shortcuts still don't work (though the programs' .exe files do, oddly enough).  I searched around online, and I guess there are some downloads that can fix this, but I don't know.  I'll probably try that tomorrow (after another scan, in Safe Mode), but it looks pretty doubtful.

The whole thing is a rotten headache.  The worst of it is, I'm not sure if there is still a virus or not.  Hopefully the Safe Mode scan will find that out.  I can't do that until tomorrow afternoon, though, because it takes so long and I have to keep an eye on it. 

At five years old, my laptop isn't exactly on the cutting edge, and the simplest/long-term solution would be to get a new one.  Except that practically no one makes laptops with 16:10 screens anymore, and I can't stand its replacement, 16:9.  That ratio subtracts about an inch, vertically.  So for the time being, I've got to try to salvage my poor laptop. 

I don't want a new laptop, anyway--I really like the one I have.  It's been my first and only laptop, and it always survived problems before.  I'll be pretty depressed if we can't fix it.

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Lol

So yesterday, I re-watched the preview of Sherlock: Hounds of the Baskerville (which looks very cool.  I'm not watching Scandal in Belgravia, though, and I'll leave it at that...)   So there's this part where the guy says "Rats as big as dogs.  And dogs as big as horses." 

So last night I dreamed I had a gigantic pet rabbit.  Bigger than a corgi.  He looked like Arthur, except huge.  And I'm not an animal person, but this rabbit was practically my best friend. 

Then this creepy bad guy came to our house (or mansion...it was huge, too) and he started to take stuff away, and I was afraid he was going to take the rabbit away.  Maybe the house was actually a hotel...anyway, there were lot of people staying there, including these three travelling warriors--I guess?  Sort of like the Three Musketeers.  I forgot what they were doing there. 

Yeah.  Weird, huh?

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MONDAY.

Yes, I am excited about Monday.  It's the beginning of the end of fall quarter.  To the best of my knowledge, all my finals are on Wednesday, and it's actually been a good quarter. The first autumn in about four years that I haven't felt weighed down with homework, and I'm 100% grateful for that.

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